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
Ha, The Silmarillion is only hardcore nerd material. I didn’t get past the first page (because I’m cool).
However!
The Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite book.
Dubliners…bloody hell. If you read that start to finish I’ll eat my tin foil hat.
Xbox4NappyRash’s last blog post..A fornication fifty-fifty
I notice that a lot of the abandoned books are either those that people rave about and say “You must read this”, or those considered classic/worthy/whatever.
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
Let’s see… you gave up on Catch 22, The Time Traveller’s Wife, and On The Road… but you made it all the way through Neverwhere!?!
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
Rol - Neverwhere was truely awful though. I like Sandman and good omens, but i’m not a rabid Gaiman fan.
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.
OK, I’ll let you off.
But Kerouac, man - you’re just obviously not smoking the right… y’know, whatever.
Rol’s last blog post..Elephant Gun
Pah! No taste.
Neverwhere and American Gods are both fantastic.
Clair’s last blog post..Best overheard line of the week:
Dan I read On the Road when I was younger and Catch 22 and never got through them. Mr B loves them, but I just didn’t get it then. Maybe if I read them now I would, but I’m not so sure. I have read a ton of the classics on there but only ‘cos I had to as part of my English degree. I have read all of Dubliners but I can’t say I liked or can remember it. Blah.
Jo Beaufoix’s last blog post..What makes you a jerk?
How the hell can you remember all the books you have read? I’d be lucky to come up with ten, although I always have one or two on the go.
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
I’m one of Dan’s favourite blogs! I’m so stoked! And, you’ll know that I’m with you about Sandman. But I did enjoy Anansi Boys. Doris Lessing is also a great believer in abandoning books you don’t like. Everyone should read Moby Dick, though.
(un)relaxeddad’s last blog post..A book meme, of course
Oh, read The Picture of Dorian Grey… it’s… delicious. Am stealing this… thank you for not making me blog about the weather today (my only other idea!)
Bec’s last blog post..Un-Perfection. Totally. Innit.
@ people in the sun: hardcore nerd reporting! Thanks for the stigma ;)
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
Come on… in this age we get WAY too much information to allow ourselves the leasiure to sit down and read as often as we’d like.
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