Welcome to my humble hodgepodge of humour columns, quotes, tips, snippets, musings and ramblings. Ready? If so, get comfy and make yourself at home!

Friday, March 09, 2007

all about books

Dakota invited readers to participate in a meme involving a list and books. Well, considering that I love both, it doesn't get much better than that! Anyway, in this meme you bold the books you've read, italicize the books you want to read, and leave blank the ones you're not interested in. I finally got around to doing it myself and here it is! Thanks Dakota.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)

2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Yikes. And I call myself a reader? Well, at least I've read some of the Canadian books (as it should be I guess), but I'm embarrassed at the number of classics I HAVEN'T read. I mean, Dickens and Austen? For shame! Ah, but this list makes me want to compile a bunch of my own of course. Namely:

How Could They Not Have Included THESE On The Above List?
Books I Feel I SHOULD Read,
Books I Feel Slightly Bad About NOT Wanting To Read,
Books I Feel Slightly Guilty About Having Enjoyed,
Books I Can't Believe I Ever Read,
Books I Can't Understand All The Fuss About,
Books I Know For Sure I'll Never Get Around To,
Books I Already Own and am Determined To Get Around To Eventually,
Books I Already Own and Feel I Should Read but Know Almost For Sure I Won't ;)

Oh, can you guess which two books on the list above are included in my profile as favourites? Um, without checking it first? ;)

And here's a short list of books I actually AM reading at the moment:

Above Us Only Sky – Essays by Marion Winik
A Whack On The Side Of The Head: How You Can Be More Creative by Roger von Oech
For The Love Of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers On The Books They Love Most by Ronald B. Shwartz

Okay, your turn! ;)

9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well I think I've just discovered why I always have so much to do - I read too much LOL LOL. I've emailed you my version of the list as I thought it would take up too much room here. Long weekend here in Oz so expect more emails (you too Krissa). And get thyself to To Kill A Mockingbird asap KJM. And reconsider The Stand? It's not pure horror as King usually writes and is very thought provoking in a lot of ways.

March 09, 2007 7:52 p.m.

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Um, that was me before :-). In case you didn't guess, snorkle snorkle.

March 09, 2007 9:20 p.m.

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is very interesting indeed! I see that original thanks go to Dakota. :) ..I am familiar with almost all of these, and while I have been a reader all my life ("Little House on the Prairie" series was my fa-vo-rite as a child) I never much like fiction. Almost every book I read and read are biographies, auto-biographies, history, etc. My all time favorite book is a novel though. Thanks to my youngest brother convincing me to read it, "Crime and Punishment" is my very favorite. I have read it once a year for the past 5 years. It is excellent! I don't know if it would be the same for anyone besides Jeff (my bro) and me, but we agree it is so well written, you feel (or experience) each characters' emotions while you're reading. It's really amazing. Sorry for the longer than long comment. And I will have to look at the list again to guess which are your faves. :) Also, hello to Mum and I hope your busy weekend is a fun one!

March 10, 2007 5:53 a.m.

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Uh-oh. I'm embarassed to say that the books you've read (bolded), I'm not familiar with (um) some of them. I am familiar with a few and have read them myself long, long ago. However, I'm going to put my guess out there without knowing what the plot for several of the "bolds" are....here it is: Of Mice and Men and Celestine Prophecy? I will hope that I am not WAY off, but, if so it's because of my limited knowledge regarding the list. :) ... Sorry for another long-winded post!

March 10, 2007 6:01 a.m.

 
Blogger Dakota said...

Oh my, I’ve created a list-monster, a list-zilla ;) It would be nice to see all the lists you mentioned in your post, but I guess it would take you ages to compile them all. So, only create them if you really, really want too, because let’s face it, I didn’t create this one :).

As for the classics, I did read some of them. I bought some of the others on the list, started reading them….but never made it to the end. Such a shame!

As for your favourites…I really have no idea so it’s going to be a wild guess:
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

I like the books you are reading at the moment…very interesting! I am reading The Time Traveller’s wife by Audrey Niffenegger right now and I love it.

Thanks for playing along, KJ, it was great fun!

March 10, 2007 11:23 a.m.

 
Blogger KJ's muse said...

Thanks for the emailed list, anonymous-commenter, aka snorkler (yes, I knew that was you!)—you sure have read a lot of them! What I do though is put "read" on top of one of my to-do lists, and that way even if I get nothing else done I feel like I've accomplished the most important task. ;) And yes, To Kill A Mocking Bird is definitely on my "I Have To Read" list.

Hi Krissa,

Don't ever apologize for long comments! :) And don't be embarrassed about not being familiar with some of the bolded titles. A lot of them are Canadian, and I'll be posting an entry about them soon. After an entry griping about how Blogger is making it even more difficult for me to post in my own blog. :(

I'm sorry to have to inform you though that the prize for guessing 100% correctly the favourites in my profile, goes to Dakota! Are you sure you didn't peek? :))

Hi Dakota,

List-zilla indeed! Snort. Um, yeah, I'll have to see about compiling those lists. Maybe I'll sneak one in here and there? Hmmm, I keep seeing that title, The Time Traveller's Wife, so I'll probably check it out one day! Oh, so many books, so little time! Aaaaaaaaaaaaack!!

March 10, 2007 6:14 p.m.

 
Blogger Dakota said...

Oh my, I guessed it right….well that’s a first! (and I did not peek!). I like One hundred years too and I did add The lovely bones to my to-read-list after reading the review on Amazon.

March 11, 2007 5:35 a.m.

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah well...better to try and fail than not to try at all, eh? Congrats to Dakota!

March 11, 2007 7:48 a.m.

 
Blogger KJ's muse said...

I think you'll like The Lovely Bones Dakota. It might not end up being one of your favourites, but it's a good book.

Indeed Krissa. And congrats to all of us for being readers in the first place! :)

March 11, 2007 6:44 p.m.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home