fabrisse | That book Meme

That book Meme

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see. I gakked this from

serafina20 who, quite sensibly, left out books that are part of series already covered on the list.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read (as in the book is bought and sitting on my shelf).
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Star those you've started and have not and will not finish.

My list is under the cut. My comments are next to some of the books. Let me just say, I think this list is terrible.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien * -- Read the first book, made it halfway through the second book before deciding life was too short for Elvish poetry -- and bloody golem
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman* -- I've read two and 2/3s, the last book bored me.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -- all right, I've read Oliver Twist, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Nicholas Nickleby, Little Dorritt, and most of the Sketches by Boz. This is the one they put on the list? *sigh*
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare -- yes, the whole thing.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien * -- I HATE ALL OF GOLEM's SSSSSSSs.
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -- It keeps coming up in conversations re: Dr. Who. Frankly, I read a great deal of Sci-fi, so I don't think any of the ideas will be new to me.
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot -- one of my all-time favorites
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -- Melanie's the hero.
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -- all of them, including the radio plays and the short stories.
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
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
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -- I have the Latin translation somewhere from when I was making one of my attempts to learn Latin.
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -- Worse, I'd read the book (Holy Blood and Holy Grail) that it was based on years ago. I consider Holy Blood to be the worst book ever written. And then this came along.
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -- This one isn't on some of the lists I've seen
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -- All seven of the books. I especially like Anne of the Island.
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan -- I've read some of his other stuff
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert -- I read the first 5 of these
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -- Does seeing the movie count
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -- And Brave New World Revisited which is a series of essays written 20 + years after the original book. I've also read books by Elspeth Huxley and Thomas Huxley.
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -- I was, however, required to read fucking Pale Fire.
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding * -- Dull
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville -- I should probably italicize this one. I loved Billy Budd.
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -- I can't remember what book of his I've read, it might not be this one.
74. Ulysses - James Joyce * -- But I love Dubliners, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -- see 73
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -- there's a whole section set in Brussels!
79. Possession - AS Byatt * -- I found the style stilted and awkward. Gave up after the second modern chapter and don't feel my life has been diminished by doing so.
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -- no desire ever to read it from reading all the reviews and the blurb when it first came out.
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -- I've read The Secret Agent and all his short stories, but never this one.
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams* -- People keep telling me I'll love it, but I can't see why. I've read a third of it.
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole * -- see above
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -- Saw the movie.
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -- even in fourth grade, I hated this book.
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo * -- the library had the first five volumes, but not volume 6.

No Twain. No Defoe. No Fielding. No non-fiction. Way too much Dickens. Don't get me wrong, I love Dickens, but lists are limited. Jane Austen wrote six books, four of them are on this list.

There are way too many books written in other languages, too. Again, I love Dumas and Dostoevsky, but I can't tell if they're truly great writers because I've only read translations. I note the only books from the Spanish are by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, no Jorge Luis Borges, no Cervantes or Calderon. Nothing from the Italian or German made this list.

Anyone want to build a list that a) has each author only once, b) covers a wider range of years, and c) only includes works written in English?

