hummingwolf (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hummingwolf) wrote2007-10-08 11:53 pm
hummingwolf) wrote2007-10-08 11:53 pm
Gacked from Everybody
It'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.
Wuthering Heights (110)
(No title) (104)--Okay, one version of this list says that Tolkien's Silmarillion goes here, but LibraryThing's list link goes to The Hobbit. I have not read The Silmarillion or even seriously considered it, but I got through The Hobbit three times.
Life of Pi : a novel (94)
The name of the rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86) No matter how I tried, I never got beyond the first page.
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and prejudice (83) Required reading in high school, but I liked it anyway.
Jane Eyre (80)
A tale of two cities (80) Required reading in ninth grade. I should re-read it one of these years.
The brothers Karamazov (80) Early 1990s, after I had to drop out of college for health reasons, I had to have a goal of some kind. You want to know how I got through this particular Big Russian Novel? I had half a year of fatigue with nothing else to do. By the time I got to the end of it, I could barely remember anything that had gone before. Well, I did remember The Grand Inquisitor, and something of Zosima. And I was convinced that Alyosha was a cutie-pie.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and peace (78)
Vanity fair (74)
The time traveler's wife (73)
The Iliad (73) Was supposed to read this for a high school class, but couldn't bring myself to finish the translation I had. Did finish it later on when a better version was available.
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The kite runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great expectations (70) Required in school at some point, I'm pretty sure. I still like Dickens.
American gods : a novel (68)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West … (65)
The Canterbury tales (64) Required reading in high school, yet I did not read it. It was the subject of our first pop quiz in that class, so at least I got the shame over with quickly.
The historian : a novel (63)
A portrait of the artist as a young man (63) I honestly don't know if I read this one or not. There was a period of time in the 1990s when I was too sick to do much besides read (and too sick to read very quickly), so I felt compelled to improve myself by reading a bunch of "classics." This may or may not have been one of the ones I picked up and forgot about.
Love in the time of cholera (62)
Brave new world (61) On my list of things to re-read soonish.
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A clockwork orange (59)
Anansi boys : a novel (58)
The once and future king (57) The first part, The Sword in the Stone, was required reading for one of my high school classes. The rest I read later on my own, and loved.
The grapes of wrath (57) I was so proud of myself that one time I made it to page 12.
The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57) Rather disliked this book, but it's something everyone should read once.
Angels & demons (56)
The inferno (56)
The satanic verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55) Required in school. Just finished re-reading it.
The picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One flew over the cuckoo's nest (54) I think I saw part of the movie once.
To the lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's travels (53)
Les misérables (53)
The corrections (53)
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel (52)
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The prince (51)
The sound and the fury (51)
Angela's ashes : a memoir (51)
The god of small things (51)
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50) Loved it.
A confederacy of dunces (50)
A short history of nearly everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The unbearable lightness of being (49)
Beloved : a novel (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The scarlet letter (48) Required in high school, but I liked it anyway.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Pu… (48)
The mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud atlas : a novel (47)
The confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger abbey (46)
The catcher in the rye (46)
On the road (46)
The hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of… (45)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into … (45) Started reading it because there was a copy down in the living room. Never finished because the copy went missing.
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's rainbow (44)
(No title) (44) This "(No Title)" links to The Hobbit.
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its … (44)
White teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The three musketeers (44)
Cold mountain (43)
Robinson Crusoe (43)
(No title) (43) Ack! It's another Hobbit!
The bell jar (43)
The secret life of bees (43)
Beowulf : a new verse translation (43) Um, I have no idea which translation I read. Do I count this anyway?
The plague (43)
The Master and Margarita (43)
(No title) (42) This one's Da Vinci Code, which I have not read.
Atonement : a novel (42)
The handmaid's tale (42)
Lady Chatterley's lover (41)
Underworld (41) I have a bunch of Underworld albums. Does that count?
(No title) (41) This one links to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Little Women (41)
A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes (41)
Stardust (41)
Jude the obscure (41)
The chronicles of Narnia (40)
Possession : a romance (40)
Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal (40)
(No title) (40) Would you believe it's another Hobbit? I've read it, but not enough to bold it every time it (sort of) shows up on this list.
Never let me go (40)
The trial (40)
Kafka on the shore (40)
Bleak House (40)
(No title) (40) Go on. Guess what this one linked to.
Sons and lovers (40)
Alias Grace (39)
The Arabian nights (39) Only in abridged form suitable for children.
