Meg had a book meme that I liked because it made me think about what I have and haven't read in my life. Embarrassingly, ds#1, nearly 32 years younger than I, has read as many as, if not more than, I have.
The RULES:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read (as in the book is bought and sitting on my shelf).
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
There are 98 books on the list.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - read this on the tour bus while touring Europe. Actually, my best bud from highschool was reading it, and I kept reading over her shoulder, and reading faster than she, so she just got fed up and gave it to me to read.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - It's a guy thing, I've heard. I can't deal with it, but ds#1 has read every one in the volume at least a couple of times.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - I think that was my precursor to the Victoria Holt phase.
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - everyone in the family did, although ds#1 was the only one who has read each one several times and it only took him about 6 hours to read #7.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - still moves me. The kids read it in our homeschool literary co-op a couple of years ago.
6. The Bible - King James version, NSE version, did several classes on it
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - like Meg, we have it, but I haven't read it.
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - This is a partial read. I started reading Golden Compass several years ago, recommended it to ds#1 who, then, read all 3 books, and I've not yet finished the first.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - this was the first novel I read after learning English in grade 3. I credit this with my love of the English language and for wanting to be a writer.
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - want to, but haven't yet.
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - also a "partial-read", my favorites being Macbeth and The Tempest.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - does it count if I've seen parts of the movie? ;)
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - ds#1 read it
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 - it was a juicy read for an 11 year old...me, that is; I'm not letting ds#1 read it yet.
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - I'm not quite sure why this received the critical acclaim that it did. I read it when I took an online course from the Gotham Writer's Grp.
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - I'd be happy if I could just finish Anna Karenina one day.
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - LOVED this book...the whole series, although the first 2 volumes more than the others. Ditto for ds#1. His "Last Chance to See" is excellent too! I have his "the Salmon of Doubt" on the book shelf to read one day.
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - I may just borrow the BBC series to watch
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - nope...I think it'll be too depressing for me. There is a cute scene in "Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave" where Gromit is lying in his cell bed (in jail) and he's reading Crime and Punishment by Fido Dogstoyevsky. I love Wallace & Gromit!
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - both ds#1 and I read it. I think I liked it more than he did.
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - I thought this was one of the most boring books I had ever read (I was 11, and Gone with the Wind was a lot more exciting then), whereas it was ds#1's favorite book from ages of 5-7. I couldn't believe he could read that over and over and over again. :P
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - "partial read", gotta finish
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - if it seems like I avoid Dickens, it's probably true
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - read the whole series, but don't remember any of it because I didn't like it very much. Ds#1 read the whole series and liked it a lot more than I did.
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - I'm so not up to date with modern lit.
37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - surreal and lots of fun, much like the Mary Poppins books (NOT at all like the movie)
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell - ds#1 really enjoyed it; I haven't read it yet
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - "partial read" - I tend to start a lot of books and never get around to finishing them.
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - It was all right; not sure why the cult following. I preferred the Betsy-Tacy series by Maude Hart Lovelace more.
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding - I hated this book so much, I told the kids they were not allowed to read it as long as they lived in this house.
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert - dh loved this one; I thought it was ok, and I'm the sci-fi fan.
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - this one really affected me. I cried, and I really enjoyed it even though it's depressing (I say this as a mom of a child with mild autism).
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - ds#1 is reading it, but I don't think he cares much for it.
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - ds#1 read it.
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker - ds#1 read it
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - both kids read it too. Not sure that they liked it any more than I did.
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - ds#1 read this a couple of times.
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte’s Web - EB White - we all enjoyed this one.
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - It's a "partial-read" for me, and ds#1 loved all the books.
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - I don't know why I liked this so much, but I did.
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - This was another book we did a couple of years ago in our homeschool literary co-op. Ds#1 was 10 and loved it. I watched the movie and a stage play of it back in high school and thought it clever and sad.
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams - watched the animated movie...
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - like Meg, I watched the '70s Michael York movies
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - I find his works interesting and probably have read a half a dozen books of his, but it's ds#1 who was totally infatuated with all his books.
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)
