Wednesday, October 01, 2008

1,001 Books

This meme is from Poppy via a blogger named Jasmine, who writes Flip Front. I don't know her, but I am a sucker for a book meme. This one's a biggun. And I can't figure out how to get the italics and bolds out of there, so I'm just going to delete the books I haven't read. You'll thank me. It's 1,001 books. That's a fuckton of books.



2000s

  • Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle - I own it. Haven't read it yet.
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon - Great book.
  • Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides - Also great.
  • Atonement – Ian McEwan - Think I'm one of a very few who did not enjoy it.
  • The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen - Own it, started it, put it down somewhere.
  • At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill - Own it, haven't read it yet.
  • Life of Pi – Yann Martel - Own it, started it, didn't like it much.
  • White Teeth – Zadie Smith - Own it, haven't read it.
1900s

  • Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee - Hated it.
  • The Hours – Michael Cunningham - Really liked it.
  • Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden - Loved this
  • Underworld – Don DeLillo - Have started this a couple of times but may give it up as a bad bargain.
  • Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres - Captain Corelli can take his fucking mandolin and stick it where the sun don't shine. I hated this book so much that I threw it across the room and swore. A lot. The ending STILL pisses me off, mostly because the rest of the book was so well-written. And whatever you do, DON'T see the movie.
  • A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth - Door stop of a book. I didn't really get it, but I did read it.
  • The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields - Depressing.
  • The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien - Meh.
  • Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
  • The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams - Loved it like I love all his books.
  • Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams - see above.
  • The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe - Didn't care for it much.
  • Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis - I am a child of the 80s after all.
  • Contact – Carl Sagan - Read it but couldn't stop hearing "billyuns and billyuns."
  • Perfume – Patrick Süskind - Very weird, but in a good way.
  • The Color Purple – Alice Walker - Read this several times.
  • The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco - Started this a couple of times, but never finished it.
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams - Of course.
  • The World According to Garp – John Irving - Read this when I was far too young to understand it.
  • The Shining – Stephen King - Scared the shit out of me.
  • Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice - Read it, loved it.
  • Fear of Flying – Erica Jong - Read it in high school, simply for the sex. Didn't get the angst.
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson - Read it in exerpts in Rolling Stone. Deeply, deeply weird.
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
  • The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles - Liked it when I read it but can't remember much about it now.
  • In Cold Blood – Truman Capote - Read it and really liked it.
  • A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess - Read it in high school and found it deeply disturbing.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee - Of course. Excellent book.
  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote - Didn't like it as much as the movie, but still, a great book.
  • The Once and Future King – T.H. White - I am a sucker for King Arthur books.
  • Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov - Did not like it at all.
  • Lord of the Flies – William Golding - Found it disturbing, which, I suppose, was the point.
  • Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison - Read it a long time ago.
  • The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger - Thought what'shisname was a foolish character and had very little sympathy for him, even though I was the "right age" for reading it.
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell - Read it under duress because I was in the class of '84. Didn't like it at the time but appreciate it a lot more now. They shouldn't make you read this stuff when your world view doesn't extend beyond Friday's dance.
  • Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh - Loved it. Wanted a teddy bear named Aloysius.
  • Animal Farm – George Orwell - See above comment about 1984.
  • The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Read it. Still don't get it.
  • The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck - Had to read it in high school.
  • Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier - Read it. Still love it.
  • Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck - One of the few books I read in high school that I really loved.
  • The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien - Read it and liked it, but man, those hobbits sing a lot.
  • Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen) - Loved this.
  • To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway - Did not love this.
  • Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell - Yes. 847 times.
  • The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers - LOVE Dorothy Sayers. Love. Her.
  • Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse - But of course.
  • Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers - See above re. D.L.S.
  • Brave New World – Aldous Huxley - Read it in high school. 'nuff said.
  • The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett - Really enjoy noir detective stuff.
  • All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque - Read it in high school. Found it unbelievably depressing. Helped solidify my hatred of war.
  • Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence - Read this on my own in high school and was disappointed that it wasn't as steamy as I thought it would be.
  • The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway - Do not like Hemingway.
  • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie - My least favorite Agatha Christie.
  • The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald - Loved this book. A lot.
  • The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton - Read this a few years ago. Loved it. Need to read more Wharton.
  • The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy - Read it a couple of times.
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Love SACD.

1800s

  • Dracula – Bram Stoker
  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - See above re: SACD
  • Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy - Read this on my own in high school and thoroughly enjoyed it.
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain - Never could understand why people wanted to ban it.
  • Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy - Enjoyed it but not enough to read it again.
  • Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy - Didn't like it much.
  • Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll - One of my all-time favorites.
  • War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy - Read this on a dare made by my 11th grade history teacher. He never finished it. I did. Lots of snow and -ovskys in this book.
  • Little Women – Louisa May Alcott - Uh, yeah. Just a couple of times.
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll - Yep. Love it.
  • Les Misérables – Victor Hugo - Did not like it.
  • Great Expectations – Charles Dickens - I LOATHE Charles Dickens, but especially this book.
  • A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens - OK, this one I did enjoy. But don't tell anyone.
  • Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert - Read this a couple of times.
  • The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne - GAH! Hated this book with a passion.
  • David Copperfield – Charles Dickens - And this one as well.
  • Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë - Wasn't too crazy about this one either.
  • Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë - This, on the other hand, I loved.
  • Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray - And this.
  • The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe - Creepy and thrilling, like all his stuff.
  • Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens - See above re: Dickens.
  • Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Found this very, very sad.
  • Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen - Jane Austen freak here.
  • Persuasion – Jane Austen - See above.
  • Emma – Jane Austen - ibid
  • Mansfield Park – Jane Austen - ibid
  • Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen - ibid
  • Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen - ibid

1700s

  • Tom Jones – Henry Fielding - Loved this. A total romp.
  • Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift - A bit too long for me, but good.
  • Pre-1700
  • The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous - Of course. Fantastic stories.
  • Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus - Hasn't everyone read these?



There. Now aren't you glad I didn't post the entire list?

4 comments:

LauraJ said...

*hanging head in shame* you've read a lot of books!! good gah woman where did you find the time?

Anonymous said...

i am SO not stealing this one. It looks painful. ;-)

Mike said...

This just reminds me, so many books, so little time...

Joke said...

1- I MAY steal this.
2- I felt equally let down by Lady Chatterley's Lover.

As you were.

-J.