Is it my fault that Barbara always posts the cool blog things before I discover them? And since Barbara and I have such similar tastes and interests, I'm always open to copying from her. This one's about books. Surprise!
Review the following list of books. Boldface the books you've read, italicize those you might read, cross out the ones you won't, put an asterisk beside the ones on your bookshelves, and place brackets around the ones you've never even heard of. (Except that I'm lame and can't figure out how to cross things out on this template. However, the alternate designation should be obvious.)
The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) - Crossed Out (see? I told you!) Call me the weaker brother (or sister), but I just can't see spending my time on something that I see as so anti what I believe. The same way I can't listen to Depeche Mode's Blasphemous Rumours. I can't separate myself from it enough to tolerate it.
*The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
*The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
*To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) But I prefer the alternate title, Tequila Mockingbird. If my dream ever comes true and I open a coffehouse/used bookstore, this is what it will be called. Maybe.
*The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman) I've heard lots of good about this series, so I may check it out someday...
*Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J. K. Rowling)
[The Life of Pi (Yann Martel)]
*Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (George Orwell)
*Catch 22 (Joseph Heller) I'm currently reading this one off and on. Though I've been off for so long I'll probably have to start over.
*The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien) I've really only read one part of this book so far, and it was the night I got to be the "Guest Reader" for my nieces, Morgan and Lindsay. I felt so famous!
[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon)] I know Barbara's going to kill me for saying I've never heard of this one.
*Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
*Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
*1984 (George Orwell) I was reading this until I discovered that my copy (bought at the LM library book sale) was missing the last I don't know how many pages.
*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J. K. Rowling)
*One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) So, so good! "The world is round, like an orange!"
Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
[The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)]
The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold) Borrowed it from a friend, such a weird story. Very creepy.
Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut) Barbara, you're forgiven. I've stopped having nightmares. Now I'm having nightmares about the war scenes in Correlli's Mandolin (book's way better than the movie, by the way. If you read the book you don't have to endure Penelope Cruz's and Nicolas Cage's horrible fake accents).
[The Secret History (Donna Tartt)]
*Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
*The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)
[Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)]
[Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)]
*Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
*Atonement (Ian McEwan) This book is worth it for its use of descriptive language alone. If anyone could ever create a whole mood in one word, it's McEwan.
[The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)]
*The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway) You just have to be in the right mood for Hemingway, you know? And that mood hits me roughly once every 7 years.
The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath) I've always wanted to read this and just haven't gotten to it somehow.
[Dune (Frank Herbert)]
Sula (Toni Morrison) -Crossed Out. I was one of the ones offended by Toni Morrison, though it was The Bluest Eye that got me. I can stand offensive content if it's there for a reason. That book, I felt, was an instance of using a good theme to pedal total trash.
Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier) - Crossed Out. Just doesn't interest me.
[The Alchemist (Paulo Coehlo)]
[White Teeth (Zadie Smith) ]
*The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton) Poor Lily Bart. I LOVE Edith Wharton, and have read almost everything she wrote. The best, in my opinion, is The Glimpses of the Moon. Also, I think it's the only one that ends happily. You'd think that The House of Mirth would be a funny book, but it's not. The same way that Little Dorrit isn't a little book. It actually weighs more than the Olsen twins put together.
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2 comments:
I'm glad to hear I'm finally forgiven re: Vonnegut. I will try not to lend you any more shocking books. But I do have a track record on that, so beware!
I'm not going to kill you for not having heard of Curious Incident. You might like it, though it gets tedious. I'd lend it to you but my brother has my copy right now.
I think you'd really like Shadow of the Wind. Kinda Garcia Marquez-ish, but not as deep and not as difficult. But fun.
I'm for it! I like borrowing books. I'm bored with all the stuff I have right now, except that last night I discovered that I have a readable copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I bought a copy a long time ago and started reading it, but discovered that there were several sections of a dozen or so pages that were glued together. Production error. So I stopped. But apparently I picked up another copy along the way somewhere, so I'm reading that now. Shadow of the Wind sounds fab.
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