What are you reading?

Films, TV shows, and books of the 'modern' era
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JackFavell
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by JackFavell »

Moraldo,

I guess I am one of those people who like to read, but I don't really read reviews anymore. As far as Irving is concerned, I honestly had no idea that he had a masterpiece yet. I am not really one to read the best sellers list so I don't know what's going on.

This reminds me that there is no Vonnegut or Updike, nor Ralph Ellison either and that's a pretty important omission. (The Invisible Man really should be on a list like this.)
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ChiO
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by ChiO »

Saint-Exupery and Dumas, but no Proust or Balzac? No Faulkner? And, where's Papa?
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MichiganJ
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by MichiganJ »

Interesting but odd list. Way too heavy with Dickens and Austen. Shakespeare gets a Complete Works and Hamlet? To add to ChiO's glaring omissions: No Homer? Chaucer? Cervantes? Swift? Henry James? Kafka? Lawrence? I understand it's a British list, but no Mark Twain?
Moraldo Rubini wrote:Regarding John Irving, I always considered A Prayer for Owen Meaney to be his masterpiece, so was not suprised to see that made the list.
I like a lot of Irving's books but Meany is his masterpiece. A close second would be Cider House Rules.
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charliechaplinfan
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by charliechaplinfan »

I read most of thesebooks before kids and presume once they've flown the nest I'll be able to concentrate again. This is a great exercise, I remember the BBC doing something similar a few years ago and the book shops offered these books 3 for 2. I think I couted 59, I'm better read than I thought.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (This one's kind of not fair.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
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 Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens58 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
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
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 Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

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 - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
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charliechaplinfan
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by charliechaplinfan »

MichiganJ wrote:Interesting but odd list. Way too heavy with Dickens and Austen. Shakespeare gets a Complete Works and Hamlet? To add to ChiO's glaring omissions: No Homer? Chaucer? Cervantes? Swift? Henry James? Kafka? Lawrence? I understand it's a British list, but no Mark Twain?
Moraldo Rubini wrote:Regarding John Irving, I always considered A Prayer for Owen Meaney to be his masterpiece, so was not suprised to see that made the list.
I like a lot of Irving's books but Meany is his masterpiece. A close second would be Cider House Rules.
We do like our Dickens and Jane Austen. I can't understand the inclusion of the complete works of Shakespeare and Hamlet. I'd love to have seen at least one of Lawrence's books in there, he's one of my favorite authors, I think I'd have had to go with Sons and Lovers. There's a lot of Hardy, Jude the Obscure is so depressing. Birdsong is so overrated. I love Mark Twain and would include him in my list. I'd also include some another Steinbeck, Raymond Chandler and if I were nominating another playwright it wolud have to be Tennessee Williams.

For me though, there isn't enough Dickens in this list and the ones that there are wolud't be my choice.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
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JackFavell
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by JackFavell »

My brain is slowly coming back CCFan, but it took forever.
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JackFavell
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by JackFavell »

I agree about Lawrence and the Dickens - there are so many greats and those on the list aren't the ones I would have picked, but I guess they are the most well known.
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charliechaplinfan
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by charliechaplinfan »

Mine is still floundering somewhere, it's payback. When pregnant with both kids I read so much, when I had Joe I had a thirst for Dickens and Wilkie Collins, I read loads of them and they seemed to sink in with ease, I haven't touched a 'classic' apart from rereading Wuthering Heights since.

It always interests me as to who comes up with these lists. I know the previous list I voted in it and I believe it did get a lot of interest and a lot of voters and I sought out some of the books to read. It's not the same list because I remember buying I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith and loving it but it's not on the list this time.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
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JackFavell
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by JackFavell »

I agree, it's great having a list to look at and see where I need to bulk up - but do I have to read the Russians? I can never keep the names straight. :D
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charliechaplinfan
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by charliechaplinfan »

If you only read one Russian book, read Anna Karenina, no film has done it justice and it's so absorbing. I have the same problem with Russian authors.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
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knitwit45
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by knitwit45 »

I try to pronounce each of the names, and then lose track of the story. :roll: :oops:
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JackFavell
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by JackFavell »

I am laughing out loud, Nan!

I think I do the same thing. Or I worry about what the name means, like "son of" and forget what was going on in the bookand have to start over. It only takes a couple of times to give up completely.

Alison, I think I could actually read that one, since I know the story so well, having seen every movie of it made, and also the Nicola Pagett series.
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CharlieT
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by CharlieT »

Just finished reading "In The Fullness of Time" by Vincent Nicolosi. It's an historical novel of the mysteries surrounding the Harding presidency and death through the reminiscences of one of his "gang" at the time of President Kennedy's assassination. It is written by a native of Harding's home town, Marion, Ohio and Vince makes it hard to tell what is fact and what is fiction. I would recommend this wonderfully written book to anyone who enjoys reading about the political intrigue during and after 'the Great War".
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moira finnie
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by moira finnie »

Charlie, how great to see you posting! I have heard many good things about In "The Fullness of Time" and wondered if it changed your perception of Warren G. Harding? Did it make you want to read more about him and his administration? Thanks for mentioning this book. I will look for it at the library.
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by feaito »

I've been reading Danielle Trussoni's "Angelology: A Novel" and I can't put it down!!! Fascinating, because it tackles subjects that are irresistible to me....
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