« Ducky and Tinkertoys and an ouchy | Main | mostly about weight loss »

Thursday, September 11, 2003

The Book List

Emily graciously gave me her permission to steal the book list idea from her and Jenn. So here are my comments. The list originally came from ivillage, where they think you "must have been an English major" if you can correctly answer ten insanely easy multiple-choice first-line-of-what-book quiz questions. So be warned, this isn't the most authoritative "100 Best Books" list you can imagine. Oddly, though, it's hard to find any good ones, so this one will have to do.

1. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

I own this. I've read it just a couple of times. It's a good book, much deeper than the movie which is also good. But in my opinion, Scarlet O'Hara, whom we're all supposed to admire, crosses the fine line between "strong woman" and "conniving bitch" and I do not like her.


2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I have this book and read it probably once a year. I have never been to the South (I'm really sorry about that, really I am, please do not throw tomatoes) but this is how I picture really small southern towns, or at least how I imagine they were in the past. Quiet, dusty, and full of life under the surface.



3. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon


I have this whole series. Diana Gabaldon is a phenomenal writer and researcher. These will keep you up all night reading. They're sometimes classified as "romance" novels but they are so much more. Try 'em, you'll like 'em. :)



4. Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley


I have never read this. I suppose if I'm going to give a rave review to a historical fiction romance novel at #3, I can't say rude things about how shallow it seems to have this be #4 on this list. Maybe I'll give it a try.



5. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving


I tried. I have a hard time with most John Irving. I own this but have never managed to get past the first few pages.



6. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein

I've read The Hobbit, and I own the trilogy after it, but I've never read them. The Hobbit seemed to be more of a mainstream sort of book than these are, and I am really not into fantasy. I'll try them again sometime though, and see if I change my mind.



7. I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb

I love Wally Lamb. This book is marvelous -- just as She's Come Undone amazes us with the ability of a male author to get inside a woman's head, I Know This Much Is True amazes me with the way it lets me get inside a man's head. And there are scenes that will rip you up with sadness as well. So well-written.



8. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

I've never read this.



9. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Never read this either. I think about it sometimes. Maybe I'll get it from the library.



10. The Stand by Stephen King

I've read this three times. If you aren't a Stephen King fan, you should still try this book, because it is not like his usual books. This is an epic novel, dealing with human nature and the nature of good and evil, creating some very real and memorable characters and putting them in a fascinating situation. Try to forget who wrote it, and try it. Even my AP English teacher in high school, who was even more of a literary snob than I am, admitted that King had come close to The Great American Novel when he wrote this one.



11. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel

Another one that I tried. I really did. Such rave reviews, and I couldn't get past the first 50 pages.



12. A Tree Grows in Brookyn by Betty Smith


This is a wonderful, wonderful book. For me, it does for New York what To Kill A Mockingbird does for the deep South -- gives a tangible sense of what life was like there once upon a time.



13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


I read this because I like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. This has none of JE's good qualities, and JE's few bad qualities are magnified in this book to the nth degree. It is far too dark and foggy for me. And like I said in my movie list, it's like a soap opera published in Gothic language.



14. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott


I liked this better when I was younger than I do now, but I do still like it. I don't agree with all the people who are upset that Jo and Laurie don't end up together. Laurie was a flake, and Jo needed someone to challenge her and take her seriously. Laurie was much better suited to Amy.



15. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


Never heard of it.



16. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery


One of my favorites. I have all of L.M. Montgomery's novels. If AoGG is too childish for you, though, try A Tangled Web. It's a cat of a completely different color, and really funny and clever.



17. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger


I read it and did not see what all the hype has always been about. It's not a bad book; I just didn't find it as deep or important as everyone else seems to. Maybe it's going over my head. Who knows.



18. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald


I could not finish this book. That was about eight years ago, though, so maybe I'll try it again now. I just got fed up with the high society whining and moaning, and I hated the characters, and I even hated the way they dressed (the 20's are not my favorite historical period from a fashion perspective, to say the least).



19. Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins


OK, this book is interesting for Christians to read. I've read the whole series and liked it OK for what it was. But it doesn't belong on a 100-best list, in my opinion. Shades of things to come further down, methinks.



20. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas


Never read it.



21. The Color Purple by Alice Walker


Never read it.



