The List

Kasey started it. She put this list from some Great American Read project (or whatever) on her blog. It is a list of 100 books that we Americans should be reading or have already read. Like, so we'll all be sharing the same collective American Culture or something. (Trust me, you will get so much more out of those Simpson's episodes if you are well-read.) Since books are the number 1 respectable reason for not getting the dishes done or bathing the children, I am of course interested in any list that provides more opportunities for that. I always appreciate being told about the next book I'm going to love. (Kelly, what is the next book I'm going to love?)

So let's talk about books. Cut and paste the list onto your blog and do the following (after reading and then deleting my insightful comments):

Bold the titles of books that you have already read.
Italicize the titles of books you want to read, but haven't yet.
Underline the titles of books you love. Since I am subversive, I decided to not underline the titles but to instead change the size of the font. (As it turns out, I really may not be all that subversive, if this is all I can come up with.)
Of course, include all kinds of profound personal observations on the texts.
At the end, please include the titles you thought were glaringly omitted in this list.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I begin giggling on the first page. I adore Mrs. Bennet. The Keira Knightley movie version is worth a watch, just stop the DVD before the ridiculous and very non-Austen, very schmaltzy final scene. Bleck.)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (A less dramatic but still beautiful story from Charlotte: Villette.)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Let the pelting with rotten produce begin: I think JK is overhyped.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (My sentimental favorite--from the time I first read it in 7th grade. Whenever we are together as a family for Easter, Christian is expected to turn to me and say "pass the damn ham".)
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Like many of Dicken's books as well, this one is just too savage for me. Sorry Adrienne! The last time I read it I promised myself it would be the last time I read it. The dangling of the toddler over the balcony is a deal breaker for me.)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Again, putting myself in the line of fire: I think Charles Dickens is a fantastic writer--I DO--but his books always make me feel bad. I mean, he is just too good at portraying life in Britain's slums in the 19th century. Like Oliver Twist. I can't handle the emotional trauma. So no, I have not finished G. E. )
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (After going over this whole list, I have come to the obvious realization that I really like Thomas Hardy. He writes great sleepy-time books.)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (Ohh, so good! That Rebecca--so evil. I also loved Daphne's other books, Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel.)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (I absolutely adore George Eliot. All of her books--with the exception of Romola which was tedious and lame--are worth a read or two at least. But where on this list, may I ask, is Adam Bede? Hmmm?)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (My first grown-up book, read in the summer between 5th and 6th grade.)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (I could live in the mood of this book. Also, the clothes.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I read this book on a dare from Simon Mudge in the first week of my first semester at BYU. Read it in three weeks. Won the bet/dare, btw.)
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Alternate title: War, What's it Good For?)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (Of course now as a mother, all I can think of when I hear this title is Veggie Tales.)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (If you know me you know I adore nonsense. This is the very essence of nonsense. Of course it was all supposed to be allegorical, but I have long since forgotten the connections Lewis was making between it and the Monarchy.)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (Good. I think I would have even liked it better if I felt more confident pronouncing "Karenina". Awkward, isn't it?)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (I shouldn't claim to have read the whole thing. Stopped half way through. Again, the staggering pathos. I am a baby.)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (While P and P is more brilliantly funny, this one has such a better story to tell.)
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 - AA 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 Meany - John Irving (I'm trusting Carly on this one.)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (This is one of those books that takes some patience at the beginning, but has two of some of the best villains in literature. Loved Loved Loved it. Creepy! A much more instantly-engrossing book by Wilkie--The Moonstone.)
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 (Okay, you definitely have to read this book. It kind of haunts you. You will not be able to stop thinking about it. You will be mad that everyone else isn't reading it along with you, because you will want to discuss it AT LENGTH!)
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 Dickens
58 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 (Just unnecessarily long. Good story, but so obvious Dumas was getting paid by the word. The sandwich is actually superior to the book. Mmmm, fried sandwich.)
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 (Excited to read a REAL vampire book.)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (I like James Joyce but all the books of his I've read haven't ended up on this list. I guess I have been reading the duds.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (This one was way long, but I couldn't begrudge Thackeray for it because the whole thing was just so deliciously snarky. Get a copy with his original drar-rings, they are hilarious.)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (Another good writer that loses me in the vulgarity. I did enjoy though, the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Alice's predecessor and inspiration: Zora Neal Hurston.)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB 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 (I liked Danny, The Champion of the World even more.)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Long but wow--I can also highly recommend the movie with Liam Neeson.)

I am hesitant now to mention the book(s) I think missing from this list because I just know I'll leave out something obvious and important. So please be courteous. A brief list:

A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
She Got Up Off the Couch also by Haven
the Southern girl books by Celia Rivenbeck (Rivenbirch, Rivenbottom?)
Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (not Elizabeth Gaskell, as I previously claimed. I also like Elizabeth's North and South.)
Wives and Daughters, also by Elizabeth
The Mitford Series by Jan Karon
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Missing Persons League by Frank Bonham
plus all the others I mentioned already during the comments section on the list.