Book Meme
As swiped from Lady Strange. . .
These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise that you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
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 *
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’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 haven’t even heard of many of these books…
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I love these types of memes. I’ve just swiped it from you! I’ve heard of most of them but haven’t read a lot.
I’ve not heard of many of these modern literature books myself. Ah, I am still a medievalist at heart. The non-fiction books I cited as read (partially or completely) on my list are there due to coursework. I had to read excerpts of Freakonomics for the MA, and the rest I thought were vaguely philosophical… but they fell short.
Isabelle - that’s because a lot of the newer fiction isn’t as well written as the classics. ;)
Some of the more modern ones I had only heard of because of when I used to make sure the stacks were organized in the library. Court, I have to admit I’m surprised at some of these you haven’t read because they seem like something you would read. ;)
HEY!! Well, I think that The Vampire Lestat can be read on its own, however there are some refernces for Interview, that might confuse you if it has been a long time since you read it. So really it’s up to you!
Thanks for reading my blog!!!!!!
Lisa - Now I feel all ashamed, haha! :)
Ally Kat - Thanks, I’ll definitely keep that in mind when I’m in the mood for some Anne Rice. :)
Court, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it that way! The books I thought you would’ve read were: 1984 & Dune. 1984 because you’ve read A Brave New World multiple times. I enjoyed both so you might like it. Dune, well, I don’t know why…it just seems like something you’d love. ;)
btw and sort of OT: Grapes of Wrath takes place in the valley I live in and explains what I mean when I talk about Okies.
Lisa - haha, it’s okay, don’t be sorry. :) I think a lot of the English classes at my hs read 1984, but for some reason I never did. Maybe I’ll have to.
There are 15 I can be sure I’ve read, and a goodly handful more I have a feeling I read during school and just don’t remember well enough to be sure of. Other than that, though… well, I’ll shamefacedly admit I’ve always been more attracted to genre books than the classics.
Heather - I have to admit that until about 3 or 4 years ago, the only classics I had read were onces I was forced to in high school. I hated them all and thus thought ALL classics were horrid. Thankfully, Jane Austen came along about then. :)
Hi Court - Thank you for stopping by and letting me know about Libba Bray’s second book. I really want to read it and it’s high on my list.
By the way, cool meme. If I get a chance I may have to do it too.
I’m surprised by how many of these I’ve read and just as many that I’ve never heard of.
That was fun! I’d steal it and “play” too, if I wouldn’t be so embarrassed at how few I’d actually read.
I’ve done this one, too. I have lots that are books I own and not yet read! Like you there were a few I’d never heard of (and was too lazy to go and look up–very bad of me).
[...] as of the date when this was started. The earliest I could find was a post from October 1st at Once Upon a Booshelf, saying the meme had been found at Lady Strange. I couldn’t find, it there though.) I myself [...]