Biston Betularia ([info]pepperedmoth) wrote,
@ 2008-06-30 20:47:00
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Entry tags:books, memes

Books, books, books.
I couldn't possibly be as bookish as I am and NOT do this. With commentary, of course.

"The premise... is that the average person hasn't read more'n six of these. As one or more of my flist have said, haven't most people been to high school?"

"Bold the ones you've read.
Italics for the ones you intend to read.
Underline the ones you loved.
Strikeout the ones you hated."

This is a pretty eclectic bunch . . . my goodness. I have read many more than six.



1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen- Loved it, also love Colin Firth. 'Nuff said.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien- I don't care if it's been overdone, I don't care if it's now hip, I don't care if Orlando Bloom can't act- I read this trilogy three times by age 15 and loved it every time.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte- Liked it better as a youngster when the romance seemed less improbable. Also, the saintly girl at the prep school rings a lot less true as I age . . .
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling Okay, but not nearly as good as many other works of children's fantasy. (Come on, Susan Cooper? SO MUCH BETTER!)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee- The book is amazing. Also, I love Gregory Peck.
6 The Bible I don't think 'love' is exactly the right word when it comes to the Bible.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman The first book was excellent; the next two fell down.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens- Was forced through this in high school. Ugh. I am trying to like Dickens again by reading the Pickwick Papers. We shall see.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Of course I love it. My ninth grade teacher told me I was just like Rosalind. One of my few stage appearances was as a dead body in Macbeth!
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien- My favorite part is the riddle scene. I had a cassette with the author reading that bit . . .
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karennina- Leo Tolstoy- Okay, I'm halfway through, but I like it very much, indeed.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Oh, come on. The Chronicles of Narnia is already up here!
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini- I love stories of redemption.
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne If I were a bear, and a big bear too, I wouldn't care if it rained or snew!
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell- Some animals are more equal than others.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery- Story of my life.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood- used to love it. It's probably her best work, which isn't saying THAT much.
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan- As above, I really like stories of redemption. Plus, the main character is a nurse. Saw the movie (not great, but I liked the premise), now want to read the book (heard it was better).
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons- If sevenravens liked it, I bet I will, too.
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen- The first Jane Austen I ever read. I laughed out loud through most of it. And I relate to Elinor, too.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens- If I can ever get over my distaste for Dickens, I want to read about an evil knitter!
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
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy: Having hated Tess, and only slightly less hated Return of the Native, I have no intention of reading anything else by him.
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville- Rob really loves this book, and I've read interesting things about the symbolism employed.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson- As a child I preferred A Little Princess; as an adult I prefer The Secret Garden
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray- All right, I'm in the middle of it.
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens- My favorite bit of Dickens so far.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert- Didn't like it in High School- might enjoy it now.
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White- Liked it very much, though I also liked Trumpet of the Swan better.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- Love, love, love these stories.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton- Yep, and I've also read the Mr. Pinkwhistle books, and there was another series, too . . . The Faraway Tree was the best of the bunch, though.
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery- I've even read it in the French.
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 - William Shakespeare: See "The Complete Works of Shakespeare," above. I particularly love the relationship between Hamlet and Horatio.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl- I liked The Witches better, and his memoir, Boy, best of all.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo- All of it in English, and large parts of it in French. Also, I have the musical almost memorized.


Final count: 48 (NOT 68 as previously posted- jeepers, where'd I get THAT number?) read, 6 more I'd like to read. Wow. So: of those I haven't read, and haven't already indicated I'd like to, which would you recommend?


(Post a new comment)


[info]gorillapotter
2008-06-30 04:25 am UTC (link)
A Town Like Alice. Seriously. It's one of my absolute favorites.
You'd like Cold Comfort Farm, too. It's funny and self-aware.

It depends why you dislike Dickens which of his you should read. His books vary widely. Bleak House is awesome in terms of language, and his girl heroine isn't insipid for a change. But it's long and dense. A Tale of Two Cities doesn't really read like Dickens--a quicker read with less digressions. My personal favorite is Nicholas Nickleby, because our hero is both dashing and kind--and reasonably intelligent! And his sister is cool too. It's a pretty quick read as well (for Dickens--all things being relative). I have started Pickwick Papers several times, thinking that I might have grown into them, and because some characters in a book I read (can't remember which) seemed to enjoy them so much. I can't get into them at all. I'd suggest trying something else for Dickens. Even Oliver Twist--the story is shorter, and the auxiliary characters are reasonably entertaining. Not The Old Curiosity Shop, though, unless you're going to read it aloud and do MST3K on it. It would probably be good for that. But then, I think that almost everybody's experience/view of Dickens is a little different.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]pepperedmoth
2008-06-30 07:13 pm UTC (link)
It's the characters in Little Women who loved the Pickwick Papers so much- that's one of the reasons I hoped I'd like them!

Thanks for the Dickens recommendations. I struggle through because he's so bloody verbose, and the stories are wildly tangential. Maybe I'll try Bleak House if I can't get into the Pickwick Papers.

Oh, and I'll definitely try A Town Like Alice!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]silverjay
2008-06-30 11:57 am UTC (link)
Only 47 on my list, but several are different from yours. I think you would enjoy The Time Traveler's Wife - if I have it around I'll set it aside for you. The Color Purple, though not my favorite on the list, is also a powerful read that you would probably enjoy.

