Wednesday, July 09, 2008

A meme after two weeks of being sick

Sorry for the long absence. I've had a cold for two weeks and didn't feel like much of anything. I did manage to put up a few movies the other day, and did finally get those beach photos up too. Since we didn't actually take any movies (again) at the beach, these are all we have. Nicky had a good time and I hope we'll do it again this summer.

I saw this meme (ok, not technically a meme, but close enough) on Sarah's blog and thought I'd take a look at the list myself. This is a list (who knows who picked these titles) that according to someone somewhere, the average adult has read only 6 of these books. Now I don't know if that's true, but I believe it. I think there are an awful lot of adults who don't read much. I read quite a bit I think, but mostly they're not "adult" books. Well, I think you'll see what I mean when you see my selections below.

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (read 150 pages)
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. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
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
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 Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So that's what? 22 books? Not as many as Tom I'm sure. He's a voracious reader and has read a LOT of these books that I haven't. It's possible I've read a few more, but if I couldn't readily recall actually reading the entire book I didn't count it. And there are several that I know I've seen the movie, but I'm not sure if I read the book. You'll see that only two are ones I plan on reading. There are just too many things out there I really do want to read, and these aren't really them. Love in the time of Cholera is one that we have in the house now and I want to read that, and I started reading Memoirs of a Geisha recently and plan to finish it some time.

Although, I have recently figured out that I can actually STOP reading a book BEFORE I finished it if I'm not enjoying it. I actually have felt trapped by books before. Books that I wasn't assigned to read, ones I'd just picked up for fun and then felt somehow honor bound to finish. Well I finally learned that it's ok to stop reading and just never go back to that book if I don't want to. It's actually quite liberating, and I've done it several times now. So now it's not such a commitment when I check out books from the library. If I don't like it I can just take it back and get another. Kind of neat.

Anyway, take a look at this list and see if you see any of your favorites there.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Read AND really liked
6. The Bible(Read more than 1/2)
8. 1984
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide....
33. Chronicles of Narnia(series)
48. The Handmaid's Tale
58. Brave New World
73. The Secret Garden
76. The Bell Jar
Read:
2. The Lord of the Rings
4. Harry Potter series(xcept last)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird
10. Great Expectations
11. Little Women
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
13. Catch 22
16. The Hobbit
21. Gone With The Wind
30. The Wind in the Willows
42. The Da Vinci Code
49. Lord of the Flies
52. Dune
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera
70. Moby Dick
87. Charlotte's Web
91. Heart of Darkness
92. The Little Prince
99. Charlie and the Choc. Factory
Love you!~Liz

Angela said...

Wow Liz, 27! You rabid reader you. ;)

You've got to read the last HP book! Come borrow mine!

Anonymous said...

I have read so many of these books over the years and I would like to tell you something, Angie. Of course, it's is alright to stop reading a book you don't enjoy 'but!' remember some books take a little while to get into and then 'WOW!' you find you can't put them down until you finish them. "Watership Down" was that book for me. Your Dad told me to just read the first 50 pages---and I did it so (grudgingly) "but he was right!" after the first 50 pages of "oh! this is so boring!' I then could not put it down and read it straight through as quickly as I could---it was a great read too. Just think if your Dad hadn't insisted on me just
reading the first 50 pages I would
have missed out on a wonderful piece of literature.
Your list is a good one to go by but I believe I will have to compile a few more for you all to read as well.
xxxoooMom/Grammie :)