Sunday, October 7, 2007

What's a Meme anyway?

Meme! Which I stole from Sassmaster. These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Bold (or blue)what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, make it red if you couldn't stand it, and star those you want to read. Make it green if you've never heard of it.

The ones with no special mark I am mostly indifferent to, or I don't want to read them beacause I know how they end.

I would like to take a moment to thank my high school world-lit teacher, Mrs. Leinweber. Going through this list made me think of her and how much I appreciate her love of literature.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (It IS recommended by 50 Books.)
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
I read this out of self-defense because my coworkers were always quoting it. I don't really remember it, though.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights (I don't know. The hero is such a pouty baby I'm not sure I want to try it)
The Silmarillion (Probably won't read. I am watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy again, however.)
Life of Pi (I listened to this on a roadtrip to Tucson. I liked it a lot, but I mixed in quite a bit of music in between the 6 or more cd's of the book.
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote
Moby Dick* (I packed this around for 15 years before I lost it. Someday, though.)
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Loved it.
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre *
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies * The guys a really good writer. I'd like to try it.
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife*
The Iliad Just another war story but with some real crybaby heroes.
Emma *
The Blind Assassin I believe this is Atwood's finest.
The Kite Runner*
Mrs. Dalloway*
Great Expectations *
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius*
Atlas Shrugged (She. Is. DeRANGED.) That's mc's quote, but it's so true.
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books*
Memoirs of a Geisha (I don't know. I hated the movie, though it was visually beautiful.)
Middlesex I know I'm supposed to know this.
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West* I think someone recommended this to me.
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (and that was an audio book)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
(I am joining Sassmaster's campaign against Ayn Rand's ridiculousness. You can too.)
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath*
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses*
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D'Urbervilles* (or maybe I'll just watch the movie)
Oliver Twist (I don't want anything to mess with my memory of the Disney version)
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay* (Hey is this one displayed in Al's living room?_
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury

Angela's Ashes*
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present

Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners*
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (I thought the movie was good, but you didn't like the book, mc?)
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five

The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves*
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Loved it, even if it is a creepy futuristic tale dealing with the near annihilation of the human race.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion

Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything*
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
Treasure Island
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood

White Teeth

David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Do your own list and let's compare. Is there anything here that you think I should try? Do you know anything about the ones I've never heard of?

7 comments:

mully said...

you seem very well-read. it is sort of amazing to think of the books we have read and the times of our lives when we read them. We should do a little series on... books that changed my life...

Sassmaster said...

It's hard to tell which titles are bolded in this reverse type. Or maybe that's just my computer.

suspiciously pleased said...

this is fantastic. we had a book come into the library recently, the complete idiots guide to reading lists, which made me think there are a lot of book out there i should be reading . . .

suspiciously pleased said...

. . . like i need to add ANOTHER thing to my list of things i want to accomplish . . . or should i call it my list that makes me feel bad about myself . . .

stupid list.

Boomer said...

Sorry about the bold. I was going to change it to a different color but I was leaving for tai chi class and then I forgot.

There's a guide to reading lists?

What else is on your list of things to make you feel bad about yourself?

Did any books change your life? I honestly don't know about mine.

mully said...

yes, lots of books have changed my life...The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin is a big one, and The Night Country by Loren Eisley. I will soon write a lil' review of them if you would like....

Boomer said...

Of course I would like that.