And I had nothing to update with today since I spent a good part of the morning being at Harry Potter midnight showing/sleeping ridic late.
“Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety; Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt.”
So it looks like I’ve read: 61/100. A lot of them in Scotland, since I had like no money, and only an academic library at my disposal. Plus only two days of class a week. So that’s a lot of wandering around in the woods and reading vaguely academic literature.
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen The hottest thing about Mr. Darcy is his mansion.
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien So many names I can’t pronounce
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte gonna lock up my mixed race wife in the attic.
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling Can cure illnesses, true science fact
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee Surviving attempted murder while wearing a ham costume!
6 The Bible And someone begat someone else… etc ed nauseum. That is the chapter where I stopped.
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte Anger issues=romantic
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell started editing my own Newspeak dictionary for like four months after reading this book
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman Trying to tell my middle school friend that her daemon would totally be a woodchuck without causing offense
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens Crazy Left at the Alter Miss Havisham+CATCHING ON FIRE=the only part of this book I liked
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott Once wrote a paper arguing that this book was basically a giant in-joke/money making scheme and that Alcott really was more about her sensationalist fiction like A Long Fatal Love Chase
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy Don’t be a ho; not even a little bit.
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Sex jokes are funnier in Olde Timey English
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien You can still be a hero even if you’re a whiny complainer (good news for me)
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell You should get married for: spite, money, boredom in that order. Also, have children and then sort of forget about them. Sorry, Wade.
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald Having a fancy gold car is cool, but it will lead to your ruin
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens This one time, in highschool, I decided it would be a good idea to read ALL OF DICKENS. Now they all kind of run together in my head, especially this one and Our Mutual Friend for some reason. I mostly remember Esther rambling about how awful she is.
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams read it, seen it, bought the towel
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh Alcoholism is fun, but leads to dying of liver failure in Africa
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll There’s a fine line between imagination and drug trip
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame Forest creatures can also have turn of the century adventures
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens Semi-autobiographical whining. SO MUCH semi-autobiographical whining.
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis Everything is a symbol for Jesus
34 Emma – Jane Austen This is my fav Jane Austen novel because it’s so different from type. Normally her works go “I’m poor but worthy! I will negotiate society to find a rich husband!” but Emma is all “I’m filthy rich and oblivious to the real world! I will wreck my friends’ lives!” Awesome.
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen See above, with a side of “too bad that loser I rejected on prom night is rich and cute now!”
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis Turkish delight=not that great. I was misled.
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres Pretty much my least favorite Louis de Bernieres book; the Latin American trilogy is hilarious and amazing and Birds Without Wings is also so good.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden If you have to be a ho, be the BEST ho
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne Pooh Sticks: best game ever
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell Pigs are the most devious of all farm animals
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown Everyone loves a good scandal, esp if it’s about Jesus!
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez This one time, it rained for like FORTY YEARS
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving So your best friend is a midget who SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS…
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins The best book I’ve ever read for free online while working nights at the library
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery Why was Anne so annoyed about having red hair? Whenever I blew out candles from ages six to ten, I would wish for red hair. Kind of bitter that Anne took hers for granted.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood I read this in one sitting in a pub in Stirling
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding Children are bitches
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan NEVER TRUST THE NARRATOR
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen See above about Jane Austen, with a side of “Damn, my sister is crazy” Although that applies to a lot of Jane Austen novels
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens Learned how to knit because of this book. Yeah, Mme Defarge was my fav.
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley GIVING BIRTH? Crazy!
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez Either I’m in love, or I have a deadly disease. Symptoms are the same, so I can’t be sure
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt Classics Majors are CRAZY, Steven
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas Revenge is a dish best served incredibly intricately, after a ridiculously many years
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding Even annoying people with faces that are shiny and might be made of plastic can marry Colin Firth. (I actually did read this book, but since it was after I saw the movie, I had a hard time picturing the characters as anything other than the actors who played them)
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens Asking for more gruel can make you famous
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker If a woman’s acting sexual, SHE MUST BE A DEMON
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett Nature can cure your sickness
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson Cultural differences are hilarious
75 Ulysses – James Joyce James Joyce: A Crazy Person
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray Sometimes, after hundreds of pages, you can get what you want and still be miserable. Also, hating most of your own characters makes for a surprisingly funny book
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens And Dickens wanted to be remembered for Martin Chuzzlewit lol
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell Is it a story within a story within a story within a story? Or is it REAL LIFE reflected through a series of mirrors?
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro Butlers are shy and therefore sad.
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert Irresponsible women will be the downfall of us all
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White Whatever, I still say Orville is a better name for a pig.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Cocaine can make you a better detective
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery Sometimes hats are actually elephants that have been eaten by snakes
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams Still terrified of rabbits
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas You can be holy and try to pick up women at the same time in France.
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare If you don’t know how to end your play, just kill EVERYONE
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl Oompa Loompas are the best source of comical cheap labor
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
I agree about Dickens and blending too much together in high school. That’s pretty much my solution, btw, for how my writing post college is muy fail: read lots of Dickens and be florid again!
I want to report that I have read 33 on the list. I admit some I was forced to read in high school, but others I have read through my book club. Thought it may raise the opinion you have of my book club if I told you that. On the list, those you haven’t yet read, I add here.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
I think #19 #28 #37 and #70 worth the read, and The Lovely Bones, I did make it to the end, but could barely see with all the crying I was doing.