Tuesday, 5 January 2010

Other peoples must read lists

So I have read a lot of books in my lifetime.   Other people have booze, narcotics and quilting, I have my books.  However, each time I move house I do a cull on my books so I couldn't tell you all the books I have read (unlike this man - mildly disturbing but I really cant speak and I'm almost jealous).  I found this list, is quite interesting much more me, although apparently I've only read sixty-one on it, tell lies sixty two I have read the bible - although I am unlikely to read it again.

The list - Ones in green I have read and I agree that you should have read them by now.  Ones in blue have read and would read again, but they didn't rock my world, may not rock yours.  Ones in pink have read and in all truth wont read again.  Yellow I started them but for various reasons (boredom being the big one) didn't finish them and unlikely to finish reading them.

  1. King James Bible
  2. Quran
  3. Abbey, Edward - Desert Solitaire
  4. Abbott, Edwin - Flatland
  5. Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
  6. Adams, Douglas - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  7. Adams, Henry - The Education of Henry Adams
  8. Adams, Richard - Watership Down
  9. Aesop - Aesop's Fables
  10. Agee, James - Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
  11. Alcott, Louisa May - Little Women
  12. Aligheri, Dante - The Divine Comedy
  13. Amis, Kingsley - Lucky Jim
  14. Anderson, Sherwood - Winesburg, Ohio
  15. Asimov, Isaac - Gold
  16. Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale
  17. Austen, Jane - Emma
  18. Baldwin, James - Giovanni's Room
  19. Barth, John - Lost in the Funhouse
  20. Baum, L. Frank - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  21. Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
  22. Bellow, Saul - Herzog
  23. Berger, Thomas - Little Big Man
  24. Bester, Alfred - The Stars My Destination
  25. Bissinger, H.G. - Friday Night Lights
  26. Borges, Jorge Luis - Ficciones
  27. Boyle, T. Coraghessan - The Tortilla Curtain
  28. Bradbury, Ray - Fahrenheit 451
  29. Bradley, Marion Zimmer - The Mists of Avalon
  30. Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
  31. Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
  32. Brown, Dee - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
  33. Buck, Pearl S. - The Good Earth
  34. Bukowski, Charles - Post Office
  35. Burgess, Anthony - A Clockwork Orange
  36. Burroughs, William S. - Naked Lunch
  37. Calvino, Italo - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
  38. Camus, Albert - The Stranger
  39. Capote, Truman - In Cold Blood
  40. Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Game
  41. Carroll, Jim - The Basketball Diaries
  42. Carroll, Lewis - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
  43. Carroll, Peter - Liber Null
  44. Carson, Rachel - Silent Spring
  45. Cather, Willa - My Antonia
  46. Cervantes, Miguel de - Don Quixote
  47. Chabon, Michael - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
  48. Chandler, Raymond - The Long Goodbye
  49. Cheever, John - The Stories of John Cheever
  50. Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
  51. Clarke, Arthur C. - Childhood's End
  52. Confucius - The Analects
  53. Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
  54. Pat Conroy - The Prince of Tides
  55. Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
  56. Coupland, Douglas - Microserfs
  57. Cunningham, Michael - The Hours
  58. Dahl, Roald - Danny the Champion of the World
  59. Danielewski, Mark - House of Leaves
  60. Davies, Robertson - The Deptford Trilogy
  61. Dawkins, Richard - The Blind Watchmaker
  62. Delany, Samuel - Dhalgren
  63. De Beauvoir, Simone - The Second Sex
  64. DeLillo, Dom - Underworld
  65. Dick, Philip K. - The Man in the High Castle
  66. Dickens, Charles - David Copperfield
  67. Dickey, James - Deliverance
  68. Dickinson, Emily - The Complete Poems
  69. Dinesen, Isak - Out of Africa
  70. Doctorow, E.L. - World's Fair
  71. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - The Brothers Karamazov
  72. Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
  73. DuBois, W.E.B. - The Souls of Black Folk
  74. Dumas, Alexandre - The Count of Monte Cristo
  75. du Maurier, Daphne - Rebecca
  76. Eco, Umberto - Foucault's Pendulum
  77. Eggers, Dave - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
  78. Eliot, George - Silas Marner
  79. Eliot, T.S. - The Waste Land
  80. Ellis, Bret Easton - American Psycho
  81. Ellison, Harlan - The Essential Ellison
  82. Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
  83. Ellroy, James - L.A. Confidential
  84. Euclid - The Elements
  85. Eugenides, Jeffrey - The Virgin Suicides
  86. Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
