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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

How many have you read?

Now for an entirely unrelated to cooking post:

I LOVE to read.  Almost as much as I love cooking. (I will take a moment to state that I don't particularly care for the Harry Potter or the Twilights)  When I was in the fourth grade, I started working my way through my parents bookshelves, much to the consternation/wonder of my teacher, Dr. Tensmeyer.  (He was worried I was reading inappropriate material for my age.)  I lucked out when I found another guy who loved to read as much as I do.  As a matter of fact, one of the first non-work related conversations that S and I had was me grilling him about his bookshelf.  Bookshelves are serious business to me, and all I'll say about his bookshelf is that is continues to make me happy to this day.  

There's a BBC Book list Meme-internety thing going around with a list of 100 books, and from what I understand, the BBC says that on average, people have only read 6 of the books on the list.  I've seen a couple of friends post this on the facebook, and a few of the blogs I follow have put this up, so I figured what the hell, I'll have a go at it too. 

Titles in bold are books I've read.  Titles in italics are books I've started, but not finished. 

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - read some, but not others...
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
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 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - This is what I'm currently reading
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM 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
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 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
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 (one day I will tackle this one)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS 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 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB 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 


So, I've read 53 of the books on the list, read 4 of the books partially, and have at least 10 more of the books on the list on my bookshelf currently.  Neat!

6 comments:

  1. I counted 12 on the list that I remember being required reading in school. I guess most people skip a lot of assigned reading? Maybe Richland has more ambitious than average schools? Both? Interesting.

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  2. I think that Hanford was more ambitious then the other schools - I remember talking with people who went to other schools in the TC (Kamaiakin had banned Catcher in the Rye when we were in school still), and schools in the Seattle area and they didn't have the required reading that we did.

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  3. =) more than 50% is great! I started counting my total and then got distracted, but I know that I was past 6. I didn't know Sam was an avid reader too, that is awesome. On a separate note the book I am reading you might actually like. It is called the Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. If you are ever low on your reading list you should pick it up.

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  4. Also, I still think I was the only person Mrs. Belgard ever had that absolutely hated A Prayer for Owen Meany. I still won't touch anything John Irving has written.

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  5. Ones I have read to date;

    2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
    4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
    5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
    8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
    9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
    10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
    16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
    22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
    25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
    30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
    33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
    36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
    42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
    49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
    52 Dune - Frank Herbert
    58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
    73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
    81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
    83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
    87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
    91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

    Next on my to-do is the Count of Monte Cristo

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  6. I actually also loathed A Prayer for Owen Meany, though I've since read The World According To Garp. Garp was better but pretty graphic.

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