22. Dune by Frank Herbert


I tried this in junior high. It was highly recommended to me by a teacher, but I hated it and didn't finish it. I remember something about a box, and a guy putting his hand in it and being in a lot of pain. Or something. I do not like sci-fi so I've never tried it again.



23. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton


Never heard of it. (sorry)



24. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand


I've heard of this but not read it. It's supposed to be An Important Book so maybe, snob that I am, I'll add it to my to-be-read list.



25. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen


One of my very favorite books. It's beautiful. Like Kathleen Kelly, I just get caught up in the language. And the characters. And the humor. And the satire. And the romance. YUM. I just finished re-reading this the other day.



26. A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford


My mom owns this, and she used to recommend it to me often. Someday when I'm housesitting for her or something, I'll have to pick it up and see if it grabs me.



27. Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts


This totally shouldn't be here. Sorry. Cute book, but empty and not worthy to be on the same webpage as Jane Eyre, let alone 70 places ahead of it.



28. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein


Never read it. Not a sci-fi/fantasy fan.



29. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis


Now, there I go saying I'm not a fantasy fan, but these books are so, so much more. I love them all. My kids are also infatuated with the books and the BBC movies.



30. Exodus by Leon Uris


Never read it.



31. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb


I touched on this briefly above, but this is an amazing book. Every woman should read it. Tomorrow. It's another one that will keep you up late reading, too.



32. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle


This is a good book but I don't re-read it very often. Don't know why. It's full of interesting ideas and characters.



33. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough


Never read it.



34. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry


I had a copy of this once but I never read it.



35. Beloved by Toni Morrison


Never read it.



36. The Witching Hour by Anne Rice


Never read it.



37. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


I have this, and War And Peace. Every few years I try them both again to see if I've grown into them yet. So far, nope.



38. The Game of Kings: The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett


I think I started one of these once but I couldn't get into it. I was having a reading slump at the time so it's not necessarily the book's fault.



39. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck


I loved this book in high school. I'm not so keen on it now. It's really well-written, and gives an excellent view of what life was like for those people in that time period, but the overarching political message in it is bothersome to me, whereas once I gloried in it.



40. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery


Funny, my two senior AP term paper subjects, right here in a row (Steinbeck and Saint-Exupéry). This is a great little book. We read it in the original French in French class, and I didn't even read an English translation till years later. Both are good. You should have seen our French teacher trying to explain via pantomime, without speaking English which was forbidden in class, the concept of taming an animal, since none of us could figure out what that word meant in the story. Classic.



41. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone by J.K. Rowling


I have never read these. Maybe someday I will, when the series is complete, the hype has died down, and my kids are old enough to have some discernment and we can discuss them together. I will say that I idly read through the first few pages of this at the library and wasn't sucked in at ALL.



42. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks


I had heard such great things about Nicholas Sparks that I thought I would love this. I didn't. It was like it was written by a junior high student in creative writing class. The style was so choppy and undeveloped and obvious that the interesting story couldn't compensate for it.



43. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison


Never read it.



44. The Awakening by Kate Chopin


Never read it.



45. Insomnia by Stephen King


Never read it.



46. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton


Never read it, but I'd like to.



47. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett


Never read it.



48. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx


Never read it.



49. Katherine by Anya Seton


Never heard of it.



50. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson


I tried this one. I kept going and going, waiting for it to cast the spell over me that it did over apparently everyone else. When I was a third of the way through and still not into the book at all, I gave up.



51. 1984 by George Orwell


Yet another person I wrote a term paper about. He was a very interesting, disturbed man. 1984 was a work of prophetic genius. He also wrote a short story about shooting an elephant that has really stuck with me through all the years since I read it. You should find if you can, and read it.



52. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov


Never read it, don't particularly care to.



53. Beach Music by Pat Conroy


Never read it.



54. Portnoy's Complaint by Phillip Roth


Never read it.



55. The World According to Garp by John Irving


I read this in high school. Someone totally spoiled the most surprising moment of it for me, and now almost all I can remember of the story is that part, and how I went through the whole book waiting for it to happen. I think it was a good book though. :)



56. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury


Never read it, although I do like a lot of Bradbury's stories.



57. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne


I read this in high school and then again a couple of years ago. I liked it much better the second time. Some books are forced on teenagers too young, I think.



58. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice


Never read it, not into the vampire genre at ALL.



59. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel


Never read it. I don't think. Wait, maybe I have, is this the one that describes the marriage bed sheets for the strict Catholics? And where some woman takes off on a horse with a guy? I think I read this while babysitting once; it was on the family's bookshelf.



60. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher


Never read any Pilcher.



61. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells


I read this and was not terribly impressed. I kept waiting for it to be something other than a falsely deep piece of chick-lit. I didn't even bother with the movie.



62. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams


I've tried this a few times and did not find it nearly as funny as everyone else seems to. (no tomatoes please).



63. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll


You know, I used to really like this story until I got the annotated version and read more about Lewis Carroll. That was one creepy guy. Now I can't get that out of my head and it sort of ruins the story for me.



64. East of Eden by John Steinbeck


I own this and have read it a couple of times. I don't remember much about it -- just a few scattered mental images. A woman with thin lips, boys learning how to drive a crank-start car, a dour moralistic woman, and a failed experiment in refrigeration. Maybe I should try reading it again...



65. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole


You know, this book was SO highly recommended to me. I ran right out and got it from the library. I read the first 90 pages or so and gave up. It was like one long fart joke.



66. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo


I haven't read this, but I want to.



67. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant


This is a book that all women should read, IMO. It's beautiful and terrible and wonderful, and vivid, and heartbreaking, and uplifting. Ack, now I want to go get it off my shelf and read it till dawn.



68. The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams


Never read it.



69. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier


Never read it.



70. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier


Never read it, but I probably should.



71. Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice


Never read it.



72. My Antonia by Willa Cather


Never read it, but I want to.



73. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison


Never read it.



74. The Bone People by Keri Hulme


Never heard of it.



75. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


I've read a few of the stories (Hound of the Baskervilles comes to mind). I like them.



76. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky


Never read it. I suppose I should.



77. The Call of the Wild by Jack London


I read this when I was maybe 10 but haven't since. I think I'll have my son read it when he's junior-high age, and read it with him then.



78. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad


Never read it. I have Lord Jim by the same author and I can't get into it. Is Heart of Darkness better?



79. Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg


Another one that all women should read. Go and get it, today, and read it. It's short and you'll be so glad you did. It'll make you go hug your girlfriends.



80. Time and Again by Jack Finney


Never read it.



81. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain


I've read this several times and I like it.



82. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley


Never read it.



83. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende


Never read it.



84. Watership Down by Richard Adams


I love this book. It is one that I get a hankering for every few years and then I just immerse myself in it for days. When my kids are a few years older, we'll read it as a family.



85. Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky


Never read it.



86. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck


Never read it.



87. …And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer


Never read it.



88. Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns


Never heard of it.



89. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen


This had a comment by some ivillager about "Ah, Mr. Darcy." I wonder if she felt stupid when she realized what she'd done. And I wonder how the ivillage editors happened to choose that for the quote to go with that title. *ahem* perhaps they've not read it? I do like this book, although I'm not quite as ecstatic about it as I am about Pride and Prejudice. I actually just finished reading it a couple of days ago, too.



90. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie


Never read any Christies.



91. Dracula by Bram Stoker


Never read it. That vampire thing again.



92. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan


I read this once. It was engrossing, and seems like it's probably an important book. I wasn't as impressed as most people seem to be but it's worth a read.



93. The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve


I read this. My SIL loves Anita Shreve. I couldn't put it down while I read it but I felt a little manipulated by it, and the ending was a total shock to me. I didn't feel like the body of the book had done even the slightest bit of foreshadowing about that. But it was pretty good, all things considered.



94. Sophie's Choice by William Styron


Never read it.



95. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner


Never heard of it.



96. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston


Never read it.



97. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy


Never heard of it.



98. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett


Read it, liked it, have never seen a movie of it because I'm afraid they'd ruin it. Focus on the Family has a pretty neat radio theater presentation of it though.



99. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte


WHY WHY WHY is this #99? Uncultured swine. I have a very hard time picking a favorite book, but whenever I'm forced to do so, this is it. I have sections of it memorized. Bliss.



100. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens


I read this aloud to T one Christmastime (I had read it a few times previously). We meant to make a tradition of it but didn't. Usually I get it out around Thanksgiving, and maybe read a chapter aloud, but then I get sucked into the book and by the time he's ready for chapter 2 a few days later, I'm done and don't want to start over. I like Dickens, paid by the word or not.