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Monday, April 02, 2007

What, meme worry?

Had to take Somerset to the vet to get her teeth cleaned this morning. Trying not to obsess about the possibility that something could go wrong.

Here's a meme to keep you occupied:
Seen in many spots - most recently on Trillian 42's blog

Look at the list of (100) books below. Bold the ones you’ve read. Italicize the ones you want to read. Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in. Movies don’t count.
Here's where I add my personal spin: Parentheses around the ones that I have partly read. Asterisk the ones that I wouldn't read if I were stuck on a desert island. Comment on the books if moved to do so.
1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) Or was that Sense and Sensibility...it's so hard to keep track of these things...
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)* ...are you sensing a theme here?
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) ...I also read Anne of the Island. A million years ago.
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)*...see #7
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) ...Holden Caulfield has always kind of annoyed me; maybe that's why I didn't enjoy A Complicated Kindness by Marian Toews. Even if it was a Canada Reads winner
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) ...is there anyone out there who didn't want to be Jo?
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)*** At my cousin's wedding, his brother gave a reading from this book as part of his speech. Six single spaced pages worth. I want that 20 minutes of my life back.
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) ...it was the 80's...those were crazy times...the mini-series was a new and exciting entity...
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)... I preferred The Edible Woman. I haven't read any of her last few books. Probably because if I try, I hear her reading them in her Grand Dame of Canadian Literature voice. And that brings out the iconoclast in me.
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)...is that her real name? Must have been hell for her spending time on the playground.
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)...you know how you feel after eating a bunch of Timbits? That "They looked good, and tasted good for about 2 seconds, but now I feel kind of sick and gross for having eaten them"feeling?... Chick-lit. Tim-bit. Coincidence? I think not!
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)... I kept reading and reading, waiting to get to the point where I actually gave a crap about what happened to any of the characters. Never happened. Kind of like what happened when I read Generation X.
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) ...not sure why I have read 2 books by an author I don't really like.
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence) ...see #78 - although at least she was a Manitoban...Never could remember if she was from Neepawa or Pinawa
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) ...The Plague Dogs was better IMHO
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)...or was that 1984 I'm thinking of...nope, I'm pretty sure I read this one as well.."Oh brave new world, that has such people in it"...
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) ...I'm from Winnipeg, so I always feel like I should WANT to read Carol Shields, but I can never bring myself to do so.
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)...a rare thing - a CBC radio related book which I have no interest in reading
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) ...although that Matt Damon is dreamy...
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) ...I put it on reserve at the library, and there were something like 30 holds ahead of me. By the time my name came up, I had gotten on with my life.
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) ...I started reading The Odyssey, does that count?

Hmmm...not alot of italicized things there. Probably for a few reasons. I am horribly biased against any book that makes it to Oprah's Book Club (I read The Reader several years ago and enjoyed it. I couldn't BELIEVE that it was subsequently tainted by the 'O' branding). I also don't have much interest in fantasy/magic themed novels (not because I don't like reading long drawn out books - I read the whole Dune series AND War and Peace; I did my time.) Plus, of late, I have been reading predominantly non-fiction books. Much of it would fall into the category "Sociology", I guess. I'm just in the process of finishing "The Ethical Imagination" by Margaret Somerville, and am over 1/3 of the way through "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Hmmm, come to think of it, much of my reading material in the last few years has consisted of books that I heard about on CBC Radio One (either author interview, book discussion, lecture series, or hearing the book being read aloud in serial format on Between The Covers).

By the way - who came up with this list? What exactly is the significance of the selection? And why are there no Somerset Maugham books listed? Is the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants more worthy of a read than Farenheit 451? Would I have gotten more out of A Woman of Substance than I did from Madame Bovary?

I hope she's not too scared and lonely in her cage...

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Comments on "What, meme worry?"

 

Blogger Bezzie said ... (Mon Apr 02, 05:58:00 PM EDT) : 

I think you're my literary twin down to the dislike of all things hobbit and hogwart, and affection for The Edible Woman (I think of that book everytime I do laundry at the laundromat--communal pubes--yick!) I also cried when Oprah ruined an Isabel Allende book by picking it for her club. Ok, I didn't cry, but I wanted to.
Great list with a twist!

 

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