There’s a book meme that’s been making the rounds recently. I’ve previously resisted it’s charms, but as I was doing my rounds tonight it showed up on two of my favorite blogs in quick succession (sad sweet songs and relaxed parents). I’m taking this to be fate nudging me to join in and so here is my list.
The rules seem to vary slightly from blog to blog, so I’m making up my own. The books I have read are highlighted in bold, the books I have started but abandoned are crossed out.
I’m not ashamed of the rather large number of crossed out titles. I see them as a failing of the author to entertain me rather than a failing within myself. Mind you, some of the crossed out ones on the list were only left half finished due to me becoming distracted or them being due back to the library.
So here goes:
* Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel
* 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
* The Tale of Two Cities
* The Brothers Karamazov
* Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
* War and Peace
* Vanity Fair
* The Time Traveler’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 : a memoir in books
* Memoirs of a Geisha
* Middlesex
* Quicksilver
* Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
* The Canterbury tales
* The Historian : a novel
* 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 : a novel
* 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
* Tess of the D’Urbervilles
* Oliver Twist
* Gulliver’s Travels
* Les Misérables
* 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 memoir
* The God of Small Things
* A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
* Cryptonomicon
* Neverwhere
* A Confederacy of Dunces
* A Short History of Nearly Everything
* Dubliners
* The Unbearable Lightness of Being
* Beloved
* Slaughterhouse-five
* 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 : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
* The Aeneid
* Watership Down
* Gravity’s Rainbow
* The Hobbit
* In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
* White Teeth
* Treasure Island
* David Copperfield
* The Three Musketeers
Related posts:
Arjan (3)
Ian (3)
Idaho Dad (3)
Ed (2)
ImPerceptible (2)
john Gray (2)
Kevin Spencer (2)
Andy (1)
Avitable (1)
David Ingalls (1)
on May 17th, 2008 at 1:39 am
However!
The Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite book.
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Xbox4NappyRash’s last blog post..A fornication fifty-fifty
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 9:37 am
There’s no shame in stopping reading a book if you are not enjoying it. Reading a book because you feel you should sucks all the joy out of it. (Dostoyevsky, Jane Austen and Anne Rice, I’m looking at you here!)
PandoraCaitiff’s last blog post..Hen night fun
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Arrrrghhh!
Oh, hang on, you gave up on American Gods. That at least restores some of my faith in you.
The Neil Gaiman Unappreciation Society.
Rol’s last blog post..Elephant Gun
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 10:11 am
And in my defense I attempted catch 22 when I was 15 and the only reason I stopped Time travelers wife was because I became distracted by something else.
I maintain that On the road is incredibly boring though.
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 10:30 am
But Kerouac, man – you’re just obviously not smoking the right… y’know, whatever.
Rol’s last blog post..Elephant Gun
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Neverwhere and American Gods are both fantastic.
Clair’s last blog post..Best overheard line of the week:
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Jo Beaufoix’s last blog post..What makes you a jerk?
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I realy enjoyed ‘The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night time’it brought home how people with Aspergers see the world, at the same time as I was working with someone who had it. Made it even more interesting.
Have you ever read anything by James Rutherfurd? Sarum, London etc. His are great historcal novels.
Gail’s last blog post..Play Up Pompey
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
(un)relaxeddad’s last blog post..A book meme, of course
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Bec’s last blog post..Un-Perfection. Totally. Innit.
Reply
on May 17th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
[...] stealing a book meme from Dan (and following his rules) as I am having a fried brain [...]
on May 18th, 2008 at 8:46 am
I also read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel, great book!
But you abondoned Oliver Twist…why.
Arjan’s last blog post..Meeting a Ms. psycho bitch
Reply
on May 20th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I’ve ‘read’ a decent amount of what you’ve got on your list. Two things:
1) Audiobooks… slap ‘em on your iPod, and listen while your driving, in line at the supermarket or at the post office or when the wife is trying on clothes at the mall.
2) Condensed books – Reading Moby Dick is great and all, but really a condensed version is just more effective. Plus, they give you more commentary as to the importance of the book in the scope of literature, the times it was written, etc. It makes you sounds really smart at parties.
Now, if you listen to condensed audiobooks, you are only one step away from nirvana….
Andre’s last blog post..Shout outs: LPD in the blog-o-sphere
Reply