That Reading List Thing
I have two quips before I hop on the bandwagon and post this list. First, where did this list come from? What is it supposed to be of? It's the most odd blend of contemporary and classic I've seen in a while. Second, there are a lot of books on this list I have no desire to read, so they shouldn't count. :D
Das Key
Books I've Read
Books I've Partially Read
Books I've Never ReadBooks I Never Intend to Read
1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) (unfortunately)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien) (Sorry, I've tried, really I have, but Tolkien and I just don't play nice.)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J.K. Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (J.K. Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) (unfortunately)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Scott Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) (I heart crazy Russians!)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Helen Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In the Skin of a Lion (Michael Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
Das Totals
Books I've Read - 21
Books I've Partially Read - 6
Books I've Never Read - 73
Conclusions: Assuming the books are arranged in order of relevance, I'm happy that most of my reading falls at the top of the list. And there are quite a few of these that I do want to read, but some I've never heard of. Again, by who's authority was this list contructed?
6 comments:
I wonder too where this list originated--it's definitely a random compilation. But hey, that's half the fun... seeing the odd combinations of books people tend to read.
You intend to never read Lord of the Rings??? You are missing out! Honestly, if I were to pick out one series for each genre as the quintessential, representative work of that particular genre, LOTR would DEFINETELY be the Ambassador of Fantasy! EVERYONE in the Fantasy genre took something from LOTR (with PERHAPS the exception of JK Rowling, but I find it very hard to believe that she's never read LOTR). People may think less of LOTR because of the movies, and the association between fans of the movies and dirty, smelly, socially retarded RPG addicts, but LOTR is not that! LOTR came WAY before all that stuff! It was so good, everyone tried to copy it, and that's where we got all the cheap fantasy shmutt! But LOTR is REAL! Anyways. I am a Tolkien fan, if you can't tell. And I'm NOT dirty, smelly, socially retarded, or addicted to RPGs. I can understand you not having LOTR very high up on your reading list, but please! Don't cut yourself off from a good thing!
SOMEONE ELSE WHO DOESN'T DIG TOLKEIN!! Wow...I totally don't know how to spell that...shame on me.
Oh oh... I don't dig Tolkien either! Sorry, fans. I enjoyed the movies, but I'm far from fanatical and never intend to read the books.
onelowerlight: Nope, I'm not missing out. Theoretically, I should love Tolkien, since I am a fantasy buff. But I've tried to start Fellowship several times and always failed because the writing style is hideously boring. I just don't see the virtue that some people seem to find in creating a believable culture. Amazing as it is, what's the point?
And I have no problems associating myself with things that have odd fans. I am a Harry Potter freak, and I also love Star Trek.
And JK Rowling has read Tolkien.
Yeah, the whole point of Tolkien was the world that he created. The characters were good, too, but the meat of it was the world itself. Oh well. Some people get into it, some people don't. Personally, I enjoyed the Silmarillion more than LOTR. The writing style is very different, more like a history than a novel.
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