Gacked from Everybody
Monday, October 8th, 2007 11:53 pmIt's that LibraryThing list that's taking over! The general idea: This is the top [some vaguely interesting number] books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (when this list was made). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. The numbers after each one are the number of LT users who used the tag of that book.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132) Though I've never so much as picked up a copy, my father had a story about a class he took in college where this book was required reading. My father missed several classes and never got around to finishing the book, or indeed making it beyond the first few chapters. When he finally made his way to class again, he was horrified to discover that there was a test that day on this book he hadn't read, and that the first question on said test was "Why did Anna commit suicide?"
"Anna killed herself?" said my father to himself. "I didn't even know she was depressed!" Certain that he was doomed to fail the class, my father decided to try to remember what he had read of the novel, apply basic psychology, and figure out if he could come up with some plausible-sounding B.S. that wouldn't ruin his own chances of getting a B.S. Being my father, he came up with B.S. plausible enough to pass. The moral of the story was, no matter how sure you are that you have no reason to succeed, go ahead and try your best anyway, because you may be able to convince someone you know what you're talking about after all.
Or maybe the moral of the story was never to take classes where big Russian novels were required reading. That could have been a secondary moral, come to think of it. (Yes, you have now been spoiled for Anna Karenina. It's not as if you were going to read it anyway.)
Crime and punishment (121) A Russian novel I was required to read for a class in high school. I rather liked it, actually.
Catch-22 (117) Required to read for the same high school class as the preceding. It always sounded like a book I should like, but it really, really wasn't.
One hundred years of solitude (115) I do have a copy on my shelves here, but I'm pretty sure I've never gotten around to opening it.
( More books within! )
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132) Though I've never so much as picked up a copy, my father had a story about a class he took in college where this book was required reading. My father missed several classes and never got around to finishing the book, or indeed making it beyond the first few chapters. When he finally made his way to class again, he was horrified to discover that there was a test that day on this book he hadn't read, and that the first question on said test was "Why did Anna commit suicide?"
"Anna killed herself?" said my father to himself. "I didn't even know she was depressed!" Certain that he was doomed to fail the class, my father decided to try to remember what he had read of the novel, apply basic psychology, and figure out if he could come up with some plausible-sounding B.S. that wouldn't ruin his own chances of getting a B.S. Being my father, he came up with B.S. plausible enough to pass. The moral of the story was, no matter how sure you are that you have no reason to succeed, go ahead and try your best anyway, because you may be able to convince someone you know what you're talking about after all.
Or maybe the moral of the story was never to take classes where big Russian novels were required reading. That could have been a secondary moral, come to think of it. (Yes, you have now been spoiled for Anna Karenina. It's not as if you were going to read it anyway.)
Crime and punishment (121) A Russian novel I was required to read for a class in high school. I rather liked it, actually.
One hundred years of solitude (115) I do have a copy on my shelves here, but I'm pretty sure I've never gotten around to opening it.
( More books within! )
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