1.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Admas
2. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
3. The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
4. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
5. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
6. Pride and Prejudice, same
7. Mansfield Park, same
8. Emma, same
9. Persuasion, same
10. Northanger Abbey, same
11. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
13. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
14. Naked Lunch, William Burroughs
15. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote
16. In Cold Blood, same
17. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
18. Through the looking Glass..., same
19. The Awakening, Kate Chopin
20. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
21. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
22. The Hours, Michael Cunningham
23. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
24. A Christmas Carol, same
25. David Copperfield, same
26. Bleak House, same
27. A Tale of Two Cities, same
28. Great Expectations, same
29. Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
30. Crime and Punishment, same
31. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
32. The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
33. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
34. Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
35. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffery Eugenides
36. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
37. The Great Gatsby, F.Scott Fitzgerald
38. Tender is the Night, same
39. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
40. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
41. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
42. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon
43. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
44. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
45. Catch 22, Joseph Helloer
46. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
47. Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
48. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
49. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
50. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
51. Crome Yellow, Aldous Huxley
52. Brave New World, same
53. The Cider House Rules, John Irving
54. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
55. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
56. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
57. Breakfast of Champions, same
58. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
59. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
60. The Shining, Stephen King
61. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
62. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
63. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
64. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
65. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
66. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
67. Chaka the Zulu, Thomas Mofolo
68. Beloved, Toni Morrison
69. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
70. Autumn of the Patriarch, same
71. Love in the Time of Cholera, same
72. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
73. Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
74. Them- Joyce Carol Oates
75. Blonde- same
76. Animal Farm- George Orwell
77. 1984, same
78. Choke, Chuck Palahniuk
79. Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
80. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
81. The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
82. The Pit and the Pendulum, same
83. The Purloined Letter, same
84. The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
85. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
86. Good Morning, Midnight, Jean Rhys
87. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
88. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
89. The 120 Days of Sodom, Marquis de Sade
90. Justine, same
91. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
92. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
93. Franny and Zooey, same