The Top 100 List

Have any of you actually used one of those lists to help you decide what you want to read next? I looked at one recently and I could only count less than forty that I had actually, legitimately read from start to finish.

Crime and Punishment is always on the list and I have read half the book, so I never give myself credit for it. Anyways, I went through a list this week and decided to check a couple of them out at the library. I want to get above 50.

From my friend Shanna's post...

But my x's

Where do you fall in the list? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.
Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X

Total: 8 (woo hoo, I am doing good. 8 out of 10, impressive right?)

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (This is the one I checked out at the library)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X (seriously, why is this book on this list...lame!!!)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (I requested this one, but since it is coming out as a movie, I should get it by the time my twins turn one)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 4
Total so far: 12

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
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

Total: 2
Total so far: 14 (Okay, many of those books I have read the beginning and then got distracted)

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X (isn't this repetitive with #33)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X (thank you Sunset Book Club...I feel smart)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 5
Total so far: 19

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 4
Total so far: 23

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X (book club in two months!!)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
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

Total: 3
Total so far: 26

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy X (this is a depressingly stupid book...why is it on here?)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 3
Total so far: 29

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 (I have tried, it is just not for me...I read a book about this book, does that count?)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 1
Total so far: 30

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistr
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
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

Total: 3
Total so far: 33

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 X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X (book club...book club!!!)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (how can you have the complete works of Shakespeare, and then this one. It is double dipping!)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

Total 4
Grand Total: 37

I have some work to do. What about you? How many have you read? Marie?

Book for August/September

Just a little more information about Echo's book for next month. The full title is Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, and the author is Immaculee Ilibagiza.

"SHHHHhhhhhpstplopP!(stuck, sucking sound) Oh my goodness - that was a tight squeeze! But LOOK! I made it! I'm in! *looks around* Uh --- where am I and how did I get in here??!!

What we've read...

I thought it would be helpful to have a list of books we've read that we can easily refer to. Hopefully this is accurate.

2011:
Jesus the Christ by James Talmage
Follow the River by James Alexander Thom
Cheaper By the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth Jr.
A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
The Host by Stephenie Myers
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
Mary, Martha, and Me: Seeking the One Thing ... Needful by Camille Olson
Sounder by William Armstrong

2010:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Recovering Charles by Jason Wright
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich
The Color of Water by James McBride
No Apology by Mitt Romney
Vienna Prelude by Brock & Bodie Thoene
Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story by Lang Lang and David Ritz
Embraced By the Light by Betty Eadie
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Little Britches by Ralph Moody

2009:
The Holy Secret by James L. Ferrell
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Other Side of Heaven by John Groberg
The Moroni Code by Jack Lyon
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin



2008:
Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Go Forward with Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley by Sheri Dew
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen
Nothing Like it in the World by Stephen Ambrose
Princess— A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson
Zamba by Ralph Helfer
All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
A Sacred Duty by Ester Rasband & Richard Wilkins
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

2007:
Fire in the Bones by S. Michael Wilcox
Let’s Roll by Lisa Beamer
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
A Train to Potevka by Mike Ramsdell
I am a Mother by Jayne Clayson Johnson
A Heart Like His by Virginia Hinckley Pearce
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Earth in the Beginning by Eric Skousen
The Wednesday Letters by Jason Wright

2006:
These is My Words by Nancy Turner
Eve and the Choice Made in Eden by Beverly Cambell
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
The Peacegiver by James L. Ferrell
Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Deadly Persuasion by Jean Kilbourne (paperback title Can’t Buy My Love same author)

Fablehaven

I thought I would share a new book series I really like.

My sister recommended this book to me. This is the first of four books. I am not sure how many more will be in the series, but it is fun to read. It is a children's book a lot like Harry Potter. There are magical creatures and fun adventures. It is an easy read, but well worth your time. It is probably meant for kids at least 7 years old, maybe a little older than that.

Happy reading!

I am all on board.

Hi Ladies!

Melanie