A list!

I do love a good list… almost as much as I love a good book, or a satisfying knitting pattern, or a decent CD (or a quiet grade 7 class – it was one of those days). Today I found a list at one of the knitting blogs I read: it’s called “And she knits, too!” and can be found here: http://acunningplan.typepad.com/ This is a meme, of sorts, in which I am taking it upon myself to tell you, my faithful readership, just how many of these books I have read. Ready? Go.

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The Big Read (http://www.neabigread.org/) said that, on average, adults have only read six books on this list. So ... copy this list, remove my yeses and nos, and add your comments (favourable or otherwise) about the ones you have read. Don't forget to include a total.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen – nope. Don’t like Jane Austen. So sue me already.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – YES, when I was young and liked fantasy books.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte – YES.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – YES.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee – YES, but years ago, I only faintly remember it.
6 The Bible –. YES I have read this one, and I must say that it was a large part of my decision to become (and remain) an atheist.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte – No.
8 1984 - George Orwell - YES
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman – YES, fabulous books, and also much hated by the Catholic school system, and therefore worth reading for that reason alone.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens – No, I’m so sorry, but I can’t abide Dickens.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott – Oh, yes. Loved all of her books.
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy – Yes – very good
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller – Yes
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – well, not the COMPLETE works, but a fair few.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier – No, but I’d like to.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien – YES, great book.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks – Nope.
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger – Yes, but back in high school (I think) when I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger – Yes and I LOVE this book.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot- Nope.
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell – YES, during a long hot summer in junior high when I had no friends to talk to so I read everything I could find on the shelves in my parents’ basement.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald – Nope.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens- Enough with the Dickens, already.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy – Yes, oddly enough.
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams – Yep. Funny.


26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh – No.
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Most of it. I keep it on my bookshelf, though, because it makes me look smart.
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll – Yes. Did you know that Carroll was an early photographer?
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame – Don’t think so…
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy – YES, heartbreaking and genius.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens – Ahem. No.
33 The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis – Absolutely. Again and again. (Although at this point I could totally do without the Christian subtext.)
34 Emma - Jane Austen – Nope.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen – And don’t plan too, either.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – Yes, but why isn’t this with the Chronicles of Narnia above?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini – Yes.
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres- No.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Yes, it was highly overrated.
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – Yep. Charming.
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell – Yes, but not so charming.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown – Two days of my time that I will NEVER get back.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Yes.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - Yes
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins – Nope.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery – Over and over and over again.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy – No, which is odd, because I had a whole Hardy phase a few years ago.
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood – Genius. Not enough Canadians on this list, though.
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding – Yep. Taught it last year, too.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan – Brilliant.


51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel – Interesting. I didn’t like it, really, but it has lived on in my mind, so something must be right about it.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert- Yes.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons – No.
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen – Make it stop!
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth – Yes. (During a time of great heartbreak.)
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon – Nope. Good title, though.
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens – NOOOOOOOOO!
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley – Yes.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon – Yes.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Yes.
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck – Yes
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - Yes
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt – No – do you think that’s really the author’s last name?
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold – Yes.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas – No.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - Yes
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy – Yes.
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding - Yes
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - No
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - No
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens – NO NO NO
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - No
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett – YES!
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson – No – Bryson is very funny, though.
75 Ulysses - James Joyce – Sadly, yes. Did I understand it? No.


76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath – Bits of it. I’m going to say no, though.
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - Nope
78 Germinal - Emile Zola - No
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - No
80 Possession - AS Byatt- Yes
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens – Yes, shockingly enough. An exception to the “No Dickens” rule.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell – No.
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker – Yes – brilliant.
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - Yes
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - Yes
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - Yes
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White - Yes
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom – No. I read “Tuesdays with Morrie” or whatever it’s called, though. Not bad.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Yes
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton – No
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - Yes
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupe – No
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - No
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - No
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - No
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute – No, but I liked “On the Beach”
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - Yes
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare – Yes
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - Yes
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - Yes


So there - that’s 60 “yes” books. Too bad they didn’t count the fabulous Canadian authors, too bad women aren’t more represented, too bad about all the Austen and the Dickens. Blech.

Still, I guess I can hold my own in the book-reading world.