A Stolen Survey

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or HATED.

Having looked at the  instructions, I have decided NOT to do that; I can’t be bothered to faff around with bolding or any of that stuff so I will just tell you what I have read and what I liked a lot or hated!

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen  Yes, I have read this.
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien  Yes, and long before it became the big hit it is today.
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte Yes.
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling I have read, I think, the first two. They are OK, I guess but they didn’t grab me like Lord of the Rings did.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee Yes
6 The Bible – Various authors Bits and pieces. I prefer the King James Version which is the version I grew up with.
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte Yes
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell Yes, and this is one that stands the test of time in that I got the Kindle version and reread it.
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman No
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens Yes
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott Yes, I loved this book when I was an adolescent.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy Yes, My sister gave this to me to read. She lived in Somerset in Hardy country.
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller Yes A funny and rather disturbing book.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Well, I am pretty sure I have not read ALL of this but I do have the complete works on my Kindle!
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier For years I LOVED this book. I think I have outgrown it… It is on our book club list this year.
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien Yes, indeed. AND, I have it in Italian, too!
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks No
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger No, I haven’t read this. People keep recommending it, though…
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger I started this and got terminally confused by the shifts in time and gave up on it.
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot Yes–Along with Shakespeare and the Brontes, George Eliot’s books were required reading in English schools.
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell Yes, a lovely book.
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald Nope.
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens We also read a lot of Dickens when I was in school
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy No, never read this.
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams YES! I love this book so much that I bought a copy for the Kindle.
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh Yes.
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky No. One of the books I will never read, I think. War and Peace is another of them.
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck I started to read this but never finished it because I found it too depressing..
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll Yes. at a very early age.
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame Yes, also at a very early age. I was a superb word-caller when I first learned to read at about four. I remember reading this and basically not understanding most of it–except the bits about Mr. Toad whom I loved. I have read it over many times since then.
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy No, another one I will probably never read now.
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens Yes.
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis Only the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I once read it to a fifth grade class and several of them cried when Aslan died…
34 Emma – Jane Austen Yes
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen Yes
36 Peter Pan – James M Barrie Yes. I also saw the play when I was a child and was genuinely moved to tears of joy when the audience was asked to clap if you believe in fairies…
37 The Kite Runner – Khaleed Hosseini This was a book club choice and I enjoyed it–but not enough to read his second book.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres No, never read this.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden Yes, another book club choice which I really enjoyed.
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne I grew up with this and read from it often to my sister who was two years younger than me.
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell My father gave me this to read
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown This was a book club choice. I read it but didn’t like it.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez No
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving No
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins Yes! One of the earlies detective stories, and another that my father introduced me to.
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery Yes
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy Yes, agaain handed to me by my sister…
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood Yes, and it made a big impression on me.
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding Yes. At first reading, I loved it. I tried it again when I got me Kindle and it didn’t stand the test of time. Incidentally, I HATE the movie versions.
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan No
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel No
52 Dune – Frank Herbert Yes, and several of the follow-ups.
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons YES! I LOVE this book
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen Yes
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth No
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon No
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens This was the Dickens choice for my School Certificate–the big exam we did at the end of the English equivaent of high school. We had a set Dickens, a set Shakespeare {Macbeth} and two set poets, {Sheets and Kelly—umm, Keats and Shelley}
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley Yes
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon I liked this a lot
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez No
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck Yes and I liked it.
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov Yes
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt An excellent book
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold Yes, liked it a lot.
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas No
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac No
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy Yes, again through the auspices of my sister
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding Yes, it was fun.
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie No
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville No,
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens Yes
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker No
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett Yes. I read it to a seventh grade and all the girls and about half the boys liked it
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson Yes.
75 Ulysses – James Joyce No
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath No
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome Yes! I grew up with the Swallows and the Amazons.
78 Germinal – Emile Zola No
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray No
80 Possession – as Byatt No
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens Yes
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell No
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker No
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro No
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert My sister TRIED to get me to read this but I just couldn’t finish it.
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry No
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White No
88 The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom No
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Yes
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton Yes, indeed. I grew up with Enid Blyton.
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad No
92 The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery Started it but never finished it. Too twee!
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams I liked it a lot and my seventh grade loved it. It is a good book for sparking discussions and getting the kids to think…
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole No
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute Yes, again a book I read when I was too young to understand it and got a lot out of it later.
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas No
98 The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho No
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl I have read it but don’t think it is as great as most people do.
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo No.

QUOTATIONS:

"Step by step. I can’t think of any other way of accomplishing anything."

Michael Jordan

"Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) English poet