Oh I’m a lazy blogger today, being all derivative and navel-gazey. I’ve seen this book list all over the place, but I think I first saw it at Helen’s blog. Now I want to play too.
Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicise the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of. Like Imani, I’ve left unformatted the books to which I feel perfectly indifferent.
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) (I started it about three times, and couldn’t get past the first two pages. So dull.)
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) (Also started it and couldn’t get past the first paragraph.)
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 (Have read some, don’t own one)
46. +Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) (Reading and lerving this as we speak)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
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)
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)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. + The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer) (Oh the shame, the shame)
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)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
Stats:
- Read 62
- Own 28
- Want to read 7
- Indifferent 10
- Never heard of 15
- Barge-pole 3
Oh, I can’t believe this. You haven’t heard of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? It’s the best coming of age book EVER. Please, please try to read this one day. For me. It literally pains me to think that there are good people who have not read this book!
Diana, I promise to look out for it. I love a heartfelt recommendation – you must do really well in that bookshop you work in!
I hadn’t heard of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn either. Now I’m intrigued and will look out for it.
Heh heh, no burning desire to read Ulysses? I was forced to read it at university. That’s one week of my life I’ll never get back.
Don’t be ashamed about the Jeffrey Archer. We all make mistakes when we are young. I know I did. My mother still thinks I like his books and occasionally they turn up as presents for me.
I wanted to say that I was indifferent to Ulysses but it’s on my shelf. That means I intend to read it at some point… Maybe.
Ooh Ulysses is one of my favorites! I got an “A” on it in college, admittedly though the professor did give many points just for trying to understand it.
I can’t decide about this meme. I find the books selected to be a bit odd, a real mash-up of popular and literary fiction. Plus the idea of not touching a book with a 10-foot pole is strange to me; it would have to be a particularly gruesome book (Silence of the Lambs would do it) for me to totally avoid something.
I’m glad to hear Diana’s praise for A Tree Grows – I’ve got it on the shelf and it is reasonably high in the TBR pile! It always shocks me how many books on lists like these I haven’t read. I know European classics, but not English or American ones.
[...] The Book List (meme) Jump to Comments Oooh–a great book meme from Charlotte’s Web. [...]
Oh dear! This looks like a ton of work!
And I am a lazy, lazy little brat…
But then again – it’s so fascinating.
Your indifference to Ulysses matches my own – I feel as though that will change one day, but I can never be sure.
[...] February 17th, 2007 · No Comments Here’s a book list that’s going around the blogs. Just the sort of thing that can keep me happily occupied for 15 or 20 minutes on a lazy Saturday afternoon. From Writing Under a Pseudonym: Oooh–a great book meme from Charlotte’s Web. [...]
I keep running into this! Maybe I’ll finally get around to it this evening. Or maybe its just shame at the ones I haven’t read (and some of the ones I have!)
[...] in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of. Like jadepark, I’ve left unformatted the books to which I feel perfectly [...]
Far too embarrassed to do this one… People will find out how ill-read I really am!
Ulysses: tried to start it twice but have reached the conclusion that I wasn’t meant to read it. The universe is clearly against it!
Please please please read The Stand. It is long and yes, there is the whole good and evil thing going on in the background but oh, the characters. It is Stephen King’s magnum opus in terms of meticulously drawn characters.
And as for Pillars of the Earth – if you have ever stood in one of England’s great cathedrals and marvelled at how they did this without modern equipment, then you will enjoy this book. It’s well-researched and finally helped me to tell my apse from my elbow
Thanks Charl! What a lovely list. I am most amazed at what I have not yet read.. It is interesting to be reassured, that there are still books on this planet that even you have not read!!
Thank You