Saw Bub and Pie give the ubiquitous 100 books meme a great twist, and thought I’d try the same thing. I clicked back through more than 15 blogs trying to figure out what the original list of 100 books was supposed to represent, but couldn’t find it. (You can see the original meme here.) The idea is to bold the ones you’ve read, but B&P came up with the idea of categories, which I shamelessly stole and then substituted with my own categories.
Better than reading a cereal box
The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
Les Miserables (Hugo)
The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
Shoulda stuck with the cereal box
The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
Read it twice, or more
The Stand (Stephen King)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling) *
The World According To Garp (John Irving)
The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
School daze
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
1984 (Orwell)
Great Expectations (Dickens)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) – in French, no less!
The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
Lord of the Flies (Golding)
Started but not finished
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
The Bible – although after 13 years of Catholic school, I’ve got a firm grasp of the plot and how it comes out in the end
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
Erm, how did I miss this one?
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
Life’s too short
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
War and Peace (Tolsoy)
The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
Ulysses (James Joyce)
Would have read by now, if I hadn’t been wasting all my time blogging about books
A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
Never got around to it
Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
Shogun (James Clavell)
Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
Emma (Jane Austen)
The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
Who?
The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
Blindness (Jose Saramago)
* I’ve started re-reading the entire Harry Potter series, starting with the Philosopher’s Stone, in anticipation of book 7 this summer.
(Edited to add: oops, it’s a meme for sharing. Consider yourself tagged if you want to play along!)
I hated Brave New World, just couldn’t get into it in the slightest 🙁
OH I love this and my List of what I have read is long. I might just do this and high light it. I couldn’t take the time to separated it. I have floors to wash. Awww the floors can wait. I might add a few too.
😉
OH and I agree with Rebecca read it but it bored me to tears.
Did you take the original list to do this? Or did you make your own?
You have too much more brain power than me. I’d do the highlight list, but could never create such a fun list like yourself.
Sorry, I did this last night. Guess I wasn’t terribly clear. I took the original list and just rearranged it. I couldn’t actually independently think of six books I’ve read or wanted to read without some sort of prompt, let alone 100!
Don’t bother with the Alchemist…there’s all kinds of hype around it, and you can always find people who will tell you it changed their lives, but it’s not actually very good.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — coming of age classic. Fond memories.
Rebecca by DuMaurier — creepy and classic.
I’d recommend those for your “How did I miss?” list if they sound appealing.
I’m always open to recommendations, Madeleine. Thanks – will put them on the to-read list for this summer.
Cait, I felt the same way about the Kite Runner. People were swooning over it, and I waited something like 7 months on the library queue, read it and said, “Meh.” Kind of angry and upsetting, certainly not transformative.
Great list. I have read quite a few of the same ones as you and a bunch of the others as well. Going through the list I can also see some that I should read again to see if they hold the same meaning so many years later.
Loved:
The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
Just Finished
A Novel (Lori Lansens)
Other great reads
Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)
The History of Love (Nicole Krauss)
I could go on and on. I’d have a hard time stopping at 100.