February 19, 2009

Book Meme

I got this list from Debbie at Stop Her She's Knitting. She scored an impressive 59 out of 100. I know I won't do nearly as well. I have started to read many of these, but found them uninteresting. I don't understand how most classics came to be classics. The rules:

1)Look at the list and bold those you have read (films don't count).
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Tag somebody if you like.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I can never get through the begots)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
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
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 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
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
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
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
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
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
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Wow - only 25. For someone who thinks of herself as a reader, these results are pretty sad. I think I shall find a longer, more broader list!
Notice that I didn't italicize any of these titles; are there any books that I haven't read on this list that are actually enjoyable? I have no intention of reading something just to say that I have read it.
I'm not going to tag anyone, but please feel free to tell me what books you love/hate on this list!

7 comments:

  1. Wow! That's a lot. The only ones I am able to read lately have pics in them and go moo!

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  2. In the books I've read that you haven't that I loved enough to buy and read more than once are the following titles:

    Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
    The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
    The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
    A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

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  3. My recommendations out of your unread book list would be:

    • Count of Monte Cristo (an epic adventure, action, and romance tale all rolled into one)
    • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (wacky antics in space)
    • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (a mystery story through the eyes of an autistic boy)

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  4. Well, I only beat you by 2 :( There may be a couple more that I've read but can't remember. But, of course, if you don't count audio books, then you beat me big time!

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  5. I HATED The Hobbit. I really liked The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I have not read many though and I agree I am not going to read a book just to say I did.

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  6. I have read:

    The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
    1984 - George Orwell
    The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
    Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
    Bible (naturally)
    A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
    Hamlet – Shakespeare

    That's sad. But you have to remember LOTR is REALLY long and I've read the entire trilogy twice. And the Chronicles of Narnia are 7 books and I've read those multiple times. That should make up for the fact that I have not read many of the books on this list.

    I have seen many of the movies but those don't count.

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  7. Wow, for a former English major I'm not very well read! A great way to get book ideas, though! I'm in the process of writing a blog about that because I need some fresh ideas...

    And your weight ticker on the bottom is awesome! The verse is just perfect. I just got home from the gym myself - for the 1st time in a year! Keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete

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