Monday, October 29, 2007

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.

Labels:

18 Comments:

Blogger laughingwolf said...

coolios... i've read most of those you have, and some you have not

great post again, ian

3:28 PM  
Blogger Hermes said...

I'm surprised to see three or four Neil Gaiman novels on the list. I'm not sure if he rates as a novelist. Life of Pi is good, actually. I didn't think I'd like it but it was OK.

6:11 PM  
Blogger Janice Thomson said...

Well I have read quite a few you have and about 11 you haven't. When I was younger I'd read anything I could get my hands on. Now I like to think I have a little more taste....lol
Probably a quarter of my books I have yet to read - someday I will...
Good post Ian.

7:28 PM  
Blogger Ian Lidster said...

I just realized I spelled Jane Austen's name wrong. I am so ashamed. I don't much like her writings, but that's inexcusable.

8:02 PM  
Blogger meggie said...

I have not read all of the ones you have, but have read others you havent so about even.
I used to plod on with books I didn't enjoy, feeling I had to finish them, no matter how excrable they were. Now I feel life is too short, & I allow myself to toss it aside if I dont like it.
I enjoyed Angela's Ashes, but found brother Frank's 'Tis, arrogant & rather boring- never finished it.

9:50 PM  
Blogger meggie said...

Even as I wrote it, I knew I had misspelt execrable. Why do I keep doing that??

9:53 PM  
Blogger geewits said...

After reading this I went to look at my copy of Canterbury Tales , also in Middle English, and can't find it and am now very irritated. Anyway, I'm glad you've read The Count of Monte Christo. I just wish someone could make a movie or miniseries of it that would really do it justice.

10:38 PM  
Blogger Casdok said...

I too have read most of those books, you have great taste!!

12:59 AM  
Blogger Voyager said...

I'm too tired to figure this list out now. I too loved Angela's ashes, but I could not even finish 'Tis.
Right now I'm just a very tired civil servant, loved your post, but the Queen has robbed me of all creative thought tonight.
V.

1:51 AM  
Blogger Jazz said...

We've read many of the same things. All I can say is that real men should maybe give AustEn a try sometimes.

5:27 AM  
Blogger Ellee Seymour said...

I am very impressed by your vast knowledge and breadth of books you have read. There's a few here I might try myself.

6:07 AM  
Blogger riseoutofme said...

I've been lurking around here for ages. I do apologise.

Liked your list ... but have to say Life of Pi IS worth a read.

6:19 AM  
Blogger kimber said...

I'm going to agree with Get off My Lawn - as much as the Sandman graphic novels were formative in my adolescent years, I don't particularly like Gaiman as an author, and it gives me the squirms to see him snuggled up with Jane Austin and James Joyce. But maybe that's just my Victorian morals.

OH, Cryptonomicon! There's a book worthy of inclusion! I'd have read it five times by now, if it wasn't so bloody huge.

12:34 PM  
Blogger kimber said...

Crap, me spelled 'Austen' wrong.

12:34 PM  
Blogger Angela said...

"Real men don’t do Virginia Woolf even more than they don’t do Jane Austin."

Bwahahahahaha!

I found The Picture of Dorian Gray in my after-college, oh-my-god-I-have-a-degree-in-English-and-haven't-read-the-classics-crisis. I was so drawn in to it that I shirked a bunch of responsibilities and didn't sleep until I had finished it. Very rarely has a book entranced me that way.

2:37 PM  
Blogger noneofyourbusiness said...

Ian, many of those brought back my high school days ... *groan!*

There are a few that will haunt me forever! *LOL*

By the way - to underline ... < u> and < /u> ... minus the spaces.

5:41 PM  
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