1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility is my favorite, though)
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (Love it. I'm so excited to take my senior capstone course on it.)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (The new movie that came out with Toby Stevens is FANTASTIC)
4. The Harry Potter Series JK Rowling (I should probably bold this one several more times - I've read them more than I can count. And. . . I'm listening to the sixth book again right now. Keeper Tryouts. Hermione is a sneaky little witch. . . )
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (Didn't actually like this one all that much though. . . )
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (This one is half bolded because I started and never finished. I don't know if that counts)
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (One of the most thought provoking books I've ever read)
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Again, only partly bolded because I never finished the series, but I read all of the first book and enjoyed it. Not as good as Harry Potter)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (No, but I've read others by Dickens)
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (And all the sequels. I went through a Little Women phase, no thanks to Christian Bale for being crush-worthy. Hehe)
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Still can't figure out why I like this book as much as I do. It's so dark!)
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Has anyone really read everything by Shakespeare? I've read most of his plays that are worth reading.)
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 (Every last freaking word. Holy cow. This book was a chore.)
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (I worship at Fitzgerald's feet. The man had such command over language!)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Ha! Genius. I love British Humor)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (One of the first classics I remember buying for myself)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (Not my favorite, but still fairly enjoyable.)
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I still knock on the backs of wardrobes)
34. Emma - Jane Austen (Some people really don't like Emma, but I enjoy her even with all of her flaws)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen (I know! One of the great tragedies of my literary life. But I WILL read it. I own it)
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Er. . . I'm confused. *looks at number 33*)
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 (Another one of the first classics I bought)
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Started and never finished. I thought it was a piece of literary trash even if the story was interesting. Horribly written)
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 (My favorite book. EVER.)
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 (Man, I need to read this one. It looks amazing.)
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Yay! There it is. Oh Col. Brandon, take me away. . . . I'm only a little kidding)
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 (That book blew my mind. Such incredible writing, and the story was killer)
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (I kind of want to read this one and kind of don't. I haven't decided yet.)
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (I started and never finished when I was in high school but I want to give it another go)
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 (My favorite Dickens book)
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (One of the books that has changed my life.)
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (I loved this book, but I'm mad that Bryson wrote it because he stole my thunder after going to England last year. This is the book I would like to have written if he hadn't beaten me to it.)
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 (I hated this movie)
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 (This book was a huge part of my childhood. I had a piggy bank named Wilbur that I would sing to.)
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I don't really have any desire to read this book at all. It sounds too sentimental and indulgent to me)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I'm debating on if this is worth reading or not)
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 (One too many times.)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (Yay! But Matilda was better.)
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Total Read:32. Though, to be fair, "The Harry Potter Series" Is not one book. Nor is The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. So, subtracting one for LWW being listed twice, that takes my total from 31 to 48. It also takes this list from 100 to 116. So ha.
Total Planning to Read:24. Note that most of these are American Lit. Figures that most of the books I've read on this lit are British, isn't it? I'm such an Anglophile. I'll probably knock off several on this list when I take my American Lit classes this next year.
Books that aren't on this list that I wish would be:
- Enders Game
- North and South
- The Giver
- The House of Mirth
- Importance of Being Earnest
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
10 comments:
You still heaven't read Bridget Jones? After all my ranting and raving? Ah well .. also, Rebecca is good. The movie was rather weird ...
Ha, loved this list. I felt so smart after going through it . . . lol. I have "Atonement" if you want to borrow it. Some sketchy scenes, but seriously the best modern novel I've read in years. Cried several times. And I can't believe you haven't read "Persuasion"! Austen's best in my opinion.
I haven't had time yet! Sorry, Heather. I swear it's on my list and will definitely be read in the near future. Just let me work through all of Anne of Green Gables again first, alright ;) I miss you!
Marisa, I've seen several movie versions of Persuasion and wasn't ever completely blown away by the story. I think, though, that's because most of the movies were about and hour and a half long and didn't take any time to develop past the Wentworth/Anne (I have to spell it with an E) plot. I know the book is shorter than Austen's others, but I like the depth. That being said, I own the book, and I do intend on reading it at some point in the near future :)
46! Ask me how much I remember from a lot of those though and I will be completely lost.
I would add the Madeline L'engele series to the list, particularly A Wrinkle in Time. I liked Many Waters quite well also.
I only got 26...still I felt good about beating the listed average of 6. Are you serious that you haven't read Pride and Prejudice? I find that hard to believe. Great list for me to use in making book choices...oh, and I think I will put it on my blog as well, with my own comments!
"Anonymous" is really Mom...somehow it didn't get that part.
Oh, I've read Pride and Prejudice. Several times. It just doesn't look quite as bold as the other ones for some reason. I tried to get it to fix but it just wouldn't. Lame.
I truly have no idea how I wound up reading your blog--I was sort of jumping around and exploring blogger--but I have to say, your mind is a beautiful thing! Your intellect and moral grounding really give me hope for your generation. God bless.
Wow! What a wonderful compliment. Thank you so much. I suppose I could modify an Anne-Shirleyism a bit and say that "there's no use being pessimistic in such a beautiful world, is there?". The world/my generation/whatever is filled with people who aren't really sucking any worthwhile marrow out of life - I'm glad that you think I'm not one of their number.
Stop by as often as you like :)
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