LibraryThing Meme

[andraste]

Apparently I am in a memeish mood this week. Slightly altering the syntax.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, italicise the ones you own but haven't read, underline the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion - I love the bits in the start where the universe is being created, and also the bits with the Istari. It's all the damn elves in the middle that I can't finish.
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey - I honestly cannot remember if I've ever read the original or just lots and lots and lots of adaptations.
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad - I have never yet got around to reading the whole thing through cover to cover.
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - we did bits of this in Middle English. I have never read the whole thing, though.
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (does in count double 'cause I read it in the original language?)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles (I am NEVER EVER reading any Thomas Hardy EVER AGAIN. We had to do The Mayor of Casterbridge for school and I loathed it.)
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince *loves Machiavelli liek whoah*
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

So: read twenty-five, started but didn't finish two (one of which is the highly episodic Canterbury Tales) and own-but-have-not-read three. That leaves about seventy I have had no contact with outside BBC costume drama. For increased meme interactivity: feel free to tell me which of these I should read.

Comments

[charliequinn.livejournal.com]

I can't believe Wicked and Angels & Demons are on that list.

They are NOT classics.

[andraste]

Well, all their presence means is that lots of people have them sitting around the house unread. The list seems to be a blend of literary classics and 'hot' books from the last five or ten years.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

I love Northanger Abbey because it's all the things an Austen novel usually is and a horror parody too. I'm kind of sad that they have never filmed it, though I understand why - the point of much of the novel is the difference between what the heroine thinks is going on and what is actually going on.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and The Time-Traveler's Wife both read as very good fanfic (i.e. genre stuff that focuses more on characterisation than plot, particularly the second book).

The Name of the Rose is really amusing in a sometimes boring way - it's hard to explain, but it's rather verbose and learned while at the same time Umberto Eco has an alert mind and a sense of humour I just love.

White Teeth is mostly pretty good and occasionally brilliant, including one of my favourite humourous scenes about a suicide attempt ever. (Yes, I actually have a list of my favourite humourous scenes about suicide attempts.)

[wychwood]

(I am NEVER EVER reading any Thomas Hardy EVER AGAIN. We had to do The Mayor of Casterbridge for school and I loathed it.)

Augh, you are SO RIGHT. I HATE AND DETEST THOMAS HARDY AND ALL HIS WORKS OF FICTION (though, oddly, some of his poetry is ok). And of all of his writing, I hate Tess the most, above all things.

Things I think you might enjoy:
Guns, Germs, and Steel / Collapse - these are really good books, and Diamond does a great job of looking at really large-scale phenomena without distorting too much. I'd rec G,G&S first and if you loved it then try Collapse (although there's a chapter in Collapse specifically about Australia, which might be worth reading even if you weren't overwhelmed by G,G&S)
Mansfield Park - this is actually my favourite Austen, though I admit I'm weird.
Anansi Boys - it's American Gods universe, but vastly funnier. I'd definitely recommend that one.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - this was an awful lot of fun, I think you'd enjoy it
Cloud Atlas - this was more *interesting* than fun, but I did think it was a good book
Kavalier & Clay - I'm quite surprised you haven't read this one! It's mainstream, but it's all about the early comics world. Kavalier and Clay aren't quite Shuster and Siegel, but... I'd recommend this one to superhero-comic-fans, in general.

[kakodaimon.livejournal.com]

I second the Kavalier & Clay recommendation! You would really love it for the following reasons:

- comics
- the foreshadowing is done so well that the reader feels very smart for noticing what's going on ahead of schedule
- wonderfully messed-up relationships

The only problem is that Michael Chabon can only seem to muster up really one well-developed, interesting female character per novel. And that one is great, but... others would be nice.

[andraste]

I love Northanger Abbey because it's all the things an Austen novel usually is and a horror parody too. I'm kind of sad that they have never filmed it, though I understand why - the point of much of the novel is the difference between what the heroine thinks is going on and what is actually going on.

It's one of the three Austens I haven't read (the others are Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility) because I don't want to run out of her books too quickly. Mind you, it's been about five years since I read Persausion for the first time, so I guess I'm due for another one.

The Name of the Rose is really amusing in a sometimes boring way - it's hard to explain, but it's rather verbose and learned while at the same time Umberto Eco has an alert mind and a sense of humour I just love.

