Monday, October 6, 2008 - My Chance to be Above Average
Those of us who are below average height can get a strong yearning to be above average. Tonight I went over and visited my friend at The Chickadee Feeder and found an opportunity, so, without fear, here I go, boldly trying it out. I quote:
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
The Rules:
1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post.
And now here I go:
*1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
*2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
*3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
*5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
**6 The Bible
*7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
*8 1984 - George Orwell
#9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
*13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (wondering how you'd know if they're complete when no one is absolutely sure the guy ever existed....)
*15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
*16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
*18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
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
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
*24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
********25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
*30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
*31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
*32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
%34 Emma - Jane Austen
&35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (why is this separate?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
*40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
*41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
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 - L.M. Montgomery
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
%51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
**52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
*54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
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
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
*65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (French class)
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
*71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
*72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
*73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. 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 - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
**89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
**92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (French class again)
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
*99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
*100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
And now I think I am off to see if I can find the Life of Pi thing...
I've read 31 of them, so I guess I'm above average. I'm pretty sure some of these shouldn't have made the list and I have no interest in reading them (ie. the Harry Potter books and DaVinci Code) I thought there was some rule that a book had to be a certain age to be considered for greatness??
Oops, I see I didn't read carefully enough at the beginning of the post. I guess I'd better go to bed before I get any more loopy :D
Edited by msmarla on Monday, October 6, 2008 at 11:04 PM
Wow. I am embarrassed at how few of these i have read. More than 6, though-- whew! I didn't count the ones which I've read only in a condensed version; otherwise the number would be almost twice as high, but still a tad on the pathetic side. Some I've seen as movies but not actually read. And of the ones i *have* read, many were in high school or college and I really don't remember a whole lot about them. (There were also a few I didn't mark b/c I actually couldn't *remember* whether or not I'd read them. Like Moby Dick. I didn't mark that b/c I *think* it was actually Billy Budd that I read in that college lit class...)
Now if they'd make a list of children's historical fiction...
Oh, and at 63", I count myself among the vertically-challenged as well. (75% of my children have already surpassed me in height.)
Interesting list. A few on there I've started and put down never to pick up again (i.e. The Time Traveller's Wife), and a few of which I've seen the film never knowing there was an actual book that inspired it (i.e. Bridget Jone's Diary....the movie was bad enough...not intending to also read it).
THOSE are the top books???
Sheesh. Where's Calvin and Hobbes?? Just kidding.
sort of.
I'm pretty sure - according to that list - that I'm in the lower percentile. My life is too short to read bad books. -- I think though, that 14 & 98 might just be a bit redundant or #98 is just exclusionary. Why single out Hamlet? *L*
Okay -- let's see if this works:
*3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
**6 The Bible
*7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
*16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
********25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (ditto the stars.)
**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (why is this separate?) (I'm not sure -- it's certainly within the Chronicles. Silly list people.)
***40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
**46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
*70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
**73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
**89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
**97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Honorable Mention:
%34 Emma - Jane Austen
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (started - never finished. No music)
and I singled it out:
I haven't read it but -- 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -- The movie was based on a book?! Wow. *SNORE*
I'm assuming that these are only from one publisher..
There's at least one - My Antonia - that was considered a classic when I was in school and I actually read it. I'm a bit bummed that I can't put a "read it" star next to it. *L*
Edited by ComfyDenim on Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 8:55 AM
