Wednesday, January 28, 2009

1000 More Books to Make You Feel Inadequate in Your Reading Habits

A compilation of The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read list is making its rounds. Rather than posting the full list of 1000 books here, I am going to simply post the ones I have read and the ones I am currently planning on reading. Head over to The Guardian and check out their well-formed lists.

Comedy

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes -- on my shelves
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens -- plan on reading
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens -- plan on reading
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons -- plan on reading
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh -- plan on reading

I feel like a comedy category without Douglas Adams or Jasper Fforde is lacking the very silliest of funny bones. I would also want to see Good Omens on the list.


Crime

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary E Braddon
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan -- plan on reading
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
A Rich Full Death by Michael Dibdin
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky -- plan on reading
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Crime of Father Amado by José Maria de Eça de Queiroz -- plan on reading
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett -- plan on reading
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Kim by Rudyard Kipling -- plan on reading
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Dissolution by CJ Sansom
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

Obviously a category that I get a lot of mileage out of. There were many authors on the list that I may read in the future but hadn't heard of the specific title they were mentioning -- which is not surprising with so many large series.


Family and Self

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Professor's House by Willa Cather -- plan on reading
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Howards End by EM Forster -- plan on reading
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce -- on my shelves
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger -- plan on reading
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington -- plan on reading
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss -- plan on reading

I read more in this category than I would have thought. There were still many books in the category that I noticed that are on my "will never read" list.


Love

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen -- plan on reading
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen -- on my shelves
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen -- plan on reading
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Possession by AS Byatt -- plan on reading
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote -- plan on reading
My Antonia by Willa Cather
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier -- on my shelves
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot -- on my shelves
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
A Room with a View by EM Forster -- plan on reading
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer -- plan on reading
Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer -- plan on reading
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James -- plan on reading
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James -- plan on reading
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak -- on my shelves
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith -- plan on reading
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy -- plan on reading

Most of the Love books I have read are classics. I wonder what that says about me.


Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon -- plan on reading
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
American Gods by Neil Gaiman -- plan on reading
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne -- plan on reading
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro -- plan on reading
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson -- plan on reading
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James -- on my shelves
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu -- plan on reading
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
The Monk by Matthew Lewis -- plan on reading
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett -- considering reading
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe -- plan on reading
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
The Time Machine by HG Wells

I know. I'm a nerd.


State of the Nation

Shirley by Charlotte Bronte -- considering reading
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe -- considering reading
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens -- plan on reading
Hard Times by Charles Dickens -- plan on reading
Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens -- plan on reading
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens -- plan on reading
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky -- plan on reading
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky -- plan on reading
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Silas Marner by George Eliot -- plan on reading
A Passage to India by EM Forster -- plan on reading
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell -- plan on reading
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell -- plan on reading
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo -- plan on reading
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry -- considering reading
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Shame by Salman Rushdie -- plan on reading
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray -- plan on reading
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton -- plan on reading

I think these are the books that I know I should read and I will slowly get to them but they aren't the ones I am choosing first.


War and Travel

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas -- plan on reading
The African Queen by CS Forester -- plan on reading
King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard -- plan on reading
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolp Erich Raspe -- plan on reading
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy -- plan on reading
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne -- plan on reading
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne -- plan on reading
Candide by Voltaire
Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut

A very short category for me because I really don't read books on War so I'm only left with Travel.

If my count is correct, I've read 99 of the 1000 books so I'm ten percent there. Go check out Danielle and Sassymonkey's lists.

Possibly a 90 percent slacker,
K

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