What I Would Read, If I Could Read
Since I'm in deep despair that I don't have any time to read (and have only read "The Vaccine Book" in the whole 12 weeks since Snippet was born), I thought I could reminisce about books I have previously read, snagging Karen's meme below.
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. (**I'm not sure at all what the criteria were for making it onto this list, but I'll go along anyway.)
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen: I won't strike through this one (since I don't even know how to make my keyboard do that anyway), but I will say it's extremely doubtful I'll read it. I'll admit it, though it might get me thrown out of the literary girls club: I don't like Jane Austen---not one bit. I won't say, "Hate," but it comes close. Her books are tedious.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien: Yum, yummy yum stuff. Fun and thoughtful, all rolled into three volumes.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte: Have read this one multiple times and love it anew with each read.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling: I can't italicize this one because it's just a big "Maybe" on my list. I like the movies a whole lot, but with my reading time being so limited, I just can't say that this series makes the cut.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens: I can say with my whole heart that I love everything I've ever read by Dickens, which is several titles, though I still have many more to read. (I keep getting stuck happily re-reading David Copperfield.)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott: I've tried to read this several times, but it stinks of the same Jane Austen-esque tediousness that makes me snooze.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare: Have read many of them, but certainly not the complete works. In general, I'm a fan and have already begun reading them to Snippet.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien: As much as I love Lord of the Rings, I can't get through this book. It bores me just a few chapters in.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger: I promised Karen I would read this book, but I forgot about it until I saw it on her list. Maybe I'll remember it now.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell: This was super-duper fun to read.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams: I loathe this movie (both versions!), so it's extremely doubtful I will
ever read the book, even though Jake tells me it's purely wonderful.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens: Love-love-love it, have read it several times.
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis: I love these books so much, I saved my $5-per-week allowance for months as a kid in order to buy the whole series.
34 Emma - Jane Austen: Read it. Hated it.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis: Confused---who would read just this one book, and not the whole series?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Technically I have read this, but I read it much too fast as part of a Master's English class, and didn't retain much. Definitely deserves a re-read.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery: I tried to read this book several times as a kid, but was bored to drooling.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert: Have not read, but Jakes says it's amazing.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love in The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov: This book got me psyched about Nabokov in general.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt: This was lots of fun.
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold: HATE THIS BOOK ETERNALLY.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac: I read a chapter or so of it, and then threw it across the room.
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy: HATE. HATE. Long and boring and HATE.
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville: LOVE it. Have read it several times, despite being warned against it by friends who were English majors.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett: A very lovely book.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath: Have been wanting to/meaning to read this for years.
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom: Have not read, but it sounds like utter crap.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: I read a couple of these as a kid. Particularly liked Hound of the Baskervilles.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams: A wonderful, lovely book, re-read several times.
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. (**I'm not sure at all what the criteria were for making it onto this list, but I'll go along anyway.)
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen: I won't strike through this one (since I don't even know how to make my keyboard do that anyway), but I will say it's extremely doubtful I'll read it. I'll admit it, though it might get me thrown out of the literary girls club: I don't like Jane Austen---not one bit. I won't say, "Hate," but it comes close. Her books are tedious.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien: Yum, yummy yum stuff. Fun and thoughtful, all rolled into three volumes.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte: Have read this one multiple times and love it anew with each read.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling: I can't italicize this one because it's just a big "Maybe" on my list. I like the movies a whole lot, but with my reading time being so limited, I just can't say that this series makes the cut.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens: I can say with my whole heart that I love everything I've ever read by Dickens, which is several titles, though I still have many more to read. (I keep getting stuck happily re-reading David Copperfield.)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott: I've tried to read this several times, but it stinks of the same Jane Austen-esque tediousness that makes me snooze.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare: Have read many of them, but certainly not the complete works. In general, I'm a fan and have already begun reading them to Snippet.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien: As much as I love Lord of the Rings, I can't get through this book. It bores me just a few chapters in.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger: I promised Karen I would read this book, but I forgot about it until I saw it on her list. Maybe I'll remember it now.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell: This was super-duper fun to read.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams: I loathe this movie (both versions!), so it's extremely doubtful I will
ever read the book, even though Jake tells me it's purely wonderful.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens: Love-love-love it, have read it several times.
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis: I love these books so much, I saved my $5-per-week allowance for months as a kid in order to buy the whole series.
34 Emma - Jane Austen: Read it. Hated it.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis: Confused---who would read just this one book, and not the whole series?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Technically I have read this, but I read it much too fast as part of a Master's English class, and didn't retain much. Definitely deserves a re-read.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery: I tried to read this book several times as a kid, but was bored to drooling.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert: Have not read, but Jakes says it's amazing.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love in The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov: This book got me psyched about Nabokov in general.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt: This was lots of fun.
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold: HATE THIS BOOK ETERNALLY.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac: I read a chapter or so of it, and then threw it across the room.
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy: HATE. HATE. Long and boring and HATE.
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville: LOVE it. Have read it several times, despite being warned against it by friends who were English majors.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett: A very lovely book.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath: Have been wanting to/meaning to read this for years.
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom: Have not read, but it sounds like utter crap.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: I read a couple of these as a kid. Particularly liked Hound of the Baskervilles.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams: A wonderful, lovely book, re-read several times.
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
posted by deanna at 12:13 AM
3 Comments:
I definitely know I'm in the six book list. I should have read more, but when I was forced to do it in college, I didn't want to. As we were rearranging books on our new bookshelf last night, I held up Erasmus Luther's Discourse on Free Will and he said, "Isn't that a little advanced for an 18 year old?". I agree. A lot of books they threw at us I didn't understand. I don't think it's because I'm necessarily stupid, but more about maturity and comprehension of things that are a deeper level. Okay, maybe I'm a little stupid. :)
For a few months now, Jeremy and I have turned off the TV and have focused more on reading. He is reading Ron Paul's The Revolution and I'm reading Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, which I'm not enjoying nearly as much as The Secret History.
Your comments made me laugh! I hypothesize that the reason I enjoy Austen and Little Women and Anne of Green Gables and such is because I was raised watching old movies? Interesting, though, that some of my absolute favorites were ones that bored you and one I didn't like (Watership Down) is one of your favorites. I'll definitely have to give WD another chance when Evie is old enough. Oh, and the Hitchhikers movies ARE crap, they don't live up to the book at all. I think the list is supposed to reflect British citizens' top 100 favorite books, based on a poll by the BBC, but I might be wrong. I think there are duplicates like Chronicles of Narnia AND Lion, Witch & Wardrobe because some people will say one is their favorite and others will say the whole series is their fave. J wanted to know who on earth would say the Complete Works of Shakespeare is their favorite book...what a pompous choice, right?
This list was fun. I wonder how it was compiled. I had fun going through it and thinking about my own choices and preferences.
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