1. The Canterbury Tales -- I'm OK with Troilus and Cressida -- Geoffrey Chaucer
I'm not putting Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on the list even though I love it because most people can't read the dialect it's written in. English developed from Chaucer not the Pearl Poet.
2. Le Mort d'Arthur -- Thomas Mallory
3. Piers the Ploughman -- or Everyman
4. Complete Works of William Shakespeare
5.[Tamburlaine the Great -- Christopher Marlowe
6. Volpone -- Ben Jonson
7. The Roaring Girl -- Thomas Dekker
8. Women Beware Women -- Thomas Middleton
9. The Maid's Tragedy -- Beaumont and Fletcher
10. The Duchess of Malfi -- John Webster] -- frankly pick any work by these guys. They're often forgotten in the waves of Shakespeare-olotry
11. The King James translation of the Bible
12. Collected poetry and selected sermons -- John Donne
13. Paradise Lost -- John Milton
14. Robinson Crusoe -- the first novel written in English (Moll Flanders or A Journal of the Plague Year may be substituted) -- Daniel Defoe
15. The Rover -- Oroonoko is also fine -- Aphra Behn (I love The Rover as a play, but I haven't read Oroonoko. I mention it as the second novel written in English and the first written by a woman. She's thought to be the first -- at least in English -- to earn her living with her pen.)
16. Pilgrim's Progress -- John Bunyan
17. Pepys Diary -- yes, most abridgements count -- Samuel Pepys
18. Tom Jones -- Henry Fielding
19. Fanny Hill -- John Cleland (Yeah, it's porn, but it's also well-written)
20. Common Sense -- Thomas Paine
21. A Vindication of the Rights of Women -- Mary Wollstonecraft
22. Frankenstein -- Mary Shelley
23. Sense and Sensibility -- Jane Austen (pick an Austen, any Austen)
24. Something by Hawthorne -- I prefer The Marble Faun, but I know it will probably be The Scarlet Letter
25. Something by Walter Scott even though I personally can't stand him
26. Vanity Fair -- William Thakeray
27. Sybil or the Two Nations -- Benjamin Disraeli
28. Moby Dick -- Herman Melville
29. A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens
30. Middlemarch -- George Eliot
31. Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte -- I like Villette, too.
32. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall -- Anne Bronte -- What can I say, I hate Wuthering Heights, and I think Emily's overrated. I'll take Agnes Grey, too.
33. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- Mark Twain (Pick anything you like by him)
34. Something by Trollope even though I can't stand him
35. The collected poetry of Banjo Paterson -- Clancy of the Overflow is my favorite.
36. The 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book -- Fannie Merritt Farmer
37. The collected short stories of Edgar Allan Poe
38. The Scarlet Pimpernel -- Baroness Orczy
39. The Hound of the Baskervilles -- Arthur Conan Doyle
40. The Prisoner of Zenda -- Anthony Hope
41. The Three Gentlemen -- A.E.W. Mason
42. The Thirty-Nine Steps -- John Buchan -- The idea of the double chase, someone who is being chased by the police and who's being chased by someone also out to get him originated in this novel.
43. Kim -- Rudyard Kipling
44. The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame
45. Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman -- E.W. Hornung
46. The Time Machine (or The Invisible Man or Things to Come) HG Wells
47. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom -- TE Lawrence
48. The Chronicles of Narnia -- CS Lewis
49. Carry On Jeeves -- PG Wodehouse
50. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- Agatha Christie
51. The Dutch Shoe Mystery -- Ellery Queen
52. Gaudy Night -- Dorothy L. Sayers
53. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley
54. 1984 -- George Orwell
55. The Collected Short Stories of O. Henry
56. The Collected Short Stories of Saki
57. The Collected Short Stories of MR James
58. Peter Pan -- JM Barrie
59. Anne of Green Gables series -- LM Montgomery
60. To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee
61. Winter's Tale -- Mark Helprin -- this is my nominee for best book in the English language.
62. The Story of My Life -- Helen Keller
63. Fahrenheit 451 -- Ray Bradbury (I'm also cool with The Illustrated Man or Something Wicked This Way Comes)

I'd like to throw in the Swordspoint Trilogy (so far) by Ellen Kushner, Mirabile by Janet Kagan, and Bones of Time by Kathleen Anne Goonan

Dune by Frank Herbert (and only Dune), Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (Although Night Watch gives me cold chills with its ending.) -- hell, any Pratchett, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy even though I can't read it any more.

Suggestions for the final 38? I'll even take Lord of the Rings. *G*

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It's a horrible list, as I already posted :)

No way am I going to post a list of my own. Too fraught!

Fair enough. *G*

Winter's Tale -- Mark Helprin -- this is my nominee for best book in the English language.

Wait... how have we not bonded over this already?

I would, however, give the nod to Watership Down. I don't get the impression it's a book that would work for you, but I think it might be the best and most important book I've ever read. It's certainly in the top ten. It's heavy psych/anthro/soc, so you can see where it and I meet, but I found it the single most exciting adventure story I've ever read. It manages to simultaneously be profound, interesting, lyrical, and thrilling. There's nothing left for me to want. (Gods, I'm talking myself into re-reading it and I don't have time.)

I remember seeing Winter's Tale on your bookshelf when you first moved in to your current apartment. Had you not yet read it then? Or did we just sort of nod about it.

What is it about those rabbits that gets everyone excited?

