Lists, Lists, and More Lists

I'm a sucker for lists and I found this one at A Guy's Moleskine Notebook:



Read/Want to Read/Don’t Care/Never Heard of It

1. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell *****
2. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald *****
3. The Grapes Of Wrath John Steinbeck (Tried to read, no longer interested)
4. The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger (too long ago to rate--suspect it would get a lower rating now.
5. Catch-22 Joseph Heller (Tried, may try again after some others)
6. One Hundred Years Of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez *****
7. Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell ****
8. Ulysses James Joyce*********************
9. On The Road Jack Kerouac (Tried, read through half, decided I didn't care)
10. The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien*****
11. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
12. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen****
13. Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë****
14. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis****
15. Great Expectations Charles Dickens*****
16. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy**** (really dull history lectures aside, this is a great book)
17. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov Tried, always severely repulsed by the subject matter whether or not apologia--On this issue, you may want to look at this blog entry from Wuthering Expectations.
18. Animal Farm George Orwell ****
19. Crime And Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky****
20. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy****
21. Lord Of The Flies William Golding*****
22. Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh*****
23. Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
24. Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez****
25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams****
26. Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë*****
27. The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien****
28. To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf*****
29. Middlemarch George Eliot Have started many times, but something (usually shorter) intervenes
30. Rebecca Daphne du Maurier Started several times, but same problem as above
31. Dune Frank Herbert*****
32. Brave New World Aldous Huxley*****
33. A Prayer For Owen Meany John Irving Lost interest in this writer after meeting him in person
34. Watership Down Richard Adams
35. The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner*************
36. Little Women Louisa May Alcott
37. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison****
38. Anne Of Green Gables LM Montgomery*****
39. Emma Jane Austen
40. Memoirs Of A Geisha Arthur Golden***
41. Beloved Toni Morrison--Tried twice, failed, haven't recovered the spirit to try again
42. Of Mice And Men John Steinbeck***
43. The Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad*****
44. Les Miserables Victor Hugo
45. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
46. The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown* --Writing execrable, puzzle--fun but transparent
47. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
48. Winnie the Pooh A.A. Milne
49. Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
50. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis de Bernieres *
51. Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut****
52. Life of Pi Yann Martel*****
53. A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess*****
54. The Count Of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas*****
55. A Passage to India E.M. Forster*****
56. Moby Dick Herman Melville--Tried before I was ready, I'm wondering if I'm ready again
57. A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
58. The Stand Stephen King Version 1 ****, Uncut **--A powerful argument for sensible editors
59. Possession A.S. Byatt--Have Tried twice
60. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert--Tried dozens of times
61. A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens****
62. The Trial Franz Kafka*****
63. I, Claudius Robert Graves****
64. The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood**
65. The Secret History Donna Tartt
66. His Dark Materials Philip Pullman*
67. The Harry Potter Series J.K. Rowling***
68. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky--Have tried several times, managed half-way once
69. Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes--tried several times
70. Sons and Lovers D.H. Lawrence (Don't recall enough to rate)
71. The Pillars Of The Earth Ken Follett***
72. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce******
73. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain****
74. The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini****
75. An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
76. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll*********
77. Bleak House Charles Dickens (Actually about 1/2 way through)
78. The Time Traveller’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger***
79. A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry*********
80. The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemmingway*****
81. Nostromo Joseph Conrad
82. Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
83. The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing
84. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
85. The Stranger Albert Camus****
86. Native Son Richard Wright*****
87. Gravity’s Rainbow Thomas Pynchon (Tried several times)
88. The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver*** (quite good up to the political diatribe in the third section)
89. Perfume Patrick Süskind**
90. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
91. David Copperfield Charles Dickens*****
92. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl*****
93. Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov (Tried several times)
94. Persuasion Jane Austen
95. Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand
96. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass (Tried several times--new translation, additional opportunity)
97. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
98. Atonement Ian McEwan
99. Light in August William Faulkner*****
100. The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett

I even appropriated Mr. Moleskine's rating system.

Very few I didn't take to--some whose attraction I fail to understand (anything by Vladimir Nabokov, for instance, and some that I love beyond reason.)

Comments

  1. I'm largely in line with your list - I strongly recommend Vanity Fair - it finally made it to the top of my list a couple of years back and I was completely bowled over by it.

    Catch 22 - it's one of those that has to have its time, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. But under no circumstances bother with the so called sequel, "Closing Time" - one of my most hated books.

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  2. Dear Randy,

    I may actually have made it through Vanity Fair, but I don't recall enough of it to count it as read. That means I read it when I wasn't ready for it.

    Catch 22 I've tried several times and had varying degrees of success with it. Not interested enough right now to try again, but that changes with time--so "given but world enough and time" its time will return again.

    shalom,

    Steven

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