Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Below are “106 books of pretension,” compiled from the books most frequently marked unread by Library Thing users.

Books I’ve read are in bold; books I’ve started but haven’t finished are in italics; books I own but haven’t read are marked with a *.

Total books I've read: 38

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

2. Anna Karenina

3. Crime and Punishment

4. Catch-22

5. One Hundred Years of Solitude

6. Wuthering Heights

7. The Silmarillion

8. The Life of Pi

9. The Name of the Rose

10. Don Quixote

11. Moby Dick

12. Ulysses

13. Madame Bovary

14. The Odyssey

15. Pride and Prejudice

16. Jane Eyre

17. The Tale of Two Cities

18. The Brothers Karamazov

19. Guns, Germs and Steel: the fates of human societies

20. War and Peace

21. Vanity Fair

22. The Time Traveler's Wife

23. The Iliad

24. Emma

25. The Blind Assassin

26. The Kite Runner

27. Mrs. Dalloway

28. Great Expectations

29. American Gods

30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

31. Atlas Shrugged

32. Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books

33. Memoirs of a Geisha

34. Middlesex

35. Quicksilver

36. Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

37. The Canterbury Tales

38. The Historian: a novel

39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

40. Love in the Time of Cholera

41. Brave New World

42. The Fountainhead

43. Foucault's Pendulum

44. Middlemarch

45. Frankenstein

46. The Count of Monte Cristo

47. Dracula

48. A Clockwork Orange

49. Anansi Boys

50. The Once and Future King

51. The Grapes of Wrath

52. The Poisonwood Bible : a novel

53. 1984

54. Angels & Demons

55. The Inferno

56. The Satanic Verses

57. Sense and Sensibility

58. The Picture of Dorian Gray

59. Mansfield Park

60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

61. To the Lighthouse

62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles

63. Oliver Twist

64. Gulliver’s Travels

65. Les Misérables

66. The Corrections

67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

69. Dune

70. The Prince

71. The Sound and the Fury

72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir (I think so)

73. The God of Small Things

74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present

75. Cryptonomicon

76. Neverwhere

77. A Confederacy of Dunces

78. A Short History of Nearly Everything

79. Dubliners

80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being

81. Beloved

82. Slaughterhouse-Five (honestly, I can’t remember if I read it or not, that's how much I like Vonnegut)

83. The Scarlet Letter

84. Eats, Shoots & Leaves (I have been wanting to read this one for a while)

85. The Mists of Avalon

86. Oryx and Crake : a novel

87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed* (a signed copy, no less)

88. Cloud Atlas

89. The Confusion

90. Lolita

91. Persuasion

92. Northanger Abbey

93. The Catcher in the Rye

94. On the Road

95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

98. The Aeneid

99. Watership Down

100. Gravity’s Rainbow

101. The Hobbit

102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

103. White Teeth

104. Treasure Island

105. David Copperfield

106. The Three Musketeers


I thought this was an interesting list, there's a lot of stuff on here that I remember having to read in junior high or high school (Frankenstein, Catcher in the Rye) and there are a couple on here that I adore so much I can't believe people haven't read them (the Count of Monte Cristo, American Gods, the Hobbit). And it was also a good reminder for some books I'll have to pick up as I have heard good things about them, I just haven't gotten to 'em (Persuasion, Poisonwood Bible).

How many have you guys read? Can anyone recommend any others on here that I should read?

4 comments:

Marianne said...

Catch-22 surprised me - it's a very funny, readable book.

Eats Shoots and Leaves is fantastic, but then again I'm a writer with a grammar/punctuation fetish.

I have to admit, I started 100 Years of Solitude but didn't finish it. It was good, but not enough to hook me. Same with War and Peace.

Mella DP said...

I always find it funny that Catcher in the Rye is on this list - how can you graduate from high school in this country without reading that book? (Or, at least, pretending that you did...) Hate that book - Holden's a phony. ;-)

I second Eats, Shoots and Leaves, and Life of Pi was fun. I tried to read The Kite Runner at a time when I was in totally the wrong head space for anything that depressing, so I've never been able to finish it. The Scarlet Letter is one of my top favorites - but then, so is Moby Dick, so most people don't want to take recommendations from me.

zooza said...

I'm just catching up after my holiday and have worked out I have read 56 of these.

Of the ones I've read and you haven't I would particularly recommend Life of Pi, Jane Eyre, The Time Traveler's Wife, Tess of the d'Urbs, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Lolita. I also really enjoyed Don Quixote but it can be a bit hard going.

Anne At Large said...

Hmm, I have to take a batch of books to the bookstore this afternoon to see if I can trade them in, now I have a whole new batch of books to look for. Thanks for the suggestions, ladies!