A book list!
2 Mar 2007 01:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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treacle_well
The Guardian's Top 100 Books You Can't Live Without
Disclaimer: I think "top X books" lists are pretty much bullshit, and Guardian ones especially so, and this one is no exception.
The ones I've read are in bold. The ones I started and didn't finish are in italic. I welcome recommendations and dis-recommendations of ones I haven't read.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (An all-time favorite)
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (Another all-time favorite)
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I read the beginning and end but skipped most of the middle.)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (OK, I must be missing something, but I read this recently and couldn't stand it. I'm like, "If I wanted to read all about people abusing each other, I could go read LiveJournal.")
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (What's this doing here? Is it really so fabulous?)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the d'Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy (No, but I did listen to Return of the Native, if only because it's read by Alan Rickman.)
13 Catch-22 – Joseph Heller (I really didn't like this. That seems to surprise most people.)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – William Shakespeare (I've read some of the plays and sonnets; I'm weakest in the historical plays.)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks (Never heard of it.)
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (Didn't like it at all.)
19 The Time Traveler's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger (Never heard of it.)
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 (I hated this, but I recently heard that a new and much better translation is available.)
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 (My favorite Dickens out of the ones I've read)
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen (My second-favorite Austen)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (Umm...why is this in here twice?)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini (Really?)
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis de Bernières (Never heard of it.)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (I confess to having enjoyed it up until the last 50 pages or so, but it so doesn't belong on a list of books you can't live without.)
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
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 (Ugh.)
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (I think this would have worked better as a rock opera than as a book. Hmm....)
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan (Never heard of it.)
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel (Never heard of it.)
52 Dune – Frank Herbert (I like it quite a bit, but it's another odd addition to the list of 100 essential books)
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen (My favorite Austen. And not just because Alan Rickman has a part in the movie.)
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 (I'm a gushing fangirl of this book)
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson (Cute, but...)
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
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 Alborn
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 (Very influential)
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 (because it's not, you know, part of the complete works?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
treacle_well The Guardian's Top 100 Books You Can't Live Without
Disclaimer: I think "top X books" lists are pretty much bullshit, and Guardian ones especially so, and this one is no exception.
The ones I've read are in bold. The ones I started and didn't finish are in italic. I welcome recommendations and dis-recommendations of ones I haven't read.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (An all-time favorite)
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (Another all-time favorite)
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I read the beginning and end but skipped most of the middle.)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (OK, I must be missing something, but I read this recently and couldn't stand it. I'm like, "If I wanted to read all about people abusing each other, I could go read LiveJournal.")
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (What's this doing here? Is it really so fabulous?)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the d'Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy (No, but I did listen to Return of the Native, if only because it's read by Alan Rickman.)
13 Catch-22 – Joseph Heller (I really didn't like this. That seems to surprise most people.)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – William Shakespeare (I've read some of the plays and sonnets; I'm weakest in the historical plays.)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks (Never heard of it.)
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (Didn't like it at all.)
19 The Time Traveler's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger (Never heard of it.)
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 (I hated this, but I recently heard that a new and much better translation is available.)
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 (My favorite Dickens out of the ones I've read)
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen (My second-favorite Austen)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (Umm...why is this in here twice?)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini (Really?)
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis de Bernières (Never heard of it.)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (I confess to having enjoyed it up until the last 50 pages or so, but it so doesn't belong on a list of books you can't live without.)
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
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 (Ugh.)
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (I think this would have worked better as a rock opera than as a book. Hmm....)
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan (Never heard of it.)
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel (Never heard of it.)
52 Dune – Frank Herbert (I like it quite a bit, but it's another odd addition to the list of 100 essential books)
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen (My favorite Austen. And not just because Alan Rickman has a part in the movie.)
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 (I'm a gushing fangirl of this book)
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson (Cute, but...)
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
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 Alborn
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 (Very influential)
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 (because it's not, you know, part of the complete works?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
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no subject
Date: 3 Mar 2007 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 Mar 2007 01:11 am (UTC)Lord of the Rings
Jane Eyre
Complete Works of Shakespeare
The Hobbit
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (but not the book, the radio episodes)
Alice in Wonderland
Dune
Sense and Sensibility
Moby Dick
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Little Prince
no subject
Date: 4 Mar 2007 03:45 pm (UTC)