100 books you've read (or haven't)

[butterfly]

Saw a couple of people on my flist doing this. I think that I've done something similar to this before, but I can't recall the details.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well, let's see.

1.) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2.) Italicize those you intend to read.
3.) Underline those you LOVE.
4.) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read.


01. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (finally got around to reading this just a couple of months ago. Very good!)
02. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (love the story and characters; not a fan of the prose)
03. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (at some point, though I suspect I won't be a huge fan)
04. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (disappointed in the last book though)
05. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (I just missed reading this in school because we moved right before one place was doing to read it and the new place had already finished)
06. The Bible (I went to a Lutheran school for three years. Oh boy, did I read this. I've read the entire thing through more than once)
07. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (ditto what I said about JE)
08. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
09. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I read the Mark Reads of it, though, which was quite good)
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 (not all of them but I have read some, and I've seen more performed; also, how is the complete works of someone a 'book'? seriously)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (insufferable main character)
*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 (I hated everyone in this book. So much hate)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (very good!)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (...I saw the movie?)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (when I was a kid)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (when I was a kid)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (haven't read it, but I own it)
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen (love! It's hard to say if I like this one or P&P better)
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (...didn't we already cover this back in #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 (as a kid)
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
*42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (lol, no. I have seen the movie)
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 (just re-read it! heavier on God than I remembered, but still very delightful)
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 (not because it seems like it would be bad, but the movie just wrecked me. I couldn't do that again)
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert (lol, what a cracky series. It's amazing how in some books I adore Duncan, but in others I hate him but he's always completely in character)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (only seen movie/tv versions; haven't read yet)
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 (So fucking depressing; I can't even)
*62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (LOVE!)
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
*68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (I haven't but I read a version that was from the whale's PoV! White Waves. Nicely done)
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker (I read this a year ago for a class. Much better than expected! Loved the format)
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (but I've seen the movie)
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 (also saw some movie versions, at least one, anyway)
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 (and saw the animated movie as a kid as well)
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read some but not all)
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 (I've seen it live. Also, we had the 'complete works of Shakespeare' above)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (plus both the Wilder movie (\O/) and the Depp one (/O\).)
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (no, but I've seen the musical)

How can this list not have any Oscar Wilde stuff on it? Take off one of the redundancies and add something from Wilde. And maybe replace the other redundancy with Typical American by Gish Jen. That book was fantastic (maybe they weren't printed by 'big read').

And, randomly, Robert Downey Jr. is a wonderful human being. It's kinda cool to read gossip stuff and find out something nice about someone.

ETA: Oh, realized that sounded a bit vague and mysterious. He helps out people who are recovering from drug addiction; gives them the kind of support that saved him.