Books, Books and more Books

After talking to a friend, I decided that I needed to read more of the "classic" novels. Don't get me wrong, I do love many of the classic authors; Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Edith Warton, etc., as well as the not so "classical" authors like JRR Tolkein, JK Rowling, etc. I finally came to the conclusion, mostly for bragging rights and to make myself feel like a smart academic type individual, that I would read those other snooty classic books that I have wanted to read but never quite get around to it.

My first step was to go to google search. Is there any other place to start? From there, I downloaded "100 Books You'll Never Read" and "100 Books to Read Before You Die." There's a pretty good variety listed on these, and there are a lot of duplicates on the list which makes it a great way to kill 2 birds with one stone. I've slowly been picking away at it for the last two months and have gotten a few kicked off the list. Fortunately, there really are a lot of good books listed that I never knew about. So here is the list I am working from, with my personal opinion on what I have done to this point. If anyone would like to join in on this little escapade, feel free. I also discovered a great online website in which you can download books for free on the internet. Those books available are past their copyright date, but then again so are most of the books on this list. Needless to say if you have the internet and the library has a waiting list, it's a nice alternative. How many can you read?
 
100 Books You'll Never Read

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin --- Love it! Very witty!
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien --- Difficult read. Really liked it.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte --One of my favorite book!
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling - Read series twice. Need I say more?
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - A must read. Fantastic!
6. The Bible - forever in the process
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Dark and totally depressing. Really enjoyed it.
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Love it. Not easiest read, but doable.
11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott - started 3 times, but can't get past chapter 2.
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -Not a happy story. Strangely really liked it.
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare --There's a lot of good stuff.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkein --- Easy read. Very fun.
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger --Not a huge fan of this one.
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - Geroge Eliot
21. Gone with the Wind -Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald --- Not a fan of this one.
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshed Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - Very intense read. So much to take out of the story. Like it.
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Weird. Someone was on drugs when they wrote this.
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -Children's story. Loved it!
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - A must read. .
34. Emma - Jane Austen - Good but not my favorite Jane Austen story.
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen - Same as Emma. 
36. the Lion, The Witch and the Wartdrobe - CS Lewis - Fantastic.
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - Amazing & heartbreaking. Fantastic book, but won't read again.
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geishe - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell --- Disturbing political parallel. Worth the read.
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown --- Really like it. Good read.
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins --- Great story! A bit slow in the beginning, but good read.
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far from the Maddening Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood --- Disturbing to me. Not sure if I liked it or not.
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding --- Creepy disturbing and strangely fascinating.
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan - didn't get past chapter 4.
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel --- Disturbing. Interesting, but not a fan of the book overall.
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53, Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen --- Great book!
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - Beautiful Love story. Tough read, but worth it.
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck --- Oh so good.
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. the Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -- Really liked it. Different concept. Very interesting.
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -Very dark. Very good.
66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jone's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville --- not looking forward to this one.
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ---- Eh. Okay.
72. Dracula - Bram Stocker --- Fast read. Exciting. Good read.
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett --- Wonderful story. Easy read.
74. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath --- Very interesting.
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackerary
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens --- Worth the read.
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. the Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Webb - EB White --- Yes. Easy read and good story. Still don't like spiders though.
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mithc Albom --- So Great! Wonderful story & an easy read
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle --- still picking at this one.
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad --- Couldn't get past chapter 2. Bored!
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - Williams Shakespeare --- My favorite Shakespeare story.
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo --- So amazing. A must read!
                 
                       Total count so far 40/100

100 Books to read Before you Die
1. The Karamozov Brothers - Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. Animal Farm - George Orwell - Disturbing political parallel. Worth the read.
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
4. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Not a fan of this one.
5. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
6. The Odyssey - Homer - Slept through this one.
7. The Illiad of Homer - Homer
8. The Grapes Of Wrath - John Steinbeck - Very intense read. Like it.
9. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
10. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
11. Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo --- Not a happy story. Pretty good read.
12. Emma - Jane Austen - Pretty good. Not my favorite Jane Austen story.
13. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
14. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx
15. Wide Sargasson Sea - Jean Rhys
16. Story of the Eye - georges Bataille
17. Invisible Man - HG Wells --- I really hated this book. Maybe you would feel differently.
18. Spy in the House of Love - Anais Nin
19. Lady Chatterly's Lover - DH Lawrence
20. Venus in Furs - Leopold Van Sacher-masoch
21. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
22. Diamonds are Forever - Ian Fleming
23. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
24. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
25. A Room with a View - EM Forster
26. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Dark and totally depressing. Really enjoyed it.
27. Don Juan - Lord George Gordon Byron -- Not a fan of this one. Found it really boring.
28. Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford
29. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
30. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
31. Middlemarch - George Eliot
32. She: A Might History of Adventure - H Rider Haggard
33. The Fight - Norman Mailer
34. No Easy Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela
35. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck --- Oh so good.
36. The Age of Innocence - Edith Warton --- Totally depressing as always. So good.
37. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
38. The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens - Really really liked this one. Easy read for Charles Dickens.
39. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Lewis Stevenson --- Good story.
40. Dracula - Bram Stoker --- Fast read. Exciting. Good.
41. Frankenstein - Mary Shelly --- Found it interesting. Not what I was expecting.
42. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole --- Fast ready. Good story.
43. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
44. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
45. Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
46. Baby Doll - Tennessee Williams
47. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
48. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Go
49. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
50. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
51. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll --- Again, someone on drugs when writing this.
52. Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
53. the Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer --- Hard read. Glad it's over.
54. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
55. The Beautiful and the Damned - F Scott Fitzgerald
56. Against Nature - Joris Karl Huysmans
57. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
58. The Outsider - Albert Camus
59. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo --- So amazing. A must read!
60. The Time Machine - HG Wells --- Short read. Good story. Very interesting.
61. The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
62. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
63. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
64. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
65. Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga - Hunter S. Thompson
66. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens --- Beautiful Love story. Tough read, but worth it.
67. Another Country - James Baldwin
68. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
69. Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk - William s Burroughs
70. The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins --- Great mystery story. Really liked it.
71. Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas D Quincy --- Eh. Okay. Didn't love it.
72. Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac
73. Monsieur Monde Vanishes - George Simenon
74. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
75. The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey
76. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
77. Bound for Glory - Woody Guthrie
78. Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
79. Maigret and the Ghost - Georges Simenon
80. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins --- Great story! A bit slow in the beginning, but good read.
81. The Big Sleep - raymond Chandler
82. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle --- Good story. Too bad it knocks on the mormons!
83. The Thirty Nine Steps - John Buchan
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. Therese Raquin - Amile Zola
86. Les Liaisons Dangereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Lao
87. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne --- Didn't love it.
88. I, Claudius - Robert Graves
89. Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton
90. The Beggar's Opera - John Gay
91. The Twelve Ceasars - Suetonius
92. Guys and Dolls -
93. Treasure Island - Robert Lewis Stevenson --- Classic boy adventure. Good read.
94. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas --- Very dark. Very good.
95. From Russia with Love - Ian Fleming
96. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
97. The Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith
98. Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
99. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
100. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

              Total  Count   28/100