  87. Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
  88. Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
  89. Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
  90. Fo, Dario - Accidental Death of an Anarchist
  91. Ford, Richard - The Sportswriter
  92. Forster, E.M. - A Room With A View
  93. Fowles, John - The Magus
  94. Gaarder, Jostein - Sophie's World
  95. Gabaldon, Diana - Outlander
  96. Gaiman, Neil - American Gods
  97. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel - One Hundred Years of Solitude
  98. Gibran, Kahlil - The Prophet
  99. Gibson, William - Count Zero
  100. Ginsberg, Allen - Howl
  101. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
  102. Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
  103. Grahame, Kenneth - The Wind in the Willows
  104. Grass, Günter - The Tin Drum
  105. Greene, Graham - The Power and the Glory
  106. Grimm, Wilhelm and Jacob - The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales
  107. Haggard, H. Rider - She
  108. Haley, Alex - Roots
  109. Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
  110. Hamilton, Edith - Mythology
  111. Hammett, Dashiell - The Maltese Falcon
  112. Hansberry, Lorraine - A Raisin in the Sun
  113. Harris, Mark - Bang the Drum Slowly
  114. Hawking, Stephen - A Brief History of Time
  115. Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
  116. Heinlein, Robert - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
  117. Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
  118. Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell To Arms
  119. Henry, O. - 41 Stories
  120. Herbert, Frank - Dune
  121. Hesse, Herman - Siddharta
  122. Hofstadter, Douglas - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  123. Homer - The Odyssey
  124. Hornby, Nick - High Fidelity
  125. Hughes, Langston - The Collected Poems
  126. Hugo, Victor - Les Miserables
  127. Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
  128. Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
  129. Ibsen, Henrik - The Wild Duck
  130. Irving, John - A Prayer For Owen Meany
  131. Jackson, Shirley - The Lottery and Other Stories
  132. James, William - The Varieties of Religious Experience
  133. Jin, Ha - War Trash
  134. Jones, Edward P. - The Known World
  135. Jones, James - From Here to Eternity
  136. Joyce, James - Ulysses
  137. Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
  138. Keats, John - The Complete Poems
  139. Kerouac, Jack - On the Road
  140. Kesey, Ken - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  141. Keyes, Daniel - Flowers for Algernon
  142. King, Stephen - It
  143. Kingsolver, Barbara - The Poisonwood Bible
  144. Kinsella, W.P. - Shoeless Joe
  145. Kipling, Rudyard - Kim
  146. Knowles, John - A Separate Peace
  147. Koestler, Arthur - Darkness at Noon
  148. Kohn, Alfie - No Contest
  149. Kristol, Irving - Neoconservatism
  150. Kundera, Milan - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  151. Lahiri, Jhumpa - Interpreter of Maladies
  152. Larson, Erik - The Devil in the White City
  153. Larson, Gary - The Complete Far Side
  154. Lawrence, D.H. - Sons and Lovers
  155. Lee, Harper - To Kill A Mockingbird
  156. LeGuin, Ursula K. - The Left Hand of Darkness
  157. Lem, Stanislaw - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
  158. Leonard, Elmore - Swag
  159. Leopold, Aldo - A Sand County Almanac
  160. Levy, Steven - Hackers
  161. Lewis, C.S. - Mere Christianity
  162. Lewis, Meriwether and Clark, William - The Journals of Lewis and Clark
  163. Lewis, Michael - Moneyball
  164. Lewis, Sinclair - It Can't Happen Here
  165. London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
  166. Lowry, Lois - The Giver
  167. Mailer, Norman - The Executioner's Song
  168. Marlowe, Christopher - Doctor Faustus
  169. Martin, George R.R. - A Game of Thrones
  170. Marx, Karl - The Communist Manifesto
  171. Masters, Edgar Lee - Spoon River Anthology
  172. McCarthy, Cormac - The Border Trilogy
  173. McCourt, Frank - Angela's Ashes
  174. McMurtry, Larry - Lonesome Dove
  175. Mellick, Carlton III - Razor Wire Pubic Hair
  176. Miller, Arthur - Death of a Salesman
  177. Miller, Henry - Tropic of Cancer
  178. Miller Jr., Walter M. - A Canticle for Leibowitz
  179. Milne, A.A. - Winnie the Pooh
  180. Milton, John - Paradise Lost
  181. Moore, Alan - The Watchmen
  182. More, Thomas - Utopia
  183. Morris, Edmund - Dutch
  184. Morrison, Toni - Beloved
  185. Murakami, Haruki - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
  186. Nabokov, Vladimir - Lolita
  187. Nietzsche, Friedrich - The Portable Nietzsche
  188. Oates, Joyce Carol - We Were The Mulvaneys
  189. O'Nan, Stewart - A Prayer for the Dying
  190. Orczy, Baroness Emmuska - The Scarlet Pimpernel
  191. Orwell, George - 1984