Baudolino (39)
Confessions (39) St. Augustine. Yes, I've read it.
The great Gatsby (39)
To kill a mockingbird (39)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Gla… (39) I do not understand how anyone can escape childhood without having read these books.
The alchemist (39)
Candide, or, Optimism (39)
Snow falling on cedars (39)
Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story (39)
Midnight's children (39)
White Oleander (39)
A passage to India (39)
The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and … (39)
The house of the seven gables (39) In all honesty, I do not know. I think this may be one I read in childhood and didn't really understand.
The lovely bones : a novel (38)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (38)
The amber spyglass (38)
The histories (38)
Swann's way (38)
The shadow of the wind (38)
Fahrenheit 451 (38)
Good omens (38)
Running with scissors : a memoir (38)
Everything is illuminated : a novel (38)
The divine comedy (38)
Paradise lost (38)
The English patient (38)
Uncle Tom's cabin (38)
The Origin of Species (37)
The plot against America (37)
The history of Tom Jones, a foundling (37)
Silas Marner (37) I read it because I was bored. While reading it, I was not less bored.
The hours (37)
Prodigal summer : a novel (37)
The bonesetter's daughter (37)
Doctor Zhivago (37)
The shipping news (36)
The phantom of the Opera (36)
The portrait of a lady (36)
Blink : the power of thinking without thinking (36)
Heart of darkness (36)
The Robber Bride (36)
The last of the Mohicans (36)
The age of innocence (36)
The system of the world (35)
Tropic of cancer (35)
The mayor of Casterbridge (35)
The Gormenghast novels (35)
The gunslinger (35)
The golden compass (35)
The Republic of Plato (35)
The remains of the day (35)
Cat's eye (35)
Eragon (35)
A game of thrones (35)
Sophie's world : a novel about the history of philosophy (34)
The island of the day before (34)
The good earth (34)
A prayer for Owen Meany : a novel (34)
The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at … (34)
A farewell to arms (34)
East of Eden (34)
The book thief (34)
Animal farm : a fairy story (34)
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.
Wuthering Heights (110)
(No title) (104)--Okay, one version of this list says that Tolkien's Silmarillion goes here, but LibraryThing's list link goes to The Hobbit. I have not read The Silmarillion or even seriously considered it, but I got through The Hobbit three times.
Life of Pi : a novel (94)
The name of the rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86) No matter how I tried, I never got beyond the first page.
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and prejudice (83) Required reading in high school, but I liked it anyway.
Jane Eyre (80)
A tale of two cities (80) Required reading in ninth grade. I should re-read it one of these years.
The brothers Karamazov (80) Early 1990s, after I had to drop out of college for health reasons, I had to have a goal of some kind. You want to know how I got through this particular Big Russian Novel? I had half a year of fatigue with nothing else to do. By the time I got to the end of it, I could barely remember anything that had gone before. Well, I did remember The Grand Inquisitor, and something of Zosima. And I was convinced that Alyosha was a cutie-pie.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and peace (78)
Vanity fair (74)
The time traveler's wife (73)
The Iliad (73) Was supposed to read this for a high school class, but couldn't bring myself to finish the translation I had. Did finish it later on when a better version was available.
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The kite runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great expectations (70) Required in school at some point, I'm pretty sure. I still like Dickens.
American gods : a novel (68)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West … (65)
The Canterbury tales (64) Required reading in high school, yet I did not read it. It was the subject of our first pop quiz in that class, so at least I got the shame over with quickly.
The historian : a novel (63)
A portrait of the artist as a young man (63) I honestly don't know if I read this one or not. There was a period of time in the 1990s when I was too sick to do much besides read (and too sick to read very quickly), so I felt compelled to improve myself by reading a bunch of "classics." This may or may not have been one of the ones I picked up and forgot about.
Love in the time of cholera (62)
Brave new world (61) On my list of things to re-read soonish.
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A clockwork orange (59)
Anansi boys : a novel (58)
The once and future king (57) The first part, The Sword in the Stone, was required reading for one of my high school classes. The rest I read later on my own, and loved.
The grapes of wrath (57) I was so proud of myself that one time I made it to page 12.
The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57) Rather disliked this book, but it's something everyone should read once.
Angels & demons (56)
The inferno (56)
The satanic verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55) Required in school. Just finished re-reading it.
The picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One flew over the cuckoo's nest (54) I think I saw part of the movie once.
