Friday Blog Bling
My friend, Steve, over on the Silent Holocron came across this fun blog meme from some other blog. It piqued my interest, so I will use it as this week's edition of the Friday Blog Bling.
Here's goes (my commentary in parentheses)...
Top 100 Books
According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.
The instructions: Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (was a fan but liked CS Lewis better)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I've read the first one but not the whole series)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (truly a great American novel.)
6. The Bible (uh, well, I'm a priest, what do you think?)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell (in the running for my all time favorite novel)
9. His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman (read part of it and put it down, very weird)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I have trouble following Hardy's narrative style).
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Maybe a few minor works I haven't read)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (sounds familiar but I am not placing it)
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (another in my top ten)
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (the book that never ends)
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (I need to read this one again, never really got it in high school)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens (very depressing, have been to a pub it describes)
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (really long but worth the time)
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (pretty wild stuff actually)
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (bizarre ending)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (good but depressing at the end)
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (long and never quite sure what the point was)
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I'm an Anglican priest...what do you think I think?)
34. Emma - Jane Austen (really avoid Jane Austen when I can)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen (see above note)
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (My all time favorite kid's novel)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (You're kidding, right??)
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (another one that I have read part of and never finished it.))
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (Classic Pooh is way better than the Americanized version)
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell (another hilarious satire if you understand what you are reading)
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Dear God, why??)
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 (I actually liked these in middle school.)
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (Again, have trouble following him.)
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Classic but weird. I recall I thought it was over the top.)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (very bizarre)
52. Dune - Frank Herbert (all time favorite Science Fiction series. Please read more than the first one.)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (I really hated my 10th grade English teacher)
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (hated it in middle school, after a degree in history I understand it now)
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (Up there with 1984.)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (This one is actually pretty good, references a line from the Sherlock Holmes short story The Silver Blaze.)
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (this sounds bizarre)
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (sad but good)
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (One of the best novels I read in High School, and do not get the abridged version!)
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac (truly psychotic crap)
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (The one Hardy novel I understood)
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Most of my friends hated this book, I loved it when I was in high school. "And he piled upon the whale's white hump, the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race...and if his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it." Truly brilliant stuff...)
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (one of Dickens' more poignant novels)
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker (not what you expect from the Bela Lugosi film)
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (read it twice, still have no idea what its about)
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 (my all time favorite work of literature bar none.)
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (Had to read this in high school. closest I've come to to setting my teeth on fire. Alleuia!)
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White (loved this when I was younger. Might have been the first book I ever owned.)
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (always thought it was hilarious that a Detroit sports columnist would write stuff like this)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (My favorite anthology, even been to the 221 B Baker Street museum in London)
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (one long sentence, but fascinating in a morbid sort of way.)
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (I’ve started it but never finished)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Be sure to pronounce his last name correctly)
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (I never actually cared for Hamlet)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (I am convinced this story makes sense if you are stoned.)
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Jean Valjean deserves better than being No. 100)
Totals:
Read: 58
Favorites: 18
Want to Read: 2
Blogmaster's note: As a Southerner, I take exception to the fact that there is not a single William Faulkner novel on this list. At least they had To Kill a Mocking Bird.
Here's goes (my commentary in parentheses)...
Top 100 Books
According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.
The instructions: Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (was a fan but liked CS Lewis better)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I've read the first one but not the whole series)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (truly a great American novel.)
6. The Bible (uh, well, I'm a priest, what do you think?)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell (in the running for my all time favorite novel)
9. His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman (read part of it and put it down, very weird)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I have trouble following Hardy's narrative style).
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Maybe a few minor works I haven't read)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (sounds familiar but I am not placing it)
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (another in my top ten)
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (the book that never ends)
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (I need to read this one again, never really got it in high school)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens (very depressing, have been to a pub it describes)
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (really long but worth the time)
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (pretty wild stuff actually)
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (bizarre ending)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (good but depressing at the end)
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (long and never quite sure what the point was)
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I'm an Anglican priest...what do you think I think?)
34. Emma - Jane Austen (really avoid Jane Austen when I can)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen (see above note)
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (My all time favorite kid's novel)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (You're kidding, right??)
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (another one that I have read part of and never finished it.))
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (Classic Pooh is way better than the Americanized version)
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell (another hilarious satire if you understand what you are reading)
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Dear God, why??)
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 (I actually liked these in middle school.)
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (Again, have trouble following him.)
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Classic but weird. I recall I thought it was over the top.)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (very bizarre)
52. Dune - Frank Herbert (all time favorite Science Fiction series. Please read more than the first one.)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (I really hated my 10th grade English teacher)
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (hated it in middle school, after a degree in history I understand it now)
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (Up there with 1984.)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (This one is actually pretty good, references a line from the Sherlock Holmes short story The Silver Blaze.)
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (this sounds bizarre)
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (sad but good)
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (One of the best novels I read in High School, and do not get the abridged version!)
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac (truly psychotic crap)
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (The one Hardy novel I understood)
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Most of my friends hated this book, I loved it when I was in high school. "And he piled upon the whale's white hump, the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race...and if his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it." Truly brilliant stuff...)
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (one of Dickens' more poignant novels)
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker (not what you expect from the Bela Lugosi film)
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (read it twice, still have no idea what its about)
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 (my all time favorite work of literature bar none.)
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (Had to read this in high school. closest I've come to to setting my teeth on fire. Alleuia!)
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White (loved this when I was younger. Might have been the first book I ever owned.)
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (always thought it was hilarious that a Detroit sports columnist would write stuff like this)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (My favorite anthology, even been to the 221 B Baker Street museum in London)
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (one long sentence, but fascinating in a morbid sort of way.)
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (I’ve started it but never finished)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Be sure to pronounce his last name correctly)
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (I never actually cared for Hamlet)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (I am convinced this story makes sense if you are stoned.)
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Jean Valjean deserves better than being No. 100)
Totals:
Read: 58
Favorites: 18
Want to Read: 2
Blogmaster's note: As a Southerner, I take exception to the fact that there is not a single William Faulkner novel on this list. At least they had To Kill a Mocking Bird.
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