I wasn't tagged for this, but what the hell. I was an English major; I love to read; and this is about books. The ones I've read are in bold, the ones I'd like to read are highlighted. I did make one modification: for the sake of space, any book I haven't heard of I took out. Fr. Erik has the full list.
1. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Hated it when I had to read it in high school, loved it when I read it later as a mature adult. Could care less that Mark Twain hated Jane Austen's writings, even though I really like Mark Twain.
2. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lost count of the number of times I have read this at about 35. The movies drove me nuts because of all the deviations from plot and characters.
3. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. Read it and appreciated it more in adulthood than during my kid years, but it is still quite a dark story.
4. J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter series. Haven't read them, don't particularly want to.
5. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird. Loved this when I was a kid, though I haven't read it for years and years.
6. The Bible. If I haven't read it, I'm in a lot of trouble.
7. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is a sociopath.
8. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four. Had to read it in junior high. Every kid should have to read it in junior high.
9. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
10. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women.
11. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Angel Clare, like others of Hardy's characters, is a dink.
12. Joseph Heller, Catch 22.
13. Complete Works of Shakespeare. I have read from them; not read all of them.
14. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca.
15. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit. Of course!
16. J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye. Read it in high school. Hated it. Found it tawdry and sordid.
17. George Eliot, Middlemarch.
18. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind. I think the movie was enough for me.
19. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Read it in high school. Jazz Age sophisticates making a complete hash out of life for themselves and others.
20. Charles Dickens, Bleak House. Though I like Dickens, I haven't read this one.
21. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace. The length of the book doesn't deter me; just haven't got a huge desire to read it.
22. Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Read this in college (not on the reading list, just wanted to). I don't remember much about it except that it was quite funny.
23. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited.
24. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment. Just haven't got the urge to read Russian novelists.
25. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Read it in high school; found it and all the other works of John Steinbeck that I had to read depressing.
26. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland. Never saw the movie, either.
27. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows. Tried to read it, couldn't get into it.
28. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Once again, just not into Russian novelists.
29. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield. Read it in adulthood and found it excellent.
30. C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia. Nope, haven't read it, though I like C.S. Lewis.
31. Jane Austen, Emma. One of these days, I hope to get around to reading this, as I really like Jane Austin.
32. Jane Austen, Persuasion. Haven't read the book, but I really liked the movie with Ann Rice and Ciaran Hinds.
33. Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha. Zero desire.
34. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh. Never read this. Did read the Raggedy Ann books.
35. George Orwell, Animal Farm. Four legs good, two legs better!
36. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code. I saw the movie, and it was crap. That was enough of a waste of money.
37. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White. The only thing I really know about Wilkie Collins is that Mark Twain once upbraided him for praising James Fenimore Cooper, which frankly, he deserved.
38. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. Never read the books, saw the miniseries.
39. Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd. Thomas Hardy wasted enough of my time with Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure for me to want to read any more of his stuff.
40. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale. I actually had to read this in (Catholic) high school. I wasn't old enough to read it then, and I'm still not old enough to read it now.
41. William Golding, Lord of the Flies. Zero desire.
42. Frank Herbert, Dune. Saw the movies, of course.
43. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility. Excellent book; the movie wasn't so bad either, even though Emma Thompson was a little long in the tooth to be playing Eleanor.
44. Charles Dickens, A Tale Of Two Cities. Another excellent Dickens classic.
45. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. I'm very much afraid there are a lot of people who would like to live in it.
50. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men. Read it in high school; hated it (see The Grapes of Wrath above).
51. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita. I couldn't have put it better than Fr. Richsteig: "I avoid porn even when it masquarades as literature."
52. Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo. I tried to read this after reading The Three Musketeers, but failed.
53. Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure. Had to read this for my Victorian Lit class in college. Couldn't stand it. Was especially maddened by the fact that I was being propped up to sympathize with complete morons who were presented to me as tragic-romantic heroes, when what they really were was arrantly stupid.
54. Herman Melville, Moby Dick. No real motivation to read it.
55. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist. Read and enjoyed it in adulthood.
56. Bram Stoker, Dracula. Vampires really aren't my bag.
57. Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden.
58. James Joyce, Ulysses. I think I had to read this in high school, but I remember nothing of it.
59. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. No desire.
60. William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair.
61. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Who hasn't seen one of the many movie adaptations? But oddly enough, I have never actually read the book.
62. Alice Walker, The Color Purple. Pure filth.
63. Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day. Saw the movie, never read the book. Thought the characters in the movie were too stupid for me to want to read the book.
64. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary. Read it in high school. Hated it, notwithstanding Flaubert's le mot juste.
65. E.B. White, Charlotte's Web. Loved this so much as a kid, and read it so many times, my parents tried to take it away from me.
66. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Some of my absolute favorite bedtime reading -- I actually have a volume of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories. My five favorites: The Hound of the Baskervilles; The Sign of Four; "The Musgrave Ritual"; "The Adventure of the Priory School"; "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton".
67. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Just have no desire.
68. Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.
69. Richard Adams, Watership Down. No desire.
70. Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers. Read this in adulthood; actually had to labor to get through it.
71. Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Never had a desire to read this.
72. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables. Never read the book, never saw the play.
73 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Who didn't have to read this in high school?
Anybody who wants to be tagged, go for it. (I'm sure somebody I know would have a different list.)
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