Seen at Raising Weg and APL: Proof that I am old and boring.
Evidently this is a list from Library Thing - a list of the top 106 books that people have on their shelves but have not actually read. Evidently these are the books that people think they "should" read, but don't.....because the books are really only appealing for those who are stuffy and boring. like me.
I have never seen "Dances with the Stars" or "The Bachelor." I don't watch "American Idol" or "Survivor" or "Swap My Wife" or "Pimp My Ride." (Don't get me wrong - I like trashy TV. Huge fan. Just not the reality version. )
Sadly, this is pretty much a list of my favorite books in the world. There were all sorts of fancy meme rules - something to bold, something to underline, something to italicize. But I just bolded. I can't figure out how to remove the underlines or the italics - just ignore those.
Who knows if this is even real. But after spending a week at a conference with cool, hip, co-workers who were discussing the various contestants of various reality shows - and not being able to contribute a SINGLE word - this is refreshing.
So, I'm old and boring. But I'm well-read in the field. (and obviously have a liberal-arts education...if I'd studied something real like math or science, there is no way I'd have had time to read all this fiction!)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina (I made my book club read this.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (another bookclub book)
Crime and Punishment (college)
Wuthering Heights (loved it.)
Catch-22 (Brilliant)
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote (hated it.)
The Odyssey (college)
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
War and Peace (college)
Madame Bovary (I made my bookclub read this too)
A Tale of Two Cities (high school)
Jane Eyre (high school)
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma (love it. read it many times.)
The Illiad (college)
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera (loved it. read it twice.)
The Blind Assassin
Pride and Prejudice (loved it)
The Historian: A Novel
The Canterbury Tales (college)
The Kite Runner (disturbing, but very good)
Great Expectations (high school)
Life of Pi (OK)
The Time Traveler's Wife (OK)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (I have this in my pile - haven't started yet)
Atlas Shrugged (college)
Foucault's Pendulum
Dracula
The Grapes of Wrath (one of my favorite books)
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (clever)
Mrs. Dalloway (liked it)
Sense and Sensibility (loved it...seeing a theme here?)
Middlemarch (I loved everything George Eliot ever wrote.)
Reading Lolita in Tehran (Also have this in my pile, but haven't started)
The Count of Monte Cristo (college)
The Sound and The Fury (college)
Memoirs of a Geisha (OK)
Brave New World (high school)
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex (fascinating)
The Poisonwood Bible (good, bookclub book)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dune (not my cup of tea)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (high school)
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver's Travels (high school)
The Three Musketeers (high school)
The Inferno (college)
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Fountainhead (liked it at the time)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (loved it)
Oliver Twist (high school)
To the Lighthouse
A Clockwork Orange (brilliant)
Robinson Crusoe (OK)
Persuasion (loved it)
The Scarlet Letter (loved it)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (OK)
The Once and Future King
Anansi Boys
Atonement (loved it)
The God of Small Things (loved it)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (book club book)
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners (loved it)
Oryx and Crake
Angela's Ashes (good)
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (college)
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley's Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces (OK)
Les Misérables (college)
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince (college)
Watership Down (high school)
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (college)
The Aenied (college)
A Farewell to Arms (college)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island (high school)
David Copperfield (high school)
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief (reading now!)
The history of Tom Jones
The Road
Tender is the Night (love anything by him)
The War of the Worlds
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3 comments:
Again, how the heck are we friends? LOL! American Idol, Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, Top Chef, So You Think You Can Dance - all on my Tivo Season pass!
(Even I just say no to Wife Swap, The Bachelor and Pimp My Ride.)
I've actually read a good number of the book you have in bold - a product of my GT/AP education. I just can't remember much about the plots in my still-nursing-at-night state of exhaustion!
There is a reason we are friends! I pretty much don't watch TV at all anymore (can't say the same for my kids unfortunately), but I LOVE to read. There are lots of my favorites on here:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - fascinating book. LOVED IT.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights - beautiful but depressing
Jane Eyre - only recently read it, now recommend it to everyone
The Silmarillion - I've read it at least twice
Love in the Time of Cholera
Pride and Prejudice - what can you say about this fabulous book that hasn't been said?
Life of Pi - very, very weird. But I enjoyed it.
The Time Traveler's Wife - loved it - but time travel is my favorite genre
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
Wicked - read this before I'd ever heard if it. I've read it twice now plus the sequel (which wasn't as good)
Dune - read all 6 books mulitple times
The Corrections - did NOT like this book
Atonement
Watership Down - always kind of scary to me
I am shocked and appalled that The Lord of the Rings is not on here.
Andrea
well, guess I'm old too. Reality shows are boring, just like *reality* is. Hello, TV networks? I watch TV to escape?? Well, maybe not, considering I mostly watch science and history shows ...
but I digress.
Bridgett & I did a version this back in October. I'm impressed with how much you two read. I read a lot too, but I guess not as high quality stuff.
I didn't finish my Liberal Arts degree, and architecture school ... well, my engineer friends felt sorry for me, if that tells you anything. But many of the things you noted as reading in college, I read in high school.
here's mine:
http://tinyurl.com/6ln4ug
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