Looks like there’s a book meme making the rounds:
Read it? Bold it.
Start it, but didn’t finish it? Italicize it.
Hated it? Strike it through.
As you can see, there are few books that I’ve started and not finished (and the ones I have were only started due to some sort of school assignment that didn’t require a complete reading). I also don’t hate many of the books, but perhaps that’s just because I think hate is a pretty strong word. (I have no idea where this list of books came from – it’s a mildly ecclectic mix of old and new. I guess Sara just made it up? Strange.)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Oliver Twist
Tess of the Dubervilles
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Miserables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
The God of Small Things
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: A Novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
Treasure Island
White Teeth
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
And Roy’s additions:
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Maus
War of the Worlds
The Invisible Man
Time Machine
Old Man and the Sea
Bluest Eye
The Republic
The Bible
Alice in Wonderland
Wizard of Oz
Return to Oz
Ender’s Game
It
Misery
The Chronicles of Narnia
Beowulf
The Stranger
Animal Farm
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
Lord of the Flies
Naked Lunch
The Confessions of Nat Turner
Rabbit, Run
As I Lay Dying
Snow Crash
The Sound and the Fury
The Great Gatsby
Watchmen
Charlotte’s Web
The Giving Tree
Good Night Moon
A Wrinkle in Time
The BFG
I suppose I could add some books, but there’s no real limit here and there doesn’t seem to be any sort of theme, so I’ll just leave it be.
You… you haven’t read the BFG?!
I find lists like this absolutely fascinating- it’s really interesting to see “the classics” that people have and haven’t read. I think my list makes it clear (if I hadn’t outright mentioned it) that there’s a good chance I was a Lit major, but I’m still surprised to see that you haven’t read things like Grapes of Wrath, or Jane Austin, but you have read Beowulf, The Republic, and The Prince.
Well, I’m an engineer, so classic literature was never my thing in school. However, I went to Catholic schools all my life (Except for 1.5 years in gradeschool), so I’ve covered a lot of philosophical ground (hence The Republic and The Prince). Most of the classic literature I read was in high school (Beowulf was there)… Once I got to college, most of what I read was for Philosophy courses. Of course, starting in about 8th grade, I read for pleasure too, occassionally tackling books that were out of my league (1984, LotR). I still like to take on a book outside my league every now and again (hence Gravity’s Rainbow).
I’ve actually never read any Roald Dahl… except maybe “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” though I could just be remembering the movie… not sure.
I’ve noticed lately that I’m not reading much. This is mostly to do with a horrible work schedule… but I just started reading The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Chabon) and I’m about halfway through Blink (Gladwell).
Hooray for reading! With my new job, I can get through a book in a day/a day and a half!
What job is that? When I was in high school, I worked for a company that did a lot of data entry stuff, but everything was kinda sporatic, so I had a fair amount of time to read. Can’t say as though I got through too many books in a single day, but still did a lot.
I work for a law agent, so I have to lodge a lot of things at many offices and I can read while I wait. I also read while I walk through the city, because I am formidable in my Spidey Sensibilities.
I’ve been in the same field since 2003, but this new job gives greater freedoms. I think I would recommend Life of Pi; finished it by lunch on the day after I started (For such days, I pack two books).