Of the wide variety of Dickens I was force fed throughout school, A Tale of Two Cities was my favorite. Typically, I thoroughly dislike Dickens, so saying that is somewhat difficult to admit. I am uncertain how you would feel about it based on your list, but yes, evil knitting is pretty interesting. :)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]pepperedmoth
2008-06-30 07:15 pm UTC (link)
I'm uncertain about The Time Traveler's Wife, only because another friend of mine read it and rather disliked it, or at least hated the ending. However, she did say it was worth reading, so maybe next time we get together you can bring it along!

Hmm. There seems to be a theme of recommending A Tale of Two Cities. I admit I've started it before, but never finished. Maybe I'll try it after Bleak House?

Thanks for the recommendations!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]nerissarain
2008-06-30 01:46 pm UTC (link)
Just on a scan through I think I've only read about 12 of these all the way through... with smatterings of others, and I own a number of them that I haven't read yet (largely the more "classics" ones)... hm... should remedy that.

(Reply to this)


[info]nerissarain
2008-06-30 01:48 pm UTC (link)
Oh, and I'd also recommend the Time Traveler's Wife, it's a good book.
... wonder if my lack of having read the Dickens or Austen is because I went to such a unique high school.... must be it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]pepperedmoth
2008-06-30 07:18 pm UTC (link)
You should try Jane Austen! The two that most people really enjoy are Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and either is a good place to start. I very much like Persuasion, as well. Emma and Mansfield Park were OK, and I would have liked Northanger Abbey a great deal more if I'd actually read the type of gothic novel Austen was parodying . . .

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]koffilnmeined
2008-07-02 01:12 am UTC (link)
"Catcher in the Rye" I heartily recommend, though it may be over-hyped.

"Catch-22", depends on your sense of humor.

"On the Road" I found worth the read because of the style in which it was written, which isn't necessarily good, but is definitely interesting (he was all drugged up and wrote it in like a week...).

"Heart of Darkness" I personally found difficult to read, but it IS a good story. (The edition I read also contained a novella called "The Secret Sharer" which I probably enjoyed more.)

Haven't read "the Count of Monte Cristo", but I do recommend Dumas' "The Black Tulip" very highly. "Castle Eppstein" was also worth a read, although that was some years ago, so I don't remember it too well.

"Moby Dick" I have yet to finish, because of lengthy passages describing whaling in what I found at the time to be extremely boring detail. I may give it another try eventually...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]pepperedmoth
2008-07-03 07:23 pm UTC (link)
Catcher in the Rye was the favorite of my best friend when I was growing up, but I had such a difficult time relating to Holden Caulfield that I gave it up early on. Not because I wasn't angry and rebellious in high school, not because he's male (I don't find it difficult to relate to male protagonists), just because I didn't like him.

I've also tried On the Road, and gave it up due to the writing style, I think. It was a long time ago.

Mm, yeah, I should try Dumas, in general. I think I'd like him, it's just that my reading list is always SO LONG!

Thanks for the tips.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
books
(Anonymous)
2009-02-05 12:10 am UTC (link)
Hi! You don't know me, but I found your blog from the MEPN entries. I am a recent applicant to UVM's program...still haven't heard back....but anyway, I continued reading some of your posts and I wanted to suggest "the count of monte cristo." I loved this book and surprisingly the movie was fantastic as well. Happy reading!

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: books
[info]pepperedmoth
2009-02-05 09:12 pm UTC (link)
Good luck applying! I myself was wait-listed.

I should read the Count of Monte Cristo, you are right. Perhaps when I'm done with all this homework I am procrastinating!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: books
(Anonymous)
2009-02-09 02:03 am UTC (link)
Hi, I'm still waiting on UVM.....i'm getting so anxious about whether I'll get in and if I do, will I be able to afford it :( ...or even make it through the first year! Yipes! In complete honesty, how "intense" was the first year? did you have any free time? Is a part-time job completely out of the question? Do you enjoy the MS portion better? Sorry for inundating you with all of these questions, but it is so hard to find info on UVM's program.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: books
[info]pepperedmoth
2009-02-10 01:25 pm UTC (link)
It's okay! I don't mind questions, and I remember being frustrated at the lack of information, too. The first year was very intense, yes, but most of us (including me) did have part time jobs. We also had several single moms who obviously spent a lot of time on outside commitments, and I had enough free time to meet my fiance and get engaged . . . so it's not all work!

I do enjoy the MS portion of the program much more (especially this second semester), and being able to work as an RN at the same time is rewarding.

Good luck- keep me updated!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: books
(Anonymous)
2009-02-12 08:10 pm UTC (link)
Congrats on your engagement! :) How exciting!
Thanks for your response. This was truly a relief to hear that people do have lives outside of the program and are able to work part-time and/or continue to be good parents. I have a great job right now that would allow me to work part-time and keep my awesome health insurance. I have been wait listed....so I should find out some time after March 1st. Are you continuing the program full-time or part-time as you work as an RN? Do you feel that the program gave you a good basis to become a nurse? How are the vibes towards masters entry prepared RN's?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: books
[info]pepperedmoth
2009-02-18 12:21 pm UTC (link)
These reply columns are getting so skinny! Next time comment on a new entry, and then it'll be easier to read.

I'm in the program full-time while I work full time. I feel that the program prepared me pretty well for the floor- I am doing no better or worse than other new grads that I see around me! We have plenty of clinicals, just spread over a shorter time span. Vibes toward me were relatively negative at first, but have vastly improved as I do my best to be friendly and fit the RN role.
Good luck on the wait list! Everyone seems to be wait-listed . . ..

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