Saw this at Pinky’s Paperhaus — I still haven’t finished logging my library in LibraryThing, but marking up this list seems doable.
But who came up with this wacked out list?? Such bizarre choices.
Rules: “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) (Can this book please go away?)
2. +Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)+ (This book was formative for me.)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) (War, war war!)
5. +The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)+ (And why are these three books listed in this out-of-order sequence?)
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) (Also formative for me, although I’m sure I’d never get through it now.)
9. *Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)*
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)*
11. +Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)+ (I really enjoy the Potter books, despite the poor writing in the first few.)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. +Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)+
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) (Only kinda want to read this.)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. +Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)+
17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)*
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. +Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)+
20. +Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)+ (I will always love Rochester.)
21. +The Hobbit (Tolkien)+
22. +The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)+
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)+ (I’ve had this on my bookshelf for ages — I wonder if I really do want to read it.)
25. +Life of Pi (Yann Martel)+
26. +The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)+ (Among my favorite books ever.)
27. +Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)+
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
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. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
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)+ (Another big favorite.)
55. +The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)+ (Ooh, and this one.)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)*
57. +Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)+
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) (Finished it, but didn’t like it.)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) (I’m about ready to think about rereading this one.)
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 Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. +Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)+
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
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)
81. *Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)*
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)*
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
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 (Ondaatje)*
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
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) +
(This I want to read, but I also sort of fear it.)
I just started dating someone. She’s kinda awesome. We were talking about how other people we’ve gone out with haven’t exactly been literary, she said “Have you read any of Mitch Albom’s books?”
I took a deep breath. This was a Moment of Truth. I nodded.
She wrinkled her nose and said, “I can’t STAND them. I have no idea why he’s so popular. They’re AWFUL.”
I smiled, from ear to ear. Butterflies took wing inside my tummy. And I all but swooned.
I feel book compatibility is quite important. Could I date someone who enjoyed “The Da Vinci Code”? Most likely not. It seems to signal problems down the road.
Music compatibility is also an indicator — especially if you like to take long, driving trips where you will be listening to shared music choices for hours on end. But then again, one can wear headphones.
Hmm. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced much music or book compatibility with anyone I’ve ever dated. That would explain some things, I guess. At best, my taste has been a subset of my S.O.’s taste (with all the things he likes that I don’t like being, of course, crap).
But, listen, since Jane Eyre is a favorite of yours, too, let me run this by you:
Rochester. Russell Crowe.
What do you say? There’ve been so many movies of this book, so many of them with bizarre casting (William Hurt!? with Charlotte Gainsbourg?!). But Crowe, to me, seems like an obvious choice. I just can’t figure out who’d play Jane.
I would also be interested in seeing Alan Rickman in the role, as one IMDB user suggests. But only if Crowe’s unavailable.
Meanwhile . . . you might consider those two Michael Ondaatje books on there–In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient (and in that order–they’re slightly related). Disregard the godawful movie of the latter; wretched; wretched. It’s been a long time since I’ve read them, but I remember both books being quite beautifully written.
I guess I should give Dickens another chance. I hated him in school, with a hot, hot hate, but haven’t tried to read him since probably tenth grade. Maybe he’s learned to write since then. . . .
Have you noticed that all of these books are fiction ?
With the exception of the Bible, of course.