I’m not much of one for bloggy memes in general, but this one appealed to me. I got it from a friend. “These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users (as of 10/2/07).” Bold is what I’ve read, italics I have begun but not finished, strikethrough is supposed to be for things one hated. Underlining is supposed to be things that are on one’s to-read list, but I can’t really do that, because 80% of the things on here I haven’t read I should—and I don’t really want to admit which I don’t plan to read! Oh, and asterisks are for things you’ve read more than once. See why I don’t do these things? Complex.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Ulysses
The Brothers Karamazov
Jane Eyre (It’s not its fault, it was someone else’s audiobook and the trip ended)
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
A Tale of Two Cities*
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Iliad
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations (kind of embarrassing—I’ve read most of it three times, and the last chapter, separately…eek)
The Kite Runner
The Blind Assassin
Emma*
The Time Traveler’s Wife
American Gods
Atlas Shrugged
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West (I was planning to finish this so I could scathe it properly, but I haven’t found the will.)
The Canterbury Tales*
Middlesex
Memoirs of a Geisha
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch (too young)
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse (I have no excuse.)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist*
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Miserables
The Corrections
The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune*
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere*
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners (You try to listen to an audiobook the cats don’t like while you’re driving them hundreds of miles)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame*
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Comments
i'm glad you did this meme, too
You should really read The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time, it’s very intriguing and a fast read. (I mean. When you’re done with school. And whatnot.)
I'm not sure I agree with this list in the first place
I’m kind of a book snob, and there are a lot of “popular” books in this list and several glaring omissions in my humble opinion. I see no works by Freud or Jung, but two works by Neil Gaiman.
And while I love Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose is not really a must read, except that you can see how much better it is than the movie (but the movie is really good for an adaptation). If you want really good Eco check out “Baudolino.” And really, the Silmarillion should only be read by those people who are trying to get English or Folktale degrees, or possibly a degree in Elven….
And finally, for shame Felicity, for shame. You need to read more!
Just my nickel, accounting for inflation.
Kug
Re: I'm not sure I agree with this list in the first place
Well, I think the virtue the list has is that it’s organic. It’s the top x books that people using a book cataloging site marked as ‘unread’—there are lots of reasons for a book to be IN the catalog and yet unread, and I enjoy that ambiguity.
Don’t even start with me until I’m outta grad school, man. My to-read list is mostly on recess until grad school concludes! (with brief returns for whatchacallit, school vacation.)