Ok, so I stole this from Mama Dawg. It's one of those lists and it's Friday and I'm fresh out of ideas. However, I have changed it up a little and have included my own refreshing commentary. If it encourages someone to read a book, then I've done my job to make our nation more literate. If I've discouraged anyone from reading an unworthy book, just thank me."The Big Read is a USA National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six." (Seriously? What lame high schools did these average people attend?)
A. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
B. Color the books you LOVED pink
C. Color the books you HATED yellow (as a warning to others)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (probably my fave of all time for its biting sarcasm- esp. considering it was written over 200 yrs. ago)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte(I'm not sure on this one)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Jesus is the Bread of Life, you know!)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (the never-ending question: necrophelia?)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens(have never heard of anyone liking it)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (loved it first time I read it as a young adult; read it again years later and didn't like it as much)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (didn't hate it, but not exactly a book deserving of being on a top 100 list of anything)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot(didn't read this, but DID read "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides which is fabulous)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell(loved it as a teen, wouldn't enjoy it so much now)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy(would like to shake the hand of someone who's read this)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams(can someone explain what this one is about?)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky(if this is anything like "The Gulag Archipelago" which I had to read and write a big research paper on in freshman english comp., that would be a "no thanks!")
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck(liked "East of Eden" much better; I think his works are wasted on the young)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll(can't recall if I read it, but my son highly recommends it)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia
34 Emma - Jane Austen(I've been told these other Austen books are not nearly as good as "Pride and Prejudice" - what say you?)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini(it's a good one, but I didn't love it)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden(good, but too long and drawn out)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell(not sure why educators think middle schoolers are going to appreciate this book)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown(worst piece of formula writing out there)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez(tried and couldn't do it)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery(every pre-teen girl should read this and then watch the PBS series; very enjoyable)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood(spooky! read it for Halloween)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding(favorite book I read in high school; was a thrill for me to visit Vieques Island where the 1960's movie was filmed)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan(just read "Chesil Beach" and still don't get why he's so popular)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons(very funny book)
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(tried and couldn't do it)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon(I've read tons of books on autism and this was the worst one out there; people just like it for the shock value)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck(truly depressing and dreadful)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov(but I did read "Reading Lolita in Tehren" and that was a horribly boring book!)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold(just can't force myself to read this one)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac(tried and couldn't do it; am I missing something?)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding(why is chick lit on this list??)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville(most tortuous read of my high school career)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett(nope, but I saw the play and wasn't impressed)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath(only a psychology major could love this one)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker(nope, but thought Oprah did a fine job in the movie)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro(didn't even see the movie!)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert(tried, but couldn't do it)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White(hated this as a child, but I also hated that sad bunny tale, "Peter Rabbit")
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom(why was this a best seller for so long? I need to stay away from books made for the masses, I guess)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery(read it as "Le Petit Prince" - merci, Madame Bauer)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams(is this another sad bunny tale?)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare(considering I've read his complete works #14?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl(thought this guy was high when I first read it as a kid; have since learned to appreciate him after my son became a fan of everything written by Dahl)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo(no, but had to read Jules Verne and Jean-Paul Sartre in AP French, so that should count for something)
ok i am glad to say i have read more than 6 of those but a little ashamed so say my total only reaches 18. 2 or 3 others i tried but just could not plow through them. a few more i picked up at a library used book sale and they are in my ever growing "to read" pile.
ReplyDeletei love books. thanks for this post.:)
oh, and i read "le petit prince" in french too. merci, m. colasanti. that and the bible are the two books i own in 3 different languages. it's just such a beautiful story with so much to say.
ReplyDeleteI also got 18 (I didn't count 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' as separate from 'The Chronicles of Narnia'). I haven't read 'War and Peace', but having finished 'Les Miserables', I'd take a handshake for that, if you're so inclined. . .
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of books on the list I'd like to read someday, but right at the moment, I don't have a lot of 'discretionary' time in my schedule. . .
No love for Of Mice and Men or Moby Dick? I'm gonna cry.
ReplyDeleteI need to look at that list. Such a strange collection; they mix classics with trendy books that we won't care about 20 years from now.
Okay, I counted 24 that I've read. But I'm probably not allowed to include The Complete Works of Shakespeare if I've only read A Lot of Shakespeare, so make it 23. If "seeing the movie" counted I would be close to 30 (Remains of the Day is a wonderful film, as is Color Purple, Madame Bovary, etc.).
ReplyDeleteFunny how we react to writers in different ways; I had to read Jane Austen in high school and despised it. The female characters seemed consumed with their romantic lives and their social status. In modern times, we call that "shallow." So its obvious I'm missing some greater context that would perhaps help me not to hate them so much.
Lime - you're welcome, you word-o-phile, you!
ReplyDeleteDesmond - yes, I'll shake your hand, but only if you admit that you use up your discretionary time on blogspot.
Jokerman - we used to discuss at our book club what made a book a "classic" - and the consensus was if people would still be reading it in 20 years. My hatred for Moby Dick revolves around the use of symbolism in every sentence. Or maybe it was just my teacher.
I can only speak to Pride & Prejudice, but I find it highly humorous that people are still shallow and consumed with their social status today, just as Austen writes about 200 yrs. ago. The exaggeration of the characters' flaws are fabulous and so true to life. I still chuckle when I think about Mr. Collins.
By the way, Crime and Punishment is a very enjoyable book. I can understand not liking The Gulag Archipelago, and this one is not like it at all. C&P is a mystery novel with lots of passion and romance and a healthy dose of Dostoevsky's Christian faith mixed in. The Russian novelists seemed to be able to integrate those elements better than anyone else ever has.
ReplyDeleteWhen I see this list, it never fails to annoy me that Bridget Jones' Diary is on it. Blech. Same with The Time Traveler's Wife, only slightly less blech. Especially when nowhere on here is Cormac McCarthy's amazing The Road!
ReplyDeleteI agree with your thoughts on Animal Farm. It wasn't until I was in college and wrote a paper on it for a lit class that the theme of the book hit me with a geniunen "aha!"
I have a copy of Catcher in the Rye, but I've never, ever read it. My husband, who, alas, never reads a book, started it and didn't get very far. I don't know if I should take that as a recommendation or not. I may still try. There's something about it that makes one feel that they must read it, you know?
You are well read. The Chronicles of Narnia include The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - a must read if you enjoy the Bible. A wonderful picture of the suffering of Christ when they capture Aslyan.
ReplyDeleteJokerman - My, you actually make C&P sound interesting! I will take a look at it at the library.
ReplyDeleteFADKOG - Read "Catcher" and let me know. I think that once you are far enough away from your own teen angst, it's not as captivating.
Rick - Thanks! My son enjoys those books, but I always thought they were more in the realm of fantasy, so I never gave them a try. I'll have to go check one of his out.
FINALLY...someone who hated Charlotte's Web. I've been getting teased so bad for hating this book.
ReplyDeleteMama Dawg - it's nice to bond over hated children's books and dead spiders.
ReplyDelete