A Book Meme from Gymshoes!

Fellow bookworm Gymshoes thought that I'd enjoy the following meme. Well, I did. So now I'm going to share it with you! It's an odd list of books, I must say. Popular "fluffy" books mixed in with some hardcore literature. Interesting...

Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole, put a cross+ in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk* the ones you’ve never heard of.

1. + The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
2. + Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen  [you guys know how I love this book!]
3. + To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee [insanely fabulous]
4. + Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell [one of my all-time favorites]
5. + The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - Tolkien [I'm a nerd, of course I've read them]
6. + The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - Tolkien
7. + The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers - Tolkien
8. + Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery [I have the whole series and they are falling apart from multiple readings.]
9. Outlander* - Diana Gabaldon
10. A Fine Balance* - Rohinton Mistry
11. + Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling
12. + Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
13. + Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving
15. + Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
16. + Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone - J.K. Rowling
17. Fall on Your Knees* - Ann-Marie MacDonald
18. The Stand - Stephen King [I like Firestarter and Carrie, though!]
19. + Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling
20. + Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
21. The Hobbit - Tolkien
22. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger [the perfect teen angst novel]
23. + Little Women - Louisa May Alcott [the first "big girl" book that I ever read]
24. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
25. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
26. + The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams [another favorite]
27. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
28. + The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis [again, I have the entire series and they are falling apart.]
29. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
30. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom [KILL THIS MAN. UGH.]
31. + Dune - Frank Herbert [The spice is LIFE. ]
32. The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks
33. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
34. 1984 - George Orwell [scared the hell out of me]
35. The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [saw the movie and loved it.]
36. The Pillars of the Earth* - Ken Follett
37. The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
38. I Know This Much is True* - Wally Lamb
39. + The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
40. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear* - Jean M. Auel
42. The Kite Runner* - Khaled Hosseini
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
45. + The Bible [Although I’m not sure whether I’ve actually read every single word]
46. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
47. + The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas [LOVE IT]
48. Angela’s Ashes - Frank McCourt
49. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
50. She’s Come Undone* - Wally Lamb
51. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
52. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
53. Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card
54. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
55. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
56. The Stone Angel* - Margaret Laurence
57. + Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling
58. The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
59. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrew Niffenegger
61. + Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
62. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
63. War and Peace - Tolstoy
64. Interview With The Vampire - Anne Rice
65. Fifth Business* - Robertson Davis
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares
68. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
69. + Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
70. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery [I read this in the original French :)]
71. + Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding [about a BILLION times better than the sequel]
72. Love in the Time of Cholera - Marquez
73. Shogun - James Clavell
74. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
75. + The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett [a childhood favorite]
76. The Summer Tree* - Guy Gavriel Kay
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
78. The World According To Garp - John Irving
79. The Diviners* - Margaret Laurence
80. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White [I will never see the film remake. Julia Roberts as Charlotte? Bastards.]
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage* - Timothy Findley
82. Of Mice And Men - John Steinbeck
83. + Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier [Ooooooooooh love this creepy book!!]
84. Wizard’s First Rule* - Terry Goodkind
85. + Emma - Jane Austen [I named my little stinker after this book!!]
86. Watership Down - Richard Adams
87. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
88. The Stone Diaries* - Carol Shields
89. Blindness* - Jose Saramago
90. Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer
91. In The Skin Of A Lion* - Micahel Ondaatje
92. Lord of the Flies - (Golding)
93. The Good Earth - (Pearl S. Buck) [*snarl*]
94. The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
95. The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum
96. The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton
97. White Oleander - Janet Fitch
98. A Woman of Substance - Barbara Taylor Bradford
99. The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield
100. Ulysses - James Joyce

Comments

[Jennifer]

Thanks for the tip. I posted my results too, and gave you a shout-out. :)

[Gymshoes]

I like the way you've combined categorizations using both bold and strikeout for books you've read but wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. LOL! There are a handful on that list that I've read but wished I hadn't! ;-) I also like the commentary you've added. I think part of the reason why this list is such a combination of popular fiction and classics is because it's not just about what you've read, but how you feel about both popular fiction and classics.

[BadAunt]

I thought of doing it too, but then realized there were several on that list that I MIGHT have read, they seem vaguely familiar, I remember the covers, I think I had them here at some point ... but they've left an indelible blank in my mind. Which means either I read them and hated them, read them and liked them but not enough to remember them, or read them in the year or so after a head injury, when I read a lot to distract myself from pain. At that time getting involved in a book - or in anything - really hurt, so I was reading in a sort of distant way.

It all makes the meme a bit DIFFICULT.

Incidentally, I can assure you that "A Fine Balance" is WELL worth reading - I adored it. (I've since read a lot of Mistry's books.) So is "She's Come Undone," which I remember I didn't expect to like but ended up recommending to all my friends until they read it to shut me up (and then agreed with me). And "Ender's Game" is a classic - The Man found it for me in a second-hand bookstore, and urged me to read it. After I finished it I was amazed that I'd never heard of it before, and then went on to read the rest of the Ender novels.

[bombadil]

Thanks, I think I am going to post this, but it needs to be revised a little bit. Putting 4 Tolkien books or 5 Rowlings really doesn't make sense. If you have read one, you probably read the others.

There shouldn't be more than 1 from any one author.