Thursday, April 05, 2007

A Good Read?

This meme I've borrowed from El Capitan and Ronni. I've made my own variation in that I'm not just bold-facing the ones I've read but highlighting in red the ones I own and haven't read (yet). It's a funny old list. I don't think Mr Bolan will think much of it.


1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
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: The Return of the King (J. R. R. Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (J. R. R. Tolkien)

7. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (J. R. R. 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 (J. K. Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J. K. Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (J. K. Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J. K. Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)
21. The Hobbit (J. R. R. Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. The Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)
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. The 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)
55. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J. K. Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Leo 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 (Victor Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’s Diary (Helen Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Márquez)
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 (John 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 (Michael Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (William 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)

I didn't list any additional books, as my friends from Texas did, but I have read huge amounts of Stephen King, John Irving, du Maurier and all of the Narnia books plus a few other CS Lewis including his SF trilogy.

I've also read almost everything Steinbeck published (not Travels With Charley), a fair bit of Fitzgerald, loads of Dickens and all but a couple of Kingsolver.

Some I've started and not finished - the Bible, Ulysses, LOTR, War & Peace to name the most notable.

Some of the books that I have read were diabolical wastes of time. Dishonourable mentions to Rowling, Fielding, Brown and Archer.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think Fielding deserves a dishonourable mention. Bridgit Jones was actually quite funny unlike most of the imitators who came after her.

Strange reading list - half of it quite good and the other half rubbish. I'd read about 50 of them; some from each pile but thankfully nothing ever by Brown or Archer.

(See you over the weekend.)

Nelly said...

One Brown, one Archer is all I ever needed to read to warn me that I should never go there again.

The only possible circumstances where I could imagine returning to them would be a very rainy night in some European B&B where it was the only English language book available.

Still don't agree with you about Bridget. It was a one-joke book.

Unknown said...

I am sufficiently embarrassed by how few of those books I've read that I refuse to steal this meme.

Instead, I'm going to sit down and quietly read a Tom Clancy.

Mudflapgypsy said...

I've read 19 off this list Nelly.

Mrs M has read quite a bit more I would think, I recognise many titles from our shelves.

Nelly said...

As Gan points out it is an odd sort of list - I'm not certain but I'd say a few of those books are out of print. There were also quite a few I'd never hard of.

If it's any further consolation Ed I think the list might have been slanted towards baby boomers and USian ones at that.

Anonymous said...

Hi Nell, I'm a yank and I think you may have something when you say that list may be slanted to USian boomers. I resemble that remark! Yeah, I have read a preponderance of those books and own many of them. (But please don't ask me what is in them, lol). I also love Steinbeck and you should read 'Travels with Charlie.' It is a charming little book.

Anonymous said...

hi nelly,
think i've probably read bout the same ones as you pretty much. reccommend any particulary good john irving, i read I'll Find You and loved it! got a comment deleted from bbc news fortnight ago for stating that harryP books are for children...heaven forbid it might true!

mikey boys x

Bank Of Doge said...

Nelly,

you should have a go at Life of Pi, saying as you've gone to the bother of owning it, its bloody brilliant so it is.

Couldn't possibly comment on any of the others tho, they're all girls books.