Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total and put it in the title.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X+) – awesome book, several wonderful movie versions (the 6 hour one, “Bride and Prejudice,” and the Keira Knightley one (yes, I can hear the purists scream, but hey, I love Knightley)).
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X+) – the world’s introduction to epic fantasy, and still about the best there is out there.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X+) – I saw the WonderWorks version (from the mid-80s, I think?) before reading the book, and I was struck by how Christian the book was compared to the movie.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X+) - #5 (Order of the Phoenix) is my favorite. I love books about good secret societies. Probably why I enjoy David Morrell’s books so much.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X+) – I think this may be the only book I was assigned to read in public high school English that I actually like.
6 The Bible (X+)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X) – I couldn’t read this one, but I listened to it while commuting. In my opinion, it deserves the title “classic,” but I still hated it.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X) – yuck.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (partial – read the first one, but didn’t like it enough to continue)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X) – I don’t generally like Dickens, and I didn’t like the ending to this one.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X) – Laurie and Jo should have ended up together. That’s all I have to say.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (many, but nowhere near all)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (X) – creepy. Wonderfully so.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X+) – I love this book. Look forward to reading it to my kids.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger – never plan to read it.
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 (started it about 4 times, never finished. Too many Russian names)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (X) – I think I may have read one or two more of his, but I just don’t like his humor.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (X+) – listened to this one recently, and LOVED it!
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (*)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck – I can’t stand Steinbeck. All of the Steinbeck books I have read, I wish I could wash out of my mind.
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X) – I read this one a long, long time ago. I remember almost nothing about it.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (X) – I don’t remember much about the book, but one of the animated versions (I forget which) makes me laugh so hard I cry.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (*) – Joseph Acker recommended this one to me when I was in high school, and I’ve never yet gotten around to reading it.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (X)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X+) – Every couple years, my favorite changes. Currently, it’s “The Last Battle.”
34 Emma - Jane Austen (X) – Lindsay and I had a race to see who could finish this book first. She won.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (*)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X+)
37 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 (X)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X+) – When I have taught world history to homeschoolers, I assign them to read this book when we study the 20th Century.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown – never, not in a million years
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White – (*)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X+) – and most of the sequels, too!
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X) – I read this book once. I’m glad I did, but that’s enough for me.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (X+) – I reread this book every couple years. Too bad none of the sequels were as good.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (X)
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 (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (X+) – I LOVE this book! The carefully planned-out revenge, the unforeseen consequences, the tragedy – it’s great.
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 (X)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (X+) – I listened to this book last year, and it’s fantastic.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X) – this one is okay, but her “A Little Princess” is one of my top ten favorite books, and I also love “The Lost Prince.”
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 (X) – this one was okay. Becky was great.
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X+) – as done by the Muppets, this one is a must-see every Christmas!
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 (X) – I’m not a huge fan of White’s books. “Stuart Little” is positively evil, because of the lacking ending. I’m still bitter about that one.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (X+)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X+) – this is one of the only books that can make me cry every time I read it.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (X)
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (X+) – this book is awesome. As Tim Murray described it, “This book has bravery, adventure, evil villains, and noble heroes. Who cares if the heroes are rabbits?” Adams also wrote “Shardik,” another of my all-time favorite books.
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Toole
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (X+) – hurray for Dumas! I love his books. I really liked the Disney adaptation of this one, too – mostly for de Mornay as Lady de Winter :)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X+) – this play is just way cool. And both the Gibson and Branaugh movies are worthy adaptations, for different reasons.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X) – I’m not a real big fan of Dahl, but this one was pretty cool. And the Tim Burton movie version of a couple years was pretty much a perfect storm – Burton (weird), Dahl (weirder), and Depp (weirdest). I think Dahl would have approved.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (*)
Thursday, February 19, 2009
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6 comments:
I always wonder, who makes up these lists? Is this a "top 100" list?
Ramdom thoughts from the list:
Not sure why Great Expectations is always listed as Dickens' best. I just didn't like that book. David Copperfield definitely deserves to make the list.
All of the Austen books are fun. The plots all bore me, but it's very entertaining to go through pulling out the best quotes.
Catch 22 is an extremely well written and funny book, but it doesn't really have much of a message beyond "war bad, bureaucracy funny, life pointless," which I think categorically disqualifies it as an all-time great book.
Hitchhiker's Guide is hysterical, and I can't believe neither of you enjoy the humor, but it's the literary equivalent of cotton candy.
Agree on Steinbeck--everyone says he's wonderful but I wouldn't want to live in his world. Where's the genius in writing the world as actually an uglier place than it already is?
Read the Da Vinci Code, and totally didn't get the hype. It's nothing new, just sacriligeous plot elements that have been around forever, repackaged. The real crime of the book is that it's essentially "Angels and Demons" (one of his ealier books) re-written (and not written as well).
I think The Moonstone is far superior to the Woman in White if you're reading Wilkie Collins.
Kerouac is worth doing, but get the audio version of "On the Road" read by Matt Dillon. It listens better than it reads.
Is it just me, or does Bridget Jones' Diary seem really out of place in a list with "Tale of Two Cities"? I feel like this is an exercise in "Pick the Item That Is Not Part of the Set." If this list was compiled like 20 years from now, how many books would be pretty much forgotten about? Five People You Meet In Heaven, the Dog Incident book, and Notes From a Small Island all come to mind.
Wow, long comment. Sorry!
Hey Sara, I got a comment!
{Darren does a little happy dance}
I don't know where this list came from, except that I think Darren found it on Facebook. Which has all the credibility of an email preceded by "FWD." I did it because I'd read several of the books and thought, "Hey! Maybe I'll have read more than Darren on this list!" Or not. Story of my life.
I liked Hitchhiker and laughed at it a lot. But you have to admit it's strange. Wait, it's like your personal brand of humor. You might think it's perfectly reasonable. There's a thought.
Good observations about the books, which means, "I agree with pretty much everything you said, how amazingly perceptive you are!"
-- SJ
Wow, I didn't realize that comments were a competitive sport!
Then again, I'm the guy who looked at the list and picked out all the books that looked short, thinking, "I bet I could knock those out in a hurry and have read more of these than anyone else!" So I should probably not judge the comment competition.
How could you tell which ones looked short? I will confess that I only got through Crime and Punishment because I had audiobook for my once a week commute to Baltimore last semester. But I like to think that's because I don't have time to read novels during the academic year, not because it was particularly arduous. Four or five others of this list have been on my shelf for several years.
I have a lot of these books, and other I have seen in book stores...so I have a hazy feeling about the size of most of them...it's a completely subjective, probably incorrect estimate. Nonetheless, I'm still betting I could rip through "The Life of Pi" a lot quicker than Anna Karenina. Does anyone know anyone who has actually read all of "War and Peace?"
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