So many kids, I don't know what to do.



Friday, April 30, 2010

To All the Books I've Loved Before

I saw this on a website the other day. I am sorry I forgot which one. As today is Follow Me Friday I figured this would be a good way for my readers and I to get to know each other.
The books I have read completely have are purple. If I tried to read them and failed they are orange. I have added some notes beccause...well because I talk too much. It's not a secret, you were bound to find out soon enough.
On the original blog I read it said having read over seven or more was above average. I do not know above average what? Smartypants? Nerd? Bookworm?

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - One of my all time favorites. Scout was on the short list of possible names for my youngest daughter.
6. The Bible - Epic Fail. My MIL got me a "read in a year" Bible and for two years I have aborted the read. Terrible. My failure here should be an entirely separate post.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - As punishment from God (for not reading the Bible?) I had to teach this book to six classes of freshman each year for four years. I do not like the book. I would go so far as to say I do not care for Dickens at all.
11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - I have read many of them. Not ALL of them. Shees.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - I just checked this out from the library.
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - I may have as a child. Not certain.
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - Can't remember now why I gave up.
39.Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell - Not a fave. Charlotte's Web is the only talking pig book I care to read. Thank you.
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - I love this book, and most of his other novels.
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
47. Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert (TBR)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac - I had to read this for a college history class. I was NOT a fan of this either. Seemed like too much whining to me at the time.
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (TBR)
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden -Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Inferno-Dante - Isn't this is Italian or something? I can't read Italian. No fair.
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - A.S. Byatt

81.A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madam Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down -Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I don't know who compiled this list. It seems broad enough. I am noticing an absence of Vonnegut and Stephen King (who I have barely read, my mother didn't allow me to in high school.) Where is Laura Ingalls Wilder? Ernest Hemingway? Jack London? Mark Twain? Ok. I have to stop. STOP.

I see several on here I should read. I will put them on my own personal summer reading list. Like Little Women and Emma. I'll pick a couple more later before summer comes. Plus I am joining a Summer Reading Challenge from another blog. I am trying to get the links and the button to work, so more on that soon.

What about you? How many have you read on this list? Do you have a favorite? Unfavorite? Which ones might you be inspired to read? Which important books/authors do you think have been left off?

13 comments:

  1. Wow, I have read ALMOST ALL of the books on that list. I guess that makes me a super duper annoying smarty pants. Heh.

    I found you through FF. Happy Friday!

    ~Tara/waterwaif
    http://waterwaif.blogspot.com

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  2. Thanks for stopping by my blog! I am a teacher also! I teach Language Arts (middle school). I have read quite a few books on the list. Currently, I am reading "American Wife." I just started it yesterday, so don't know that much about it yet.

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  3. I have read about 10-12 from this book list. I wonder how it was created - I wonder why some of the books made this list. I have a few of the books on the TBR list (or sitting on my bookshelves to read).

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  4. I have read a few of those books...I wish I had more time to read. Kids, dinner, house work...How do you find the time?

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  5. Thanks for coming by my blog! I just became a follower of yours. FIVE kids?!? I think I could learn a thing or two from you!! :)

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  6. Just found you through the Book Blogger Hop. Fun blog - can't wait to read more!

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  7. WOW! What a list...I have to say I have read very few because as a junior high reading teacher...I usually have to read young adult books to keep up with my students! LOL

    Thanks for stopping by my blog! I am now a new follower!!! Have a fabulous weekend!

    Oh...and I love the name of your blog...too cute!!!

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  8. Hi! Found you via the FF!
    I love to read, but have to admit I haven't hit alot of the books on that list
    http://carriesrambles-carrie.blogspot.com

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  9. Hi! Thanks for following Mrs. Baja's Cozy Book Nook-- Alway great to meet another reader! I've read about 42 of these-- but lists are so subjective.

    I'm following you as well-- even if you thought I was an old woman! heehee-- I found that note in an old book and was inspired to start a bookblog. My handwriting is atrocious.

    btw, I'm an SLP-- lots of educators using blogging as a creative outlet-- I love it!

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  10. that is a super list! i love that you have vikram seth on there! i am now following your blog!

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  11. I've seen lists like this before, all with different books on them. I still find it fun to compare what I've read, though! :-)

    I decided to post this, too:
    http://proudbooknerd.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-many-have-you-read.html

    Oh, and Dante's Inferno was originally written in Italian but has been translated! ;-)

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  12. Wow, you just sparked something in my head, Scout is now on my shortlist for favourite names :) and i hope you like The Time Traveler's wife, I thought it was pretty good. thanks for stopping by my blog!

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  13. Hey, Thanks for all the comments. Just to answer a few questions. I did not come up with this list. I just copied it. Also I read alot of these books while I was getting my English degree....so I didn't have to worry about who wasn't getting fed, or who was juggling knives. I would say the last ones I read from here were The Lovely Bones, or maybe The Kite Runner. I hope to read more good books this summer. In fact I joined a book challenge.

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