Oddly enough, I read quite a lot of Eco's non-fiction when I was at university, but I never got around to any of his fiction. It's certainly on my list of things to track down, and given that I've got a background in Medieval history anyway, the verbosity may be less of an issue for me *g*.

White Teeth is mostly pretty good and occasionally brilliant, including one of my favourite humourous scenes about a suicide attempt ever. (Yes, I actually have a list of my favourite humourous scenes about suicide attempts.)

Tell me, have you ever seen the British film Brassed Off?

[andraste]

Augh, you are SO RIGHT. I HATE AND DETEST THOMAS HARDY AND ALL HIS WORKS OF FICTION (though, oddly, some of his poetry is ok). And of all of his writing, I hate Tess the most, above all things.

It was all I could do not to spend my exams writing I WANT TO PUNCH SOME DEAD BRITISH AUTHORS IN THE FACE over and over given that we also did Sons and Lovers that year. They are rivals for the title of my most-hated book ever. And I have heard that the aspects of The Mayor of Casterbridge that I detested are muliplied in Tess.

Guns, Germs, and Steel / Collapse - these are really good books, and Diamond does a great job of looking at really large-scale phenomena without distorting too much. I'd rec G,G&S first and if you loved it then try Collapse (although there's a chapter in Collapse specifically about Australia, which might be worth reading even if you weren't overwhelmed by G,G&S)

Oooo, that sounds interesting indeed. My dad has Guns, Germs and Steel I think and I am going to visit the parental units this weekend.

Mansfield Park - this is actually my favourite Austen, though I admit I'm weird.

I am determined to ration out my Austen, so I read a new one about every five years. Mind you, I think it is time for another. Probably should be Sense and Sensibility since I have it on my shelf, but I am weighing up my options.

Anansi Boys - it's American Gods universe, but vastly funnier. I'd definitely recommend that one.

I've had it on the shelf since soon after it came out, but it's the TPB version and therefore hard to read on the train. I do have a holiday coming up soon, though.

Kavalier & Clay - I'm quite surprised you haven't read this one! It's mainstream, but it's all about the early comics world. Kavalier and Clay aren't quite Shuster and Siegel, but... I'd recommend this one to superhero-comic-fans, in general.

The funny thing is, I actually gave it to my father as a Christmas present, but I've never got around to temporarily stealing it back! I guess I have quite a bit of shelf-raiding to do this weekend.

[andraste]

I second the Kavalier & Clay recommendation! You would really love it for the following reasons:

- comics
- the foreshadowing is done so well that the reader feels very smart for noticing what's going on ahead of schedule
- wonderfully messed-up relationships

... that does sound like me, doesn't it? I resolve to at least steal it from my parents this weekend.

The only problem is that Michael Chabon can only seem to muster up really one well-developed, interesting female character per novel. And that one is great, but... others would be nice.

This always puzzles me than a complete inability to come up with any well-developed female characters; if you can do it once, how much harder can it be to do it again?

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

It's one of the three Austens I haven't read (the others are Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility) because I don't want to run out of her books too quickly.

I didn't like Mansfield Park and never finished it, but NA is among my favourites.

Tell me, have you ever seen the British film Brassed Off?

I have, once upon a time, but I can't remember what you may be referring to. Remind me?

[wychwood]

I hate all of Thomas Hardy's works, but I hate and detest Tess SO MUCH that I actually voluntarily went and read Far From the Madding Crowd in my free time so I could write a compulsory essay on that instead. I would hold his arms behind his back so you could punch him in the face more efficiently. (We didn't do any Lawrence, though; all my other school reading was pretty good).

K&C: reeeeeeeeeeeeead it! You must! *g*

[andraste]

I have, once upon a time, but I can't remember what you may be referring to. Remind me?

I was thinking of the incident where a man tries to hang himself ... while wearing a clown costume, complete with giant shoes.

[andraste]

I would hold his arms behind his back so you could punch him in the face more efficiently.

You are a true friend!

(We didn't do any Lawrence, though; all my other school reading was pretty good).

Looking back, those were the only two I truly hated. I found a lot of the stuff we did in the early years of secondary school frustrating because it was so far below my reading level, but the books themselves weren't bad.

[charliequinn.livejournal.com]

This is why libraries are very good things :)

[andraste]

This is why libraries are very good things :)

They are indeed. These days I only buy books I'm reasonably certain I'll want to keep around. (And if it turns out I'm wrong, I donate them to the library!)