My First Meme

A bunch of noteworthy things are happening today, but I'm grumpy and don't feel like writing about them (or it's not time to write about them yet). But I don't want to skip a day, so I'm resorting to an old trick. A sparsely annotated list.

Here's how this meme works. Below are the top 106 books tagged "unread" in LibraryThing (a book cataloging website that I absolutely love). The books I've read are in bold. The books I started, but couldn't finish are italicized.

I was hoping this list would demonstrate my amazing erudition, but I've never even heard of most of these books. Maybe they're unread because they're too long and boring? Anyway, here's the list.

1. The Solitudes by John Crowley


2. To Green Angel Tower, Part 1 by Tad Williams


3. The Arabian Nights by Husain Haddawy


4. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - The cover of this book appeals to me. (I've found that, yes, you can judge a book by its cover. Whoever is in charge of designing these things does a pretty good job. I rarely find a bad book behind a cover that I like - although sometimes a good book is hidden behind a bad cover.)


5. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


6. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - I really wanted to like this, but the wording was just too stilted. I have the translation by Thomas Shelton, which has been accused of being too literal.


7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez - Never read it, but it has a great opening line:
   

   Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.



8. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Not sure why I never got around to reading this one.


9. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien - Am I a heretic for thinking this book was kind of boring? (I'm a devoted LoTR fan.)


10. Ulysses by James Joyce - I liked what I read, but just didn't have the time for it.


11. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - Same comment as for Ulysses.


12. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray


13. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller


14. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert


15. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood


16. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky - The best book ever! But it has to be the translation by David McDuff, which is available as a Penguin Classic (yes, the cheap one is the best). And the movie has Captain Kirk!


17. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco - Loved the book. And the movie was pretty good too.


18. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


19. Middlemarch by George Eliot


20. The Satanic Verses: A Novel by Salman Rushdie - Somehow, even with all the publicity this book received (what with the fatwa and all), I managed to read every book by Salman Rushdie except this one. So when I saw it on the shelving cart at the library I had to grab it. (The librarian had the same reaction as me.) So far, so good.


21. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens


22. The Odyssey by Homer - The Robert Fagles translation is the best if you just want to enjoy the story. (Some critics think he strays too far from the the literal Greek, but how would I know anything about that?)


23. Moby Dick, or, The Whale by Herman Melville - Great book. Hated the whaling bits when I read it in high school, but loved them when I read it in grad school. The difference between reading for pleasure and reading to pass a pop quiz?


24. The Story of Saddler's Croft by E & H. Heron - What the heck is this?


25. The Story of Baelbrow by E & H. Heron - And this?


26. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
    

    Whan that April with his shoures soote
    The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
    And bathed every veyne in swich licour
    Of which vertu engendered is the flour

    
    (Yes, I googled for the spelling. But I will never forget those opening lines.)
    


27. A Victim Of Higher Space by Algernon Blackwood


28. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi


29. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson - I loved everything he wrote before the Baroque Cycle, but I just couldnt get into this one. (I saw that Jamie was reading it, so I might give it another chance.)


30. Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - And, I saw the movie! (The Disney version.)


31. The Iliad by Homer - Again, I find the Fagles translation to be the most readable. (I suffered through the Lattimore and Fitzgerald translations in high school and college. But maybe they weren't that bad? I just wasn't ready for them?)


32. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova


33. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco - It took me a couple of tries to get through this book, but it was worth it. (The first time I tried to read it, I got bogged down trying to figure out which parts of the "history" in the book were true. If only I'd had Google back then!)


34. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo


35. Battle Royale, Book 1 by Koushun Takami - I read Casino Royale. Does that count? (And, I saw the movie! Casino Royale, not Battle Royale.)


36. Love in The Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez


37. The Once and Future King by T. H. White


38. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas


39. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner


40. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen


41. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - Didn't see the movie either.


42. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding


43. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon


44. Emma by Jane Austen


45. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers - I have this book on my bookshelf for some reason, although I've never read it. A brief perusal of its contents indicates that it might be my kind of book. Many detailed tangents totally unrelated to the plot. Check. Author is full of himself. Check. What's not to like?


46. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond - Would have made a good magazine article.


47. Life of Pi by Yann Martel


48. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - I read an abridged children's version. Does that count?


49. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand


50. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf


51. Dracula by Bram Stoker - I saw the movie!


52. The Host by Stephenie Meyer


53. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny


54. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Loved the book. Hated the movie (the one with Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox).


55. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse


56. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini And, I got the DVD out of the library, but I didn't watch it yet. Maybe tomorrow.


57. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf


58. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - And, I saw the movie!


59. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood


60. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne - And, I visited the house in Salem. Twice!


61. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence


62. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift


63. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens


64. Inferno by Dante Alighieri - The Hollanders have the most readable translation. I read this to Anna when she was an infant. (I'm not kidding.)


65. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe


66. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen


67. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence


68. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy - Who knows why I even bothered to try reading this one?


69. The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake


70. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald


71. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - And, I played string bass in the high school musical. (And I don't even play string bass!)


72. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand


73. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë


74. Underworld: A Novel by Don DeLillo


75. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - Saw the movie!


76. Bleak House by Charles Dickens


77. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger


78. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman


79. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - Would have made a good magazine article.


80. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje - Didn't see the movie either.


81. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce


82. Dressed To Slay by Harper Allen


83. The Confusion, Part I: The Baroque Cycle #4 by Neal Stephenson


84. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott


85. A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson - I just read this yesterday!


86. Silas Marner by George Eliot


87. Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle


88. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - Would have made a good magazine article.


89. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Cate says I should try this.


90. The Known World by Edward P. Jones


91. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner - I just can't get into Faulkner.


92. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro


93. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri - I still haven't read the Paradiso, but the Hollanders have a recent translation.


94. Joseph Andrews and Shamela by Henry Fielding


95. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe - Saw the movie! (Does that count?)


96. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy


97. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon


98. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells - And, I saw the movie!


99. American Gods by Neil Gaiman


100. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy


101. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - I read the Cliff Notes. Does that count?


102. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust


103. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - And, I saw the movie!


104. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - Saw the movie!


105. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides - Also on my bookshelf.


106. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

That was more fun than I expected. I'll probably come back to this list as I think of more things.