  192. Palahniuk, Chuck - Fight Club
  193. Perez, Richard - The Loser's Club
  194. Pirsig, Robert - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
  195. Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
  196. Plato - The Republic
  197. Poe, Edgar Allan - Collected Tales and Poems
  198. Pound, Ezra - Selected Poems
  199. Pullman, Philip - Northern Lights
  200. Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
  201. Quinn, Daniel - Ishmael
  202. Rand, Ayn - The Fountainhead
  203. Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
  204. Reynolds, Sheri - The Rapture of Canaan
  205. Rhys, Jean - Wide Sargasso Sea
  206. Robbins, Tom - Still Life With Woodpecker
  207. Roberts, J.M. - The New History of the World
  208. Robinson, Kim Stanley - The Years of Rice and Salt
  209. Robinson, Marilynne - Housekeeping
  210. Roth, Philip - Portnoy's Complaint
  211. Rowling, J.K. - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  212. Rushdie, Salman - The Satanic Verses
  213. Russo, Richard - Empire Falls
  214. Sachar, Louis - Holes
  215. Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
  216. Schlosser, Eric - Fast Food Nation
  217. Scott, Walter - Ivanhoe
  218. Sedaris, David - Me Talk Pretty One Day
  219. Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
  220. Shakur, Tupac - The Rose That Grew From Concrete
  221. Shaw, Bernard - Pygmalion
  222. Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
  223. Shirer, William - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
  224. Shute, Nevil - On the Beach
  225. Simmons, Dan - Hyperion
  226. Sinclair, Upton - The Jungle
  227. Spark, Muriel - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
  228. Spiegelman, Art - Maus
  229. Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
  230. Stephenson, Neal - Quicksilver
  231. Stevenson, Robert Louis - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  232. Stoker, Bram - Dracula
  233. Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
  234. Styron, William - Sophie's Choice
  235. Sundman, John F.X. - Acts of the Apostles
  236. Svevo, Italo - Confessions of Zeno
  237. Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
  238. Takami, Koushun - Battle Royale
  239. Tan, Amy - The Joy Luck Club
  240. Tartt, Donna - The Secret History
  241. Thomas, Dylan - The Collected Poems
  242. Thompson, Craig - Blankets
  243. Thompson, Hunter S. - Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72
  244. Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
  245. Tocqueville, Alexis de - Democracy in America
  246. Tolkien, J.R.R. - The Lord of the Rings
  247. Tolstoy, Leo - Anna Karenina
  248. Toole, John Kennedy - A Confederacy of Dunces
  249. Trumbo, Dalton - Johnny Got His Gun
  250. Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  251. Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher - A Midwife's Tale
  252. Updike, John - Rabbit, Run
  253. Vergil - The Aeneid
  254. Vinge, Vernor - A Deepness in the Sky
  255. Voltaire - Candide
  256. Vonnegut, Kurt - Slaughterhouse Five
  257. Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
  258. Wallace, David Foster - Infinite Jest
  259. Warren, Robert Penn - All The King's Men
  260. Watterson, Bill - The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
  261. Waugh, Evelyn - Brideshead Revisited
  262. Webb, Mary - Precious Bane
  263. Wells, H.G. - The War of the Worlds
  264. Welsh, Irvine - Trainspotting
  265. Wharton, Edith - The Age of Innocence
  266. White, E.B. - Charlotte's Web
  267. White, T.H. - The Once and Future King
  268. Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
  269. Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
  270. Wilder, Thornton - The Bridge of San Luis Rey
  271. Williams, Tennessee - A Streetcar Named Desire
  272. Wolff, Tobias - This Boy's Life
  273. Wolfe, Tom - The Right Stuff
  274. Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
  275. Wordsworth, William - The Major Works
  276. Wright, Richard - Native Son
  277. Yeats, William Butler - The Collected Works, Volume I
  278. Zinn, Howard - A People's History of the United States
Hmmm I appear to have a deep divide I have read a number traditional classical literature and tbh most of them I would read again, and contemporary literature.  I also am wary of so called contemporary literature (with a capital L) they just don't resonate with me (well most of them anyway).  I read a lot of historical fiction.  I also have a tendency to read the back of the book and if it doesn't grab me I don't buy it.  I'm not a big believer in if someone says its awesome I should read it (although The Time Traveller's Wife was indeed rocking).  

I need to work on my own list I think.

S.  

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