To the lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's travels (53)
Les misérables (53)
The corrections (53)
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel (52)
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The prince (51)
The sound and the fury (51)
Angela's ashes : a memoir (51)
The god of small things (51)
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50) Loved it.
A confederacy of dunces (50)
A short history of nearly everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The unbearable lightness of being (49)
Beloved : a novel (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The scarlet letter (48) Required in high school, but I liked it anyway.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Pu… (48)
The mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud atlas : a novel (47)
The confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger abbey (46)
The catcher in the rye (46)
On the road (46)
The hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of… (45)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into … (45) Started reading it because there was a copy down in the living room. Never finished because the copy went missing.
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's rainbow (44)
(No title) (44) This "(No Title)" links to The Hobbit.
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its … (44)
White teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The three musketeers (44)
Cold mountain (43)
Robinson Crusoe (43)
(No title) (43) Ack! It's another Hobbit!
The bell jar (43)
The secret life of bees (43)
Beowulf : a new verse translation (43) Um, I have no idea which translation I read. Do I count this anyway?
The plague (43)
The Master and Margarita (43)
(No title) (42) This one's Da Vinci Code, which I have not read.
Atonement : a novel (42)
The handmaid's tale (42)
Lady Chatterley's lover (41)
Underworld (41) I have a bunch of Underworld albums. Does that count?
(No title) (41) This one links to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Little Women (41)
A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes (41)
Stardust (41)
Jude the obscure (41)
The chronicles of Narnia (40)
Possession : a romance (40)
Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal (40)
(No title) (40) Would you believe it's another Hobbit? I've read it, but not enough to bold it every time it (sort of) shows up on this list.
Never let me go (40)
The trial (40)
Kafka on the shore (40)
Bleak House (40)
(No title) (40) Go on. Guess what this one linked to.
Sons and lovers (40)
Alias Grace (39)
The Arabian nights (39) Only in abridged form suitable for children.
Baudolino (39)
Confessions (39) St. Augustine. Yes, I've read it.
The great Gatsby (39)
To kill a mockingbird (39)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Gla… (39) I do not understand how anyone can escape childhood without having read these books.
The alchemist (39)
Candide, or, Optimism (39)
Snow falling on cedars (39)
Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story (39)
Midnight's children (39)
White Oleander (39)
A passage to India (39)
The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and … (39)
The house of the seven gables (39) In all honesty, I do not know. I think this may be one I read in childhood and didn't really understand.
The lovely bones : a novel (38)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (38)
The amber spyglass (38)
The histories (38)
Swann's way (38)
The shadow of the wind (38)
Fahrenheit 451 (38)
Good omens (38)
Running with scissors : a memoir (38)
Everything is illuminated : a novel (38)
The divine comedy (38)
Paradise lost (38)
The English patient (38)
Uncle Tom's cabin (38)
The Origin of Species (37)
The plot against America (37)
The history of Tom Jones, a foundling (37)
The hours (37)
Prodigal summer : a novel (37)
The bonesetter's daughter (37)
Doctor Zhivago (37)
The shipping news (36)
The phantom of the Opera (36)
The portrait of a lady (36)
Blink : the power of thinking without thinking (36)
Heart of darkness (36)
The Robber Bride (36)
The last of the Mohicans (36)
The age of innocence (36)
The system of the world (35)
Tropic of cancer (35)
The mayor of Casterbridge (35)
The Gormenghast novels (35)
The gunslinger (35)
The golden compass (35)
The Republic of Plato (35)
The remains of the day (35)
Cat's eye (35)
Eragon (35)
A game of thrones (35)
Sophie's world : a novel about the history of philosophy (34)
The island of the day before (34)
The good earth (34)
A prayer for Owen Meany : a novel (34)
The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at … (34)
A farewell to arms (34)
East of Eden (34)
The book thief (34)
Animal farm : a fairy story (34)
On the topic of books . . .
while i can still hold heavy books in my hands . . .
wrists are actually doing better on a lower dose of
generic tylenol down from 1300mg twice a day to 1000mg twice a day.
happened quite by accident. bought two huge bottles of the lower dose.
there's also a slim book called "born on a blue day"
by an autistic savant by daniel tammet that i started
earlier this year--fascinating book!
i mostly try to keep up with the more interesting stuff on lj,myspace,yahoo groups,and individual emails.
Re: On the topic of books . . .
no subject
I'd like to add you. "Friend?"
no subject
no subject