106 books of pretension meme 26 Apr 2008 Like Lynch, here is “the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users.” So what I’ve read is in italics, what I never finished is struck through: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Anna Karenina Crime and Punishment Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude Wuthering Heights The Silmarillion Life of Pi: a novel The Name of the Rose Don Quixote Moby Dick Ulysses Madame Bovary The Odyssey Pride and Prejudice Jane Eyre The Tale of Two Cities The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler’s Wife The Iliad Emma The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner Mrs. Dalloway Great Expectations American Gods A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Atlas Shrugged Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex Quicksilver Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West The Canterbury tales 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 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 Tess of the D’Urbervilles Oliver Twist Gulliver’s Travels Les Misérables 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 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Beloved Slaughterhouse-five The Scarlet Letter Eats, Shoots & Leaves The Mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake: a novel Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed 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 In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences White Teeth Treasure Island David Copperfield The Three Musketeers I never could read Dickens or Tolstoy. 53 read. I must be very pretentious. Administrative
Administrative Month first line meme 6 Dec 200818 Sep 2017 Bora made me do it… first line of the first post of each month the year. It doesn’t quite read like a dadaist poem. January: OK, so the next door party finished about 1.30, but the family disputes finished about 5 am, so instead of thinking, I’m going to let… Read More
Administrative 106 books meme 3 Oct 2007 I do these things to (a) impress you all (if I can), (b) get a crossbearing on whether I’m actually part of this culture I find myself inside of, and (c) see if there are any other books I ought to have read. Like my source, Live Granades, I bold… Read More
Administrative Five-fiftysix meme 1 Dec 2008 New: Solutions listed Mike Dunford, who is still trying to get me to pay for that time he put me up in Hawaii when his wife was on active service in Iraq (if I knew what I’d have to pay, both in climbing horrific rainforested slopes to release wallabies, and… Read More
Anything by Umberto Eco that is fiction is worth a read. Anything by Neil Gaiman. Neal Stephenson’s trilogy is great (to a philosopher and historian of science).
um, you do remember that I got this one from you in the first place, right? “h/t: the silverback” means, un, Snowflake. just sayin’ http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/10/106_books_meme.php
Completely off topic for all those who have played Mornington Crescent here; the train has finally reach its destination, Humph has died. The world has definitely become a poorer and sadder place.
Hey, I truly recommend “A confederacy of Dunces”, just for the protagonist’s bizarre world-view. Oh yeah, and for Burma Jones.
Odd, like you I’ve read most of these (not all the same ones though); though never managed to finish War and Peace. I’ll have to have a look at the ones I haven’t read. Of the ones you’ve read which would you rate as worth a peruse? I’ve read all the Dicken’s, actually enjoyed some of them. ———— Middlemarch is dire, though the TV adaptation is bearable. The Silmarillion I really liked. It is, I suspect, only for die-hard LOTR fans. Don Quixote, I’m suprised you haven’t read this. Takes a while to get into. The Satanic Verses, no no no. An poorly constructed tale by an overrated scribbler.
Odd, like you I’ve read most of these (not all the same ones though); though never managed to finish War and Peace. I’ll have to have a look at the ones I haven’t read. Of the ones you’ve read which would you rate as worth a peruse? I’ve read all the Dicken’s, actually enjoyed some of them. ———— Middlemarch is dire, though the TV adaptation is bearable. The Silmarillion I really liked. It is, I suspect, only for die-hard LOTR fans. Don Quixote, I’m suprised you haven’t read this. Takes a while to get into. The Satanic Verses, no no no. An poorly constructed tale by an overrated scribbler.
Odd, like you I’ve read most of these (not all the same ones though); though never managed to finish War and Peace. I’ll have to have a look at the ones I haven’t read. Of the ones you’ve read which would you rate as worth a peruse? I’ve read all the Dicken’s, actually enjoyed some of them. ———— Middlemarch is dire, though the TV adaptation is bearable. The Silmarillion I really liked. It is, I suspect, only for die-hard LOTR fans. Don Quixote, I’m suprised you haven’t read this. Takes a while to get into. The Satanic Verses, no no no. An poorly constructed tale by an overrated scribbler.
Odd, like you I’ve read most of these (not all the same ones though); though never managed to finish War and Peace. I’ll have to have a look at the ones I haven’t read. Of the ones you’ve read which would you rate as worth a peruse? I’ve read all the Dicken’s, actually enjoyed some of them. ———— Middlemarch is dire, though the TV adaptation is bearable. The Silmarillion I really liked. It is, I suspect, only for die-hard LOTR fans. Don Quixote, I’m suprised you haven’t read this. Takes a while to get into. The Satanic Verses, no no no. An poorly constructed tale by an overrated scribbler.
Chris’Wills wrote: The Satanic Verses, no no no. An (sic) poorly constructed tale by an overrated scribbler. How tastes differ, a superb book by an excellent author! The Erudite Ape wrote: Anything by Umberto Eco that is fiction is worth a read Almost anything! I found Baudolino boring and didn’t finish it, a first for a novel by Eco. I have read forty of the list and finished all but one, halfway through the Molly Bloom soliloquy at the end of Ulysses I changed into skim modus just to finish it. What interests me as somebody who considers himself widely read and well informed is how many of these books I have never heard of.
