Wednesday, November 11, 2009

I Love Books

Since November 5th last year, I have read (or listened to) approximately 73 books. Not bad, not bad! I read A LOT during the summer, and I also read a lot last year because my job sucked and I had the extra time.

A few of those 73 books have been amazing, can't put them down, love them so much I want to read all day books. I like using goodreads.com because I rate each book and when people ask what I'd recommend I can look at my list and suggest the books that I've given 5 stars.

My favourite book this year has been The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum, which is one of the few books I now own. Thanks to M's family I received it as a gift last Christmas! I've also really enjoyed books by Ruth Reichl, who was a food critic for the New York Times, and an incredible writer, in my humble opinion.

One thing I've noticed through keeping a goodreads list is that I read a ton more nonfiction than I ever realized! My 36 in 365 goal of reading 5 nonfiction books this year was way too easy.

Thinking about all this lead me to search for the BBC's top 100 books. I found about 10 different lists and don't know which one is proper, so I closed my eyes and just chose one. How many of these have you read? I've put a star beside the ones I can remember reading.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling *
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell *
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger *
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott *
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling *
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling *
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling *
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl * (Currently reading to my class!)
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery *
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell *
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett *
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding *
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl *
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding *
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl *
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley *
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

My total is 16. That's it! Some of these I've never heard of and some I'd like to read eventually in my lifetime!

Books, my second true love. I think I'll go read.

4 comments:

  1. I'm currently reading On The Road - Jack Kerouac (i can never spell his last name correctly). So far I love it. It makes me want to become a penniless wanderer.

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  2. If you like the Harry Potter series, you should definitely read Tolkien. I would start with The Hobbit, then move on to the Ring series.

    Also, To Kill a Mockingbird is absolutely WONDERFUL.

    So is anything by John Steinbeck. Cannery Row is my favorite, but The Grapes of Wrath is pretty great, too.

    Jane Austen is fabulous. Sense and Sensibility is my favorite of hers.

    And The Great Gatsby is SO SO SO SO good, especially because it still seems really relevant today.

    Yay for books!


    (The Pillars of the Earth is really fun, too, but it's long and is best when you can read it in long chunks. Not little bits at a time.)

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  3. I love books, too!! I wish I had more time to read though!!

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  4. That's a great list. I find that I have so many I want to read I will never catch up :) But at least I will never run out of ideas of books to read.

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