A Reading List
I'm having one of those book slumps again. I wonder why I've had so many of them this year? I want to read a classic but I can't seem to choose the right one. Today, I saw this reading list at Thomas at My Porch's blog . The BBC believe most people would have read 6 of these. I've read 44. No wonder I can't choose my next classic. I've put the ones I've read in red and the ones I've partially read in italics. I've enjoyed many of them but I've added an asterisk next to the ones I really loved.
So how many have you read? Based on the list, if you've got recommendations for me, please do drop me a comment below. Plus, while we're at it, can you tell me what's the best book you've read so far this year? I'm starting to think of my top ten list for 2010 and it somehow isn't as great as my 2009 list. I need to read a good book before the New Year!
* 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
* 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
*4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
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 The Complete Works of Shakespeare
14 The Complete Works of Shakespeare
*15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
*18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
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
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
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 - 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 - LM 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
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 - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
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
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
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
For two short not real rough holiday season reads not in red yet for you try-The Great Gatsby-the last ten pages are just totally beautiful-Brave New World-I still recall the book in detail after 40 plus years ago-
ReplyDeleteI really loved the Great Gatsby when I read it earlier this year. I've read (or partically read)32 of that list which isn't too bad.
ReplyDelete@mel & @jessica - Looks like I'll have to pick up The Great Gatsby. I actually have a copy but I don't know why I've never read it. Funny because Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald is one of my favorite novels.
ReplyDeleteYou haven't read any of my favourites on the list! Anne of Green Gables! Emma! Vanity Fair!
ReplyDeleteAs for my favourite books of the year, I loved: The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard, the Mrs Tim books by D.E. Stevenson, A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka, and Greenery Street by Denis Mackail. It's been a good reading year!
I've made it through 49 - nearly half the list. I don't really understand the list at all, though... It's a weird mishmash of books, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI've read 50, a pleasingly round number, although a few of them I really wish I hadn't bothered with! You must read the Great Gatsby although I actually think Tender is the Night and the Beautiful and Damned are both better.
ReplyDeleteOne Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece, and I recently read A Tale of Two Cities and absolutely loved it. It is a fantastic story and the imagery it conjures up of the French revolution, of London, of Paris, of night-time carriage rides and bars in basements are almost unbeatable. I was surprised by how readable and gripping it was. Am now planning to read some more Dickens!
I think I only counted 23 so I can look forward to reading quite a few more. Guess I won't have any trouble thinking of what to read next!
ReplyDeleteRead another Dickens!!!
ReplyDeleteps. In my opinion don't bother with Cloud Atlas, unless others whose reading tastes you know you share rave about it.
Great Expectations is one of my favorites from the unreads on your list - love it, love it, love it. I've read 65 of them, but I'm never going to get 100% because Confederacy of Dunces and I just DON'T get along. :-)
ReplyDeleteBest book of the year so far: possibly the first volume of Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter in English).
I've read 32 from the list. So far this year, one of my favorite reads has been Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys.
ReplyDelete@Claire (The Captive Reader) Thanks! More books to add to my list.
ReplyDelete@Steph - On second thought, it is a weird list...the Da Vinci Code, Bill Bryson??! I'll have to find another list online.
@Jane & @Joan Hunter Dunn - I'm going to try A Tale of Two Cities!
@Emily - I actually like A Confederacy of Dunces. Weird but fun in a way.
I've read a nice even number: 50 of them, and I find it so terribly sad that the BBC says people have only read 6. Poor illiterate world...
ReplyDeleteDon't you love the classics?! They're my favorite in all the world, and I'm so glad to see that you've read The Secret History. For some bizarre reason, that's I book I'm crazy about. Murder, go figure.
Mrs. B., I can recommend Middlemarch, A Town Like Alice, War and Peace, A Fine Balance, Gone with the Wind, and, definitely, before any of the others, Anne of Green Gables.
ReplyDeleteAs for my favourite book of the year, that's a tough one. I think it's better to give a list of my favourites: A Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby, A Town like Alice by Nevil Shute, Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott, Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, Life and Death of Harriett Frean by May Sinclair, and The Rector's Daughter by F. M. Mayor. Plus, I would also add They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple; even though I've read most of her other novels this year except for High Wages and Every Good Deed, and they were all excellent, that one was my favourite. I feel like I've read many good books this year, and some of them have been because of your recommendations. :)
@Belleza - The Secret History is one of my favorite books of all time. Definitely top five.
ReplyDelete@Virginia - You've indeed had a fabulous reading year which is much more than I can say for myself. Thanks so much for all your recommendations. There are many on that list that I haven't read. They Were Sisters is also my favorite Whipple and I'm happy to hear that I've recommended some good ones to you.
27. That's how many I read from that list. Why not try The Lord of the Rings and Dune.
ReplyDeleteWow that's some list! What suggestions do I have to offer? Hmmm...you could read some satirical work on the early twentieth century: cold comfort farm or maybe some Evelyn Waugh....if you haven't already :)
ReplyDeleteSorry to spam but I see that you have already read cold comfort farm, try Emma before the new year :)
ReplyDelete63? No wonder I have no life...
ReplyDeleteTry Middlemarch :)
When you're in the mood for a warm and wonderful book--perhaps while you are on summer vacation--try the phenomenal Swallows and Amazons series by Ransome. The first one (S&A) is a perfect place to start. Winter Holiday is my second favorite in the series. You can share with children if you like, too.
ReplyDeleteI just can't wait to hear what you think of "Faithful Place!" I think Tana French is a goddess. Did you read "The Likeness?" I thought it had heavenly echoes of Du Maurier....
ReplyDeleteI've got another one for you, Mrs. B -- I cannot recommend highly enough a memoir called "The Hare with Amber Eyes." Possibly the best book I read this year. Moving, thought-provoking, beautifully written.
ReplyDeleteOh, and your NYRB challenge continues to influence: my husband just read "Indian Summer" and I just finished Stefan Zweig's "The Post Office Girl" which Danielle of A Work in Progress blogged about.
Thx for your comment on Book Group of One!