Chris’Wills wrote: The Satanic Verses, no no no. An (sic) poorly constructed tale by an overrated scribbler. How tastes differ, a superb book by an excellent author! The Erudite Ape wrote: Anything by Umberto Eco that is fiction is worth a read Almost anything! I found Baudolino boring and didn’t finish it, a first for a novel by Eco. I have read forty of the list and finished all but one, halfway through the Molly Bloom soliloquy at the end of Ulysses I changed into skim modus just to finish it. What interests me as somebody who considers himself widely read and well informed is how many of these books I have never heard of.
Thony C. How tastes differ, a superb book by an excellent author! Well “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” is pleasant/interesting so perhaps calling him a scribbler is a bit strong. “Midnight’s Children” was also worth reading and I have “The Enchantress of Florence” in the pile of unread books, perhaps on the next visit home I’ll read it. So many books, so little time.
Thony C. How tastes differ, a superb book by an excellent author! Well “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” is pleasant/interesting so perhaps calling him a scribbler is a bit strong. “Midnight’s Children” was also worth reading and I have “The Enchantress of Florence” in the pile of unread books, perhaps on the next visit home I’ll read it. So many books, so little time.
Thony C. How tastes differ, a superb book by an excellent author! Well “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” is pleasant/interesting so perhaps calling him a scribbler is a bit strong. “Midnight’s Children” was also worth reading and I have “The Enchantress of Florence” in the pile of unread books, perhaps on the next visit home I’ll read it. So many books, so little time.
Thony C. How tastes differ, a superb book by an excellent author! Well “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” is pleasant/interesting so perhaps calling him a scribbler is a bit strong. “Midnight’s Children” was also worth reading and I have “The Enchantress of Florence” in the pile of unread books, perhaps on the next visit home I’ll read it. So many books, so little time.
I’m so glad you labeled this “106 books of pretension meme” rather than the “106 Great Books meme” which it was originally labeled. Pretension is right word here. I have to point out the appalling lack of multicultural representation in this list.
I remember trying to read The Corrections. I took it on vacation, read 300 pages, gave up and used it as a foot rest on the plane ride home. I remember reading James Joyce as well Homer in high school (a lifetime ago). I’ve read 43 books and many of the ones I have not read are sitting on my bookshelf. Someday I will be in the mood to read them. I highly recommend Kavalier and Clay. Michael Chabon certainly has a way with words.
I’ve recently finished “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” by Chabon. Different from anything else I’ve ever read. It’s a mystery, it’s speculative fiction (I won’t call it science fiction), it’s alternative history. It’s what if, what is, what could have been. Now I’m reading “Your Inner Fish”. Science – much neater, straightforward and easier to understand.
I whole-heartedly agree with #3: “A Confederacy of Dunces” is a must-read. Bizarre, twisted, hilarious, disturbing, and much more (and much less).
I whole-heartedly agree with #3: “A Confederacy of Dunces” is a must-read. Bizarre, twisted, hilarious, disturbing, and much more (and much less).
Wow! Having blogger’s block or something. Too Bad! And to segue to my comment: I have one of those things, too. What am I talking about? No, that’s ONE wrong: it isn’t an opinion. Nope, not an excuse, either. One more guess to go! I’ll give you a hint: I HAVE one, but you are acting like one. Ta!
Wow! Having blogger’s block or something. Too Bad! And to segue to my comment: I have one of those things, too. What am I talking about? No, that’s ONE wrong: it isn’t an opinion. Nope, not an excuse, either. One more guess to go! I’ll give you a hint: I HAVE one, but you are acting like one. Ta!
Almost anything! I found Baudolino boring and didn’t finish it, a first for a novel by Eco. How tastes differ indeed. I loved Baudolino. I was rather intrigued half way through as how they were going to translate it into English. His use and abuse of the Italian language is most deftly done.
I knew my favorite novel (Gravity’s Rainbow) would be on the list. Besides Gravity’s Rainbow, I’d recommend (those with asterisks particularly): Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude* The Name of the Rose Moby Dick Ulysses American Gods The Canterbury Tales A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* A Clockwork Orange One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest* Dune Angela’s Ashes : a memoir Dubliners Slaughterhouse-five* On the Road* I was very disappointed in A Confederacy of Dunces, and don’t see what all the fuss is about regarding A Catcher in the Rye.
Why is Guns, Germs, and Steel on this list? I was an avid reader of Natrural History magazine in the mid-80s through late 90s. The entire book had already been published in Natural History, and Marvin Harris’s Cannibals and Kings is a better read. I never finished GG&S because I had already read it in a bunch of short articles.
By that logic, Bacopa, you would never read Dickens or Twain, because they serialised most of their stories too, before they became books.
By that logic, Bacopa, you would never read Dickens or Twain, because they serialised most of their stories too, before they became books.
> Humph has died Oh noes! At least John won’t dare to censor us now, out of respect for the dead. Archway.
Dittos on “Confederacy of Dunces” – But… Oh! The Poisonwood Bible! I highly recommend, also “Prodigal’s Summer” (not on the list, but same author).
What! Lord of the Rings isn’t on the list? I admire you for not even attempting Angels and Demons; it was exactly like the Da Vinci Code but even more so. Two people at work are reading the Time Traveller’s Wife and both are complaining about how little happens in it (but they are still reading). Loved the Inferno but never really got into Purgatory. I suppose it is because hell is more fun?