Monday, February 4, 2013

I love these kinds of lists: 100 Books


Can I play the game?  I'm copying from the Darwins, Bearing, Jamie... 

I also came up with my own key and have a note of explanation: I got a jumpstart on some of these titles because a high school English teacher gave me a list of 100 books a college graduate should have read by graduation (on a piece of paper photocopied from some book, not off the internet, which was at the time still restricted to colleges and research institutions). Hats off to motivational English teachers! Since I didn't have a social life, I read two books a week to get through the list. Needless to say, I could not pass a pop quiz on a number of those, except for the ones I reread as an adult.  I'd hazard a guess that that list had better titles than this list. Also, joining book clubs has upped the number of contemporary titles I've read - and also forgotten much of, aside from rudimentary plot elements.  So even though I've read 79 of the books, I can't really claim to "know" more than maybe a third. 
Haven't read
Read it
Reread*
Read in high school or before
LOVE
Interested in reading, based on what I know of it
Saw the movie



  1. To Kill a Mockingbird*
  2. The Catcher in the Rye
  3. Fellowship of the Ring*
  4. Pride and Prejudice*
  5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
  6. Romeo and Juliet*
  7. Jane Eyre*
  8. 1984
  9. Hamlet*
  10. The Hobbit*
  11. Brave New World
  12. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe*
  13. The Great Gatsby*
  14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
  15. Fahrenheit 451
  16. Wuthering Heights*
  17.  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland*
  18. The Secret Garden
  19. Green Eggs and Ham*
  20. Little Women*
  21. Of Mice and Men
  22. The Handmaid's Tale
  23. Lord of the Flies
  24. The DaVinci Code
  25. Frankenstein
  26. Dune
  27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  28. Gone With The Wind*
  29. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  30. A Wrinkle in Time*
  31. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
  32. Slaughterhouse Five
  33. Anne of Green Gables*
  34. Twilight
  35. Where the Sidewalk Ends*
  36. Le Petit Prince *
  37. Memoirs of a Geisha
  38. The Princess Bride
  39. The Picture of Dorian Grey
  40. The Hunger Games
  41. Sense and Sensibility*
  42. The Golden Compass
  43. Dracula
  44. The Color Purple
  45. The Kite Runner
  46. The Odyssey* 
  47. Anna Karenina* (Currently rereading)
  48. And Then There Were None
  49. Interview with the Vampire
  50. The Book Thief
  51. One Hundred Years of Solitude
  52. The Count of Monte Cristo
  53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  54. The Joy Luck Club
  55. Little House on the Prairie*
  56. The Giver
  57. Life of Pi
  58. Rebecca
  59. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
  60. Ender's Game
  61. A Tale of Two Cities
  62. L'Étranger
  63. East of Eden
  64. Les Miserables
  65. The Bell Jar
  66. Lolita*
  67. The Road
  68. The Time Traveler's Wife
  69. A Prayer for Owen Meany
  70. The Stand
  71. Catch-22
  72. The Sun Also Rises
73. The Pillars of the Earth
74. Crime and Punishment
75. The Good Earth
76. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
77. The Help
78.  Watchmen
79.  Lonesome Dove
80. Water for Elephants
81.  Outlander
82.  American Gods
83. The Poisonwood Bible
84. My Sister's Keeper
85.  The Master and Margarita
86.  The Notebook
87.  Like Water for Chocolate
88. Beloved*
89. Their Eyes Were Watching God
90. Invisible Man
91.  A Game of Thrones
92. The Fountainhead*
93.  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
94. Ulysses
95.  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
96. The Brothers Karamazov*
97. The House of the Spirits
98.  Fight Club
99.  Middlesex
100.            Interpreter of Maladies (read some short stories by Lahiri)

I should have coded the ones I want to reread - Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Secret Garden, maybe East of Eden, maybe the Vonnegut just to remember why I liked him ...but I think as an adult I wouldn't like Vonnegut anymore, even if he was a Hoosier.

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Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.
-Lemony Snicket