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.
- The Solitudes by John Crowley
- To Green Angel Tower, Part 1 by Tad Williams
- The Arabian Nights by Husain Haddawy
- 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.)
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- 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.
- 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.
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Not sure why I never got around to reading this one.
- 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.)
- Ulysses by James Joyce - I liked what I read, but just didn't have the time for it.
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - Same comment as for Ulysses.
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
- 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!
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco - Loved the book. And the movie was pretty good too.
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- 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.
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- 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?)
- 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?
- The Story of Saddler's Croft by E & H. Heron - What the heck is this?
- The Story of Baelbrow by E & H. Heron - And this?
- 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.) - A Victim Of Higher Space by Algernon Blackwood
- Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
- 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.)
- Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - And, I saw the movie! (The Disney version.)
- 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?)
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
- 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!)
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
- Battle Royale, Book 1 by Koushun Takami - I read Casino Royale. Does that count? (And, I saw the movie! Casino Royale, not Battle Royale.)
- Love in The Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Once and Future King by T. H. White
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
- Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - Didn't see the movie either.
- Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
- Emma by Jane Austen
- 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?
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond - Would have made a good magazine article.
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - I read an abridged children's version. Does that count?
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- Dracula by Bram Stoker - I saw the movie!
- The Host by Stephenie Meyer
- Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
- 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).
- Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini And, I got the DVD out of the library, but I didn't watch it yet. Maybe tomorrow.
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - And, I saw the movie!
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne - And, I visited the house in Salem. Twice!
- Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
- Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- 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.)
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy - Who knows why I even bothered to try reading this one?
- The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake
- Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - And, I played string bass in the high school musical. (And I don't even play string bass!)
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- Underworld: A Novel by Don DeLillo
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - Saw the movie!
- Bleak House by Charles Dickens
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
- The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - Would have made a good magazine article.
- The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje - Didn't see the movie either.
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- Dressed To Slay by Harper Allen
- The Confusion, Part I: The Baroque Cycle #4 by Neal Stephenson
- Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
- A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson - I just read this yesterday!
- Silas Marner by George Eliot
- Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - Would have made a good magazine article.
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Cate says I should try this.
- The Known World by Edward P. Jones
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner - I just can't get into Faulkner.
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri - I still haven't read the Paradiso, but the Hollanders have a recent translation.
- Joseph Andrews and Shamela by Henry Fielding
- Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe - Saw the movie! (Does that count?)
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
- Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
- The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells - And, I saw the movie!
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman
- Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - I read the Cliff Notes. Does that count?
- Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
- Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - And, I saw the movie!
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - Saw the movie!
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides - Also on my bookshelf.
- 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.
1 comment:
I was going to say, this post ended up being pretty impressive! Jamie started Quicksilver and I started Anna Karenina right before Luke was born. Not good reading material when you're sleep deprived. So for now I've been catching up with People magazine. Try The Poisonwood Bible next!
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