I remember seeing Winter's Tale on your bookshelf when you first moved in to your current apartment. Had you not yet read it then? Or did we just sort of nod about it.

Oh, I'd read it back in eighth grade, when it came out. Maybe you just concluded I had excellent taste in fiction and moved on? :)

What is it about those rabbits that gets everyone excited?

The thoroughness of the world-building? The archetypical themes? The life-or-death struggle? The sheer exuberant storytelling?

Of course, I wind up liking it for a reason that I'm pretty sure that isn't why everyone else gets excited (at least, not that they're conscious of): it's a book about leadership -- the King archetype -- and group dynamics. Indeed, in a sense, the characters are the groups in it -- the Old Warren, Strawberry's Warren, Efrafa, Watership Down, etc. -- that's the level on which much "character" development happens. We see individual character development, but much of the story is about how this random assortment of individuals turn themselves into a functioning team -- into a people. And it's set against a ground of all the other ways of groups organizing themselves that they encounter in their adventures.

The character who does most develop is Hazel, whose story it is: this whole thing is the story of how Hazel learns to be a Chief Rabbit (i.e. king). It's unique in my reading experience in that it doesn't treat kingship as a black box, as something which is bestowed by outside agency and then enjoyed or abused. It's actually a portrayal of someone learning how to be a Leader of Men. Or rabbits, as the case may be. It's about natural authority and the complex relationship of group to leader.

I'd be interested in your take on Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander. Definitely a kids' book, but it's certainly about learning to lead.

I noticed the list was pretty bizarre as I did it on my lj, but I was too lazy to come up with my own.

I'm just going to do your list here.
1. The Canterbury Tales (And Sir Gawain)
2. Le Mort d'Arthur -- Thomas Mallory
3. Piers the Ploughman -- or Everyman
4. Complete Works of William Shakespeare
5.[Tamburlaine the Great -- Christopher Marlowe (Hmm, what have I read by Marlowe?)
6. Volpone -- Ben Jonson
7. The Roaring Girl -- Thomas Dekker
8. Women Beware Women -- Thomas Middleton
9. The Maid's Tragedy -- Beaumont and Fletcher
10. The Duchess of Malfi -- John Webster] -- frankly pick any work by these guys. They're often forgotten in the waves of Shakespeare-olotry
11. The King James translation of the Bible (which is something since I'm Catholic)
12. Collected poetry and selected sermons -- John Donne
13. Paradise Lost -- John Milton OMG! OMG indeed!
14. Robinson Crusoe AND Moll Flanders -- Daniel Defoe
15. The Rover
16. Pilgrim's Progress -- John Bunyan
17. Pepys Diary -- yes, most abridgements count -- Samuel Pepys
18. Tom Jones -- Henry Fielding
19. Fanny Hill -- John Cleland (Yeah, it's porn, but it's also well-written)
20. Common Sense -- Thomas Paine
21. A Vindication of the Rights of Women -- Mary Wollstonecraft
22. Frankenstein -- Mary Shelley
23. Sense and Sensibility -- Jane Austen
24. Something by Hawthorne -- House of Seven Gables (nope never read Scarlet Letter)
25. Something by Walter Scott
26. Vanity Fair -- William Thakeray
27. Two Nations -- Benjamin Disraeli
28. Moby Dick -- Herman Melville
29. A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens
30. Middlemarch -- George Eliot
31. Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte -- I like Villette, too.
32. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall -- Anne Bronte (nope, but I think Emily's overrated too)
33. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- Mark Twain (and others
34. Something by Trollope even though I can't stand him
35. The collected poetry of Banjo Paterson -- Clancy of the Overflow is my favorite.
36. The 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book -- Fannie Merritt Farmer
37. The collected short stories of Edgar Allan Poe
38. The Scarlet Pimpernel -- Baroness Orczy
39. The Hound of the Baskervilles -- Arthur Conan Doyle
40. The Prisoner of Zenda -- Anthony Hope
41. The Three Gentlemen -- A.E.W. Mason
42. The Thirty-Nine Steps -- John Buchan (want to read this)
43. Kim -- Rudyard Kipling
44. The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame
45. Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman -- E.W. Hornung
46. The Time Machine HG Wells
47. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom -- TE Lawrence
48. The Chronicles of Narnia -- CS Lewis
49. Carry On Jeeves -- PG Wodehouse
50. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- Agatha Christie OMG!
51. The Dutch Shoe Mystery -- Ellery Queen
52. Gaudy Night -- Dorothy L. Sayers
53. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley
54. 1984 -- George Orwell
55. The Collected Short Stories of O. Henry
56. The Collected Short Stories of Saki
57. The Collected Short Stories of MR James
58. Peter Pan -- JM Barrie
59. Anne of Green Gables series -- LM Montgomery
60. To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee
61. Winter's Tale -- Mark Helprin
62. The Story of My Life -- Helen Keller
63. Fahrenheit 451 -- Ray Bradbury

