I found this on Shana‘s site and while I’m not normally a fan of memes, this is a bookish one, and I’m a fan of bookish things. See also, title of post. Diet! Coke! 6PM! Bad!
As Shana said, there are some glaring omissions on this list but it’s an interesting exercise so if you lift it from here, leave me a link. I’d love to see yours.
Read on, bookworms.
Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole (I’ve got books I’ve READ that I wish I had used a 10 foot pole to avoid, thus they are both BOLD and STRICKEN, -KC), put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of.
1. +The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. +Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. +To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (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 (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. +Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. +A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. +Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. +Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. +Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. +Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (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 (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 (Tolstoy)
47. +The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. +Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) – read half, got bored
49. +The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. +The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. +A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. +Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. +The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. +Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (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)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. +One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. +Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) – still. can’t. finish.
69. +Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. +The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. +Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. +Love in the Time of Cholera (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 (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. +Emma (Jane Austen)
86. +Watership Down(Richard Adams) (“I read half. i hated it.” – why shana and I are friends)
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 (Ondaatje)
92. +Lord of the Flies (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)
I’d like to highly recommend The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. There is just something about this book that is utterly remarkable and unlike anything I’ve ever read before or since. That reminds me — I should go re-read it for inspiration.
Well, I did it. I’m not sure how comprehensive that list is, but you and shana have already mentioned that!
I’m buying you a copy of Blindness, post haste. Awesome book. Is on my shelf of faves. Didn’t you love The Power of One? This is a pretty odd list, though. I have done this before with MLA lists, but then I removed the book section from my site, so oh what the hell, I’ll do it again with this one.
Thanks this was fun! Also i found out I have a tragic inability to Strikethrough a book….
I’m doing it. Not sure when, but I will.
(Read “Gone with the Wind.” It will blow your mind.)
You should read Life of Pi. It’s beautifully written. Don’t get the audio version from Audible, though. It’s advertised as unabridged, but it’s missing the author’s note which is vital to the story.
it’s embarrassing to admit how lame i am when it comes to reading. i am so random.. and lately mostly read autobiographies and technical manuals, ick. but, i did it anyway.
I realize I am sorely lacking on my reading of the classics. Anyway, I enjoy your blog and thanks for the meme!
Robin
in the skin of a lion – is one of my favourite books of all time.
also, angela’s ashes bored me to tears.
x
Love the list, I went and did it and posted it to my site. Thanks for the brainteaser!
Wait, so you read both Atlas Shrugged AND The Fountainhead? This blows my mind. This must mean that after somehow getting through 500 pages of objectivist dreck and not liking it, you thought to yourself “Hey, I should give that crazy Russian lady another try.”
I bet you were in college then, right?
I HAVE to agree with craige a few comments up. As a bookish person, Blindness is an absolute must-read. Actually, most of Saramago’s books are must-reads. Yay, books!
check out my list on my blog! thanks for posting this. FUN!!!
Fun! I’ve posted mine.
Ack! The bold didn’t come through on some of mine so I removed my post…so don’t look.
Sorry.
I read both the Ayn Rand books willingly on my own in high school. I’m embarrassed to say that at the time Atlas Shrugged made a rather profound impact on me. I even wrote a college entrance essay on it. What can I say? I was young and naive and impressionable.
This meme goes a long way – I’m trying to find out where it started and I’ve come back about 5 blogs so far…
I’ve done it! Strange to have read 45% yet not heard of nearly a quarter of them.