Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Read all the books!

Absolutely stolen from Becky's blog

In my dreams, my personal library looks something like this.
I'm sort of procrastinating here. I meant to do a post about the last book I finished, The Submission by Amy Waldman but I keep staring at the blinking cursor, thinking: How do I tell them to read the book? I have so many *feelings* about it and I need to quote all these parts without giving anything away because it's so beautiful. And so I just stare, and feel all the feels.

Therefore, book related goofing off!

This is a list of books, via LibraryThing (which, full disclosure, I use to catalogue my books and love), of the 100 Books that the BBC thinks everyone should read. I've read 54, so a little over half of the list. Though I do question why Hamlet and the complete works of William Shakespeare are both listed. If you've read the complete works of Shakespeare, you've read Hamlet. But whatever.


It's an interesting list, heavy on the British side of things, but since it's coming from the BBC this shouldn't surprise anyone. The inclusion of Dracula but the exclusion of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde, Frankenstein or The Hunchback of Notre Dame is curious to me, as is the lack of anything by Poe. And there's a distinct lack of theological texts, barring the inclusion of the Bible.

Instructions:
Put an ‘x’ next to those you have read.

[X] 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[X] 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
[X] 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[X] 4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
[X] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[X ] 6 The Bible - God
[X] 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[X] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[ ] 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[X ] 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 9

[X] 11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
[ ] 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[X] 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[X] 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
[ ] 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[X] 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[ ] 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
[X] 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[ ] 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[ ] 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 5

[X] 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[X] 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[X] 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[ ] 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[X] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[X] 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[X] 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[ ] 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[X] 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 7

[X] 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[ ] 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[ ] 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[X] 34 Emma - Jane Austen
[X] 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
[ ] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
[X] 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[ ] 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[X] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[] 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 5

[X] 41 Animal Farm - George Orwellx
[X] 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[] 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[ ] 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
[ ] 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[X] 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[ ] 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[ ] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[X] 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[ ] 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 4

[ ] 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[X] 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
[ ] 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[X] 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[ ] 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[ ] 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[X] 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[ ] 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[ ] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[ ] 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 3

[X] 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[X] 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[] 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[X] 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[X] 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[ ] 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[ ] 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[X] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[ ] 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[X ] 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 6

[X ] 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[X] 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
[X ] 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[ ] 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[ X] 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
[X ] 76 The Inferno - Dante
[ ] 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[ ] 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
[ ] 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[ ] 80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 5

[X] 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 Mxistry
[X] 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[X ] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[] 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 3

[X] 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[X ] 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[] 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[X] 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
[] 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[ ] 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[X ] 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[X ] 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[X] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[X ] 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo *

Total: 7

Total read ~54

9 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing! Have you seen Watch it...

    ReplyDelete
  2. You could also say why does it have both Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, since if you've read the Chronicles of Narnia you have read the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe...

    Anyways YOU HAVE NOT READ HIS DARK MATERIALS!!!!!!!!!
    This trilogy is some of my FAVOURITE books. I have read it 4 times (and I almost never re-read books so it goes to show how much I adore it). Seriously, must-add to your list, I've yet to meet someone who didn't enjoy it.

    Also, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Atonement by Ian McEwan are must-reads in my book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, that. There are a couple of instances where they have a book and the series listed. Or why only the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and not the rest of the stories? Ah well. Books are such a personal thing, no list is ever going to be perfect.

      I started reading The Golden Compass once, years ago and never finished it. I don't remember why. *shrug*

      Everyone keeps saying that I need to read The Handmaid's Tale, so it's on my list. Admittedly, my list is rather long, but it's on there! I'll check out Atonement. Is the movie based on it, do you know?

      Delete
    2. I do not know why you didn't finish it! Sacrilege! Although to be fair, it's a bit of a slow start, but SO worth it.

      And yes, The Handmaid's Tale is excellent.

      The movie is based on the book, but the book is much better than the movie (although the movie is visually pleasing).

      Delete
    3. Well I'll see about trying to read it again. I tend to enjoy fluffy YA books more than the more serious YA, so maybe that's the problem.

      The book is always better than the movie! It's a rule.

      Delete
    4. Hmmm well it isn't really that fluffy, I must admit. I think it's a very thought-provoking book, Philip Pullman isn't a fan of organized religion, and it shows, but in such excellent ways. I just love them. But please please please whatever you do, don't watch the movie and think that's what the books are like, cause the movie SUCKED. I was so disappointed.

      And yes, it is a rule!

      Delete
  3. Oooooo, great personal library!! :) Fun post!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :D Thanks!

      If that was my library, I'd never leave...

      Delete

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