Friday is List Day: Book List Meme

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.

5 thoughts on “Friday is List Day: Book List Meme”

  1. 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.

  2. 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).

  3. 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.

  4. 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).

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