What would you add to the list? Or subtract from it?

And how did you never read To Kill A Mockingbird? *G*

I am embarrassingly poorly read. Much of my reading in the last few years has been religious or spiritual and I'm not sure they count.

Why would spiritual books not count? I'm currently working my way through an abridged translation of Maimonides.

The original list skews very American and pretty pop culture. My list reflects my own reading over nearly forty years, but I did try to be representative of a wide range of styles, cultures, and historical periods. It probably skews a little British. *G*

Can we get an explicit purpose for your list? "Best books"? "Books everyone should read"? Something else? I'm not sure what I'd add unless I have a better idea of what you're trying to accomplish.

"4. Complete Works of William Shakespeare
11. The King James translation of the Bible
48. The Chronicles of Narnia -- CS Lewis"

These are all multi-books. All of them contain individual entries which are well worth of inclusion on many grounds. And all of them contain significantly lesser work, which isn't that worthy. (I suspect 59 is also in this camp, but I haven't read them.)

"9. The Maid's Tragedy -- Beaumont and Fletcher"

My favorite of theirs, by a long shot, is The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

"33. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- Mark Twain (Pick anything you like by him)"

Depending on the purpose of the list, much of Twain might not qualify. But this definitely does, as would The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

"Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman"

I certainly enjoyed it, but I'd consider it a lesser work of his. I'd put him down for Sandman. (If your purpose allows for comics. In which case Will Eisner's "A Contract With God" should likely be on the list as well.)

I'll have to find "A Contract With God."

I hated the original list because it seemed both too broad (books in other languages) and too narrow (most are 20th century and those that aren't concentrate on few authors).

My own list is based on trying to include only books in English, but also books that are representative of a specific time, place, or author.

There's probably also a cultural side too it, which is where the King James Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare come in. So many phrases used in daily speech come from one or the other of these two books. I could probably pull 7 works by Shakespeare to cover most of his contributions to the language, and Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Gospel According to Luke, Gospel According to John, and I Corinthians XIII would cover a great deal of the King James Bible's contribution to the language. The Lewis made it because the original list had it that way. Were I selecting only one, it would be Voyage of the Dawn Treader because that's the one I connect with.

I know this isn't a list of my favorite books. If it were, the Geste of Robyn Hoode and Other Ballads would replace Chaucer.

I picked The Maid's Tragedy because I have a hard time finding Beaumont and Fletcher's comedies funny. Seeing them might be hilarious, but I keep feeling like there are physical bits that I'm missing when I read them.

Neverwhere is my favorite Gaiman book, it speaks to me in ways his other works haven't. But I completely get why Sandman might be the one item in his oeuvre everyone should read.

Edited 2008-06-26 21:33 (UTC)

There are quite a few books on your list that I haven't read/completed. I think my tastes are more eclectic and unless the writer speaks something normal to me, I'll never get past the first page.

I tried the Swordspoint Trilogy and though the first book wasn't bad, all that tragic angst drove me up the wall. *g* I much prefer Lynn Flewelling, specifically her Nightrunner stories. The other fantasy series I'd have on the list would be the Pern novels by McCaffrey and the first three Xanth novels by Piers Anthony. Keeping in fantasy, I'd have Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.

For older, more "literary" books, I'd have Wilde, specifically The Picture of Dorian Grey. I'm rather miffed that he wasn't on the original list and I tend to treat with suspicion anyone who makes a list like that and doesn't include Wilde. ;)

ETA: I'd also add Ayn Rand to the list, most specifically Anthem, as I think that's a book everyone should read. :)

Edited 2008-06-27 03:55 (UTC)

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That book Meme

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