Wednesday, March 07, 2007

100 BOOKS

As an avid book junkie, I found this list intriguing...
It's a list 0f 100 books. I picked it up over at Josi Kilpack's blog.

Directions are thus: Copy the whole list to YOUR blog.
* Bold the ones you’ve read
* Italicize the ones you want to read
* Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in
* Highlight those you haven't heard of.
**Put a couple of astericks by the ones you recommend.

And of course - because I am a blabbermouth (or is it blabber finger when typing?) I will add a few vagrant comments along the way:

So to begin....
1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown) (I enjoyed this tremdendously but didn't take it all that seriously. Come on, it's a NOVEL.)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) **
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
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)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) **
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)** I LOVED this book. Movie was pretty good, but the book absolutely captivated me.
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)
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)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) (I always wanted one of those translater fish you could put in your ear so you could understand any language..way cool!)
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) (this is on my bookshelf, just haven't read it yet.)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of 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) *** LOVED IT~
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 (God, with some help from his friends)**
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) (too grim for my tastes.)
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 (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
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) ** POWERFUL!
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 (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
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)
76. The Summer Tree(Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving) (This may be the ONLY Irving book I haven't read)
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)**( Sad tale, but lovely prose.)
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) I don't care about the great language - I HATED this book. Too mean.
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)(another on my shelf waiting)
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) (Book was MUCH better than the movie.)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

I must add I truly have no interest in any of the Harry Potter books... I started the first one and just couldn't get into it. I wanted to read them to be able to talk about 'em with my grandkids, but I just couldn't go there. The Tolkein trilogy is an old favorite from my high school days, and I've been back through them once or twice as an adult. But ya either like that fantasy world of middle earth or you don't. I used to want to be Goldberry...married to Tom Bombadil. Seemed like a life I could go for...

There are gobs of books that for one reason or another did not make this list that I wish had...but still, it was fun to go through and remember some tales I've read and compare notes with others. How about you?

8 comments:

Shane Murphy said...

Of those you haven't heard of, I've read 100 Years of Solitude by Marquez and The Life of Pi by Martel. I've also read something by Saramago, but not Blindness. All three of these are part of the magical realism genre, it seems to be a pattern? The genre is one of my favorites, and Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie is my favorite book of the genre. The Life of Pi is the easiest read of those you've listed, but I'd skip it and go for one of the other three (but not 100 Years of Solitude until you've read other things from the genre or even other things from Marquez).

Mimi said...

Oh my goodness - I have to say, get thee to a bookstore and read "The Kite Runner". It's beautiful.


I should come back and do this.

Mimi said...

Ok, I'm back. This is such a wonderful list, so many of my favorites are on it. It's hard to complile a list that isn't heavy handed or escoteric.

I have to admit, though, I'm a Tolkein flunky - I never made it through the first one, much less the entire Ring Trilogy. But, I have read multiple times "The Hobbit"

Belladonna said...

This afternoon I checked out "The Secret Life of Bees" from the library. I also just started a new book on tape - Sula by Toni Morrison. After these two I may sample some of those Shane mentoned and then pick up Kite Runner on Mimi's suggestion. Yeah, it's kind of fun to compare notes with what others have read and see what they liked or didn't.

Millie said...

I saw this list too and have put it on my desktop so I can be more "well-read". :) Some of my favorite books were on it! Yay!

Josi said...

Loved your notes--especially the bible one. I need to find out what the booklist is for--is it the best selling 100 books of all time or what? I'm definately going to read Handmaid's tale per your reccomendtion.

Christopher Newton said...

I don't quite get it. Kind of a random choice. Seems like one could make dozens of lists like these. They're all novels I guess.
Did some Eminent Authority make up the list? Did the listmaker have any criteria or was he just thinking, "oh yeah, that's a good one. I'll put that in."
He (or she) put in Crime and Punishment, but not Brothers Karamazov, arguably the greater book. Why? What about Marcel Proust? Is he out of fashion now? The Clan of the Cave Bear for gosh sakes? That's a bathtub book, so this isn't meant to be a list of great books. Just what is it? Inquiring pigs want to know.

Belladonna said...

Hey Ponder Pig, nice of you to drop by. Ya know, for the life of me I don't see any single criteria for the gathering of this list. I don't much care. I've just enjoyed being reminded of some fine reads from the past that I hadn't thought of for a while and getting prodded to pick up some new titles. It has been particularly fun for me to share this list with some other folk and here their impressions. It fits for me.

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