This is a meme I found over at Helen’s blog. One that (Un)relaxeddad and Anthromama have been doing recently. It is about LibraryThing’s list of the top 106 books that lie unread on people’s shelves. You have to bold the ones you’ve read of your own accord, underline the ones you had to read for school or university, and italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. I’ve added an extra bit and have *starred* the books that are, indeed, sitting on my shelf unread.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses – I keep starting it
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The [A] Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
*The Time Traveler’s Wife*
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - Most of
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - DNF
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
*Neverwhere*
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
*Eats, Shoots & Leaves* Bit by bit in the bookstore
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Filed under: literature | Tagged: books, meme
hey archie you’ve missed a few great classics there – Madame Bovary is one of my favourite books.
freakonomics is pretty interesting – there’s a great chapter on how naming your baby affects their future earning potential
my stats would be a bit pathetic – but i suspect nursemyra and azahar have both chewed through most of these titles!
@ Nursem, Hey, nearly 40% isn’t bad
@ daisy, I was worried about my stats but it is surprising just how many books get read over a lifetime
Fascinating … I seem to have read many that you didn’t even consider, but I’m not sure how to do the classification/s you suggest. Is it possible to do this on your blog or do I have to do it some other way? Other than that, I think it stands at about 50%+ that I have read. I know most of the titles even if I haven’t read the book.
To do something like this, you would need to develop your own blog – maybe a good idea -
The only reason I got through Ulysses was because we were forced to write an essay on it at university. I hated it! The Once and Future King is on my to read list and so is Lolita.
You are better read than I am–at least according to this list, but then, I would bet that there are dozens of young adult titles that I have read that you haven’t. That is because I try to keep up one them professionally. Plus, I enjoy them.
You really must read *The Time Traveller’s Wife* – it is an excellent book.
What did you think of the Satanic Verses, Archie? And have you read Midnight’s Children?
@ Helen, I don’t think I could ever finish Ulysses
@ Kateny, You could well be correct. I haven’t read huge amounts of children’s literature.
@ Angela, It is on my list of books to buy – once my TBR pile goes down a bit
@ Philipa, no – I haven’t read the Satanic Verses – from the excerpts of Rushdie’s work I have read, I don’t think I want to. He seems a boring writer – or maybe I’m an ADD reader
I’m actually surprised by just how many I’ve read… they don’t half add up, don’t they, over the years?
Ulysses… I finished that. And, boy, it ruined my whole damn summer! I hate the thing with a passion… oh, except for the “Mollylogue”. I quite enjoyed that.
The Satanic Verses (I read it B.F. — Before Fatwah
) I enjoyed it but remember it as being rather hit and miss. Time for a re-read, I think.
War and Peace is on my summer reading list, probably after Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (which I’m finding surprisingly readable.) What did you think of W&P, Archie?
@ Gary, dare I say it?
Yep – It is about Russia – - -
Seriously, it is long, tragic and very pessimistic. Communism would have been a relief to everyone involved.
I guess it’s going to be another thoroughly miserable summer, then lol Oh, well, at least it’ll be better than the British weather… won’t it?
Actually, the weather should be quite good this summer – there isn’t an Ashes Tour
That was fun to review! I got a kick out comparing my list with yours. Obviously, I’m a bit more of a romantic all the Austin, Bronte, etc. were bold and would have been extra bold if multiple readings counted.
Ashes, Archie? That’s cricket, right?… Too energetic for me, mate
@ Kym, I am trying to get a few of the 19th century chick-lits into my resume. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a literate man in possession of a good reading habits, must be in want of a library.
@ Gary, Hey, you’re talking about my sport there – well, till a few years ago.
Chess is about as sporty as I get
Paraphrasing Pride and Prejudice! Whew, good thing I don’t know where you live. I married the last guy I found that could do that!
@ Gary, I used to play that once. Unfortunately the mind is now going
@ Kym, I hope you have both the sense and sensibility not to repeat yourself LOL
I know that feeling, Archie. I haven’t actually got the patience to be good at it, but I do enjoy the occasional game.
Ah yes – I am now beginning to feel somewhat like Olaf Stapledon’s Sirius – - -
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Annually!