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Friday, July 11, 2008

How many books have YOU read!?

Snagged this lovely one off of my friend's blog Words... what do they all mean? and I must say, I am not the average adult. In fact, I've read so much that I think there must be some average adults who have never read ANY of these books.

Anyway, on we go...

Apparently The Big Read thinks that the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books on their list.


1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen Gah.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte My mom read this to me... I don't remember much of it. I should re-read it.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible Yeah yeah, I'll get to it...
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens I hate Dickens.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (ALL OF IT?? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME HERE?? I think for the number of times I've read Hamlet, MacBeth and the number of scenes I've acted out of the complete works, I should get a little credit.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
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 (Gah, there he is again.... I've seen the mini-series, does that count?)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (Is there a Brideshead: the first meeting?)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame I can't believe I haven't read this. Well, at least I finally read Watership Down last year.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (you know, I really hate this man)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis I don't care about the latent christianity any more than I care about the latent homosexuality in LOTR, they are damn fun books for kids either way... Except for the Last Battle. That one still creeps me out. WHAT ABOUT SUSAN!?!
34 Emma - Jane Austen (seen the movie and I have had ENOUGH of Jane Austen)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Um, isn't that considered one of the Chronicles?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres OMG! I just read this and it's AMAZING! Screw the movie, READ THE BOOK!!!
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell Again, how did I miss reading this book?
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown Seriously? The NEA wants me to read this book??
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving Frustratingly I think this book is on my bookshelf in DANISH
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan Dude, I SOBBED at this movie...
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel If I had a nickel for every time someone has told me to read this book...
52 Dune - Frank Herbert Gets better if you can make it past page 30... Kinda like Fellowship of the Ring.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens I want the two weeks of my life I spent forcing myself through this book in Mrs. Willerts class BACK!
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley Not as good as 1984.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon My sister has this book. It's not so much that I deeply desire reading it... but that it's a forgone conclusion that I will this Christmas when I get bored.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov I've started this book so many times. I really ought to try to finish it.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (I feel I know this book)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas Almost read this book this summer. Read Capt. Correlli instead.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett This was my favorite book when I was young.
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
80 Possession - AS Byatt Started but didn't finish when the owner of the book up and moved and took it with her.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens For a person who hates Dickens, I sure have read a lot of his dribble.
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
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I haven't read ALL of them, but A LOT of them.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad Apocalypse Now was better.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery The Danish Boy gave this to me. Odd choice of book to give to your girlfriend, yes/no?
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams Glad to see this on there. Makes me feel better about missing Wind in the Willows.
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute It started so PROMISINGLY - Bataan Death March! Suicidal generals (who die in freak shampooing accidents, doncha know, and if you don't... well, you had to have been there.)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare FINALLY a Shakespeare I can bold.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Dude, I've read 46 of these. Forty Six. I'm amazingly well read, it seems. And they didn't even mention many of my favorite authors. I can't believe American Gods by Neil Gaiman isn't on here. It is one of those books I'd bring to a deserted island! I'd also bring Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett too.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:20 PM

    "41 Animal Farm - George Orwell Again, how did I miss reading this book?"

    I have no idea, since I read it in high school.

    "I want the two weeks of my life I spent forcing myself through this book in Mrs. Willerts class BACK!"

    Mrs. Willert yay! I loved her.

    You've read a bit more than me (had a bit more education, too, so that's hardly surprising).

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  2. Darnit....You've got me beat. I've only read 36 of these. I have to object to some of them, though. Jude the Obscure?!? I was ready to slit my wrists to get out of finishing that wretched book. Only one Alice Walker novel? And what about I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?!? Or Where The Red Fern Grows?!? The Diary of Anne Frank? The Wizard of Oz? No Vonnegut? No Dante? I object!!

    And "freak shampooing accident"?? Three words that when strung together make me laugh and cry all at once...

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  3. And hey...why haven't you joined Good Reads? I need more book recommendations that I can access regularly. And don't you know it's all about my needs...?

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