Monday, March 10, 2014

I Love A Good List

This blog is stealing a page from another blog I follow.  I'm about to share with you a list from the Listopia section of Goodreads.

Have I mentioned how much I love Goodreads?  It's my couch potato equivalent of going to the bookstore.  Don't get me wrong, nothing could compare with actually being inside a bookstore, but when I can't leave home, Goodreads it is!

Goodreads holds my lists of what I've read and what I want to read.  That "want to read" list grows exponentially faster than the "read" list, but I push on.  Other features that I adore are the "giveaway" books.  There are literally hundreds of books being given away by the authors and publishers.  I've won a few in my time. It's fun. Who can resist a free book?  Then there is the Listopia feature.

You would think that loving to read as much as I do and having hundreds of unread books right here in my home that I would have a "next in line" stack of books that I automatically pick the next one from.  Not so.  I never know what kind of book I'm going to want to read next so I don't even try.  But  Listopia has every kind of list imaginable and it's an awesome way to discover what's next.

It's also a place to find if I measure up.  Okay, I admit it - I have no idea who's standard I am measuring up to or why I even care, but it's kind of fun.  I suspect that this list of 100 Books That Everyone Should Read At Least Once is a compilation made by popular vote.  Let's see how I fare.

Again, drawing my inspiration from that other blogger, I will draw a line through the books I have read.  An asterisk indicates it's on my "want to read" list.

 100 Books That Everyone Should Read At Least Once (according to Goodreads Listopia)
  1. To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
  2.  1984 by George Orwell
  3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*
  4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
  5. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
  6. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  7. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (I have no intention of ever reading this)
  8. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger*
  9. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  10. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald*
  11. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
  12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte*
  13. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
  14. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (I have no intention of ever reading this)
  15. Lord of the Flies by William Golding* (This was assigned reading in HS but I don't think I ever finished it.  I want to go back and read it)
  16. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury*
  17. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
  18. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
  19. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
  20. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  21. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
  22. The Giver by Lois Lowry
  23. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  24. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (I probably have read at least Wonderland)
  25. Night by Elie Wiesel
  26. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  27. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  28. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte*
  29. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  30. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell*
  31. Holy Bible: King James Version
  32. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (I'm sure we read at least parts of this in school)
  33. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
  34. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde*
  35. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
  36. Brave New World/Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
  37. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  38. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (I have no intention of ever reading this)
  39. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
  40. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
  41. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
  42. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  43. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
  44. The Odyssey by Homer
  45. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  46. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
  47. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
  48. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  49. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
  50. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  51. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (I'm sure we read at least parts of this in school)
  52. Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss
  53. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck*
  54. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery*
  55. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  56. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens*
  57. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A.Milne (I still have my mother's book given to her in 1927)
  58. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
  59. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  60. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
  61. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini*
  62. Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
  63. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
  64. Life of Pi by Yann Martel*
  65. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  66. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  67. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  68. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
  69. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne*
  70. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  71. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  72. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
  73. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  74. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R.Tolkien (I have no intention of ever reading this)
  75. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  76. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
  77. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
  78. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  79. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  80. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
  81. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  82. The Little House Collection (1-9) by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  83. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  84. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith*
  85. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  86. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  87. The Book of Mormon: Another testament of Jesus Christ by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  88. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  89. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  90. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  91. The Stand by Stephen King
  92. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
  93. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
  94. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver*
  95. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
  96. The Quran
  97. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  98. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
  99. The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom*
  100. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Now that I've copied the first 100 books of this list onto my blog I see that it was created in 2008. Not that it matters as it appears that it's being added to and voted on still to date.   

36 of 100 is my count of the books I have read.  18 more are already on my list of "to read."  You may have noticed that I marked a couple as NEVER!  This is because I've tried to read Tolkien and just couldn't get into it.  And Les Miserables?  Not a chance.  There are definitely others that I'm sure will never be on my list but those just are so far off the radar for me, I had to note it. 

5 comments:

  1. This list differs a little...I had only read 33 on this one. :)

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  2. You are so funny Betsy! Not only do we like the same type of books, you and I BOTH refuse to read the LOTR books! My husband and daughter love, love, love them but I tried "The Hobbit" years ago and couldn't get through it. Thanks for all of your insight and recommendations about other books. You're a great source (as if my "to read" list needed any more on it, though!)

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    Replies
    1. Sadly, I've missed reviewing a few that I've read recently. If I don't review them right away I forget too much of the story to go back and review it later. Truth. I hate when that happens.

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  3. I've read 43 and parts of some others. I don't agree with all of the titles on this list...I would replace a few with better, more meaningful (at least IMHO) books.

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