Oh -- 'Musketeers' -- I thought you said 'Mouseketeers'

Once again I swiped from my friend Jazz, mainly because I am at a creative impasse – dealing with boneheads on the Island Highway does that to a guy – and also because I am a bibliophile, and finally because I like lists. I like lists because half the job has already been done for a body, and all that body then has to do is respond appropriately.

So, if you want to do this, too, here is what you have to do, according to the rules:

Bold those you've read.
Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
Italicize books you have started but couldn't finish. (I've also bolded 'cause I can't help but comment and comments are in italics)
Underline those on your To Be Read list. I did mine in Green because, like Jazz, I don't know how to underline.

1984*

A Clockwork Orange

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Unlike Jazz, I liked this because I like Joyce, except for Finnegan’s Wake which is downright weird, and 90 percent of Ulysses. Of course, virtually everybody has read the dirty parts and if they haven’t, they should.)

A Short History of Nearly Everything (I think I have read all of Bryson, and probably will reread some of his offerings.)

A Tale of Two Cities (It is a far-far better thing I do -- I think)

American Gods

Anansi Boys

Angela's Ashes (Liked it very much. Also read ‘Tis; not as powerful, but very readable. As a former teacher I appreciated some of his pedagogical musings)

Angels & Demons

Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand is Ayn Rand, so if you like crypto-fascists this is OK)

Beloved

Brave New World *

Catch-22

Cloud AtlasCollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Crime and Punishment (I think I read the Classics Illustrated version of this. Does that count?)

Cryptonomicon

David Copperfield (A long slog, but a good story)

Don Quixote (Vile hard reading, but it offers some terrific insights into the human condition and the conflict between our animal and spiritual natures. Did you know Cervantes’ birth and death dates were identical to Shakespeare’s?)

Dracula

Dubliners (Good collection of short stories and tells a lot about a fascinating city early in the 20th Century)

Dune

Eats, Shoots & Leaves (OK, but I thought it was overrated since she spends a lot of time stating the obvious)

Emma (Real men don’t ‘do’ Jane Austin, unless they have to, which is why I read the mind-numbing ‘Pride and Prejudice’.)

Foucault's Pendulum (Like Jazz, I should finish this. Probably I won’t)

Frankenstein

Freakonomics

Gravity's Rainbow

Great Expectations (Again, I should finish this, but the movie – the David Lean version – filled in a lot of the gaps)

Gulliver's Travels*

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies

In Cold Blood

Jane Eyre (I think I’ve read it, but am not positive)

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Never heard of it)

Les Misérables (Read it when I was a kid and loved it. Good old Les))

Life of Pi: A Novel (Just like Jazz on this one. It’s sitting on a shelf. It may or may not be read)

Lolita* (Offers many insights into human sexuality, and is not just a dirty book; albeit it is that, too.)

Love in the Time of Cholera

Madame Bovary

Mansfield Park

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlemarch

Middlesex

Moby Dick (Oh, God, yes, but only because I had to. Believe me, only because I ‘had’ to for a course)

Mrs. Dalloway (Real men don’t do Virginia Woolf even more than they don’t do Jane Austin)

Neverwhere

Northanger Abbey

Oliver Twist (That lovable old Bill Sykes)

On the Road (When I was growing up if you subscribed to any ‘hipness’ aspirations, you read your Kerouac. This is the book about which Truman Capote said: “That isn’t writing, that’s typing.)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* (Yes indeed, and saw the movie, too (many times), even though Kesey hated it)

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Oryx and Crake

Persuasion

Pride and Prejudice (I’ve stated my case on this one)

QuicksilverReading

Lolita in Tehran

Sense and Sensibility (A thousand times, no)

Slaughterhouse-Five*

Tess of the D'Urbervilles (I like Hardy better as a poet, but his Wessex Tales are still all good)

The Aeneid

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Blind Assassin

The Brothers Karamazov

The Canterbury Tales (In Middle English, if you please. ‘Whan that Aprill with its shoures soote …)

The Catcher in the Rye ******* (About 17 times, I think)

The Confusion

The Corrections

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-

The Fountainhead (Ayn again...)

The God of Small Things

The Grapes of Wrath (Wonderful, along with most other things by Steinbeck))

The Historian

The Hobbit (I tried. It bored me senseless)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (He wasn't a true hunback -- He was only a quasi-modo)

The Iliad

The Inferno (I assume this refers to the Divine Comedy, in which case I’ve read it all)

The Kite Runner

The Mists of Avalon

The Name of the Rose

The Odyssey

The Once and Future King (I know this is the progenitor of Camelot, which is one of the pukiest musicals ever, so I never bothered reading the original)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Real scary)

The Poisonwood Bible

The Prince

The Satanic Verses

The Scarlet Letter

The Silmarillion

The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner is difficult, but ultimately worth it)

The Three Musketeers (Ripping yarn)

The Time Traveller's Wife

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Saw the movie, liked it)

To the Lighthouse (I’ve stated my case about V. Woolf, and this is the book that made me feel that way. I want to yawn just thinking about it.)

Treasure Island* (“Yaaarrrrr”)

Ulysses (See ‘dirty stuff’ above)

Vanity Fair (All is vanity, nothing is fair)

War and Peace (Life is far, far too short. But, as Woody Allen said, “It’s about Russia.”)

Watership Down (Tried once. Yech!)

White Teeth

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Wuthering Heights (For Victoriana it’s a pretty good study of the class system)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Lots more I would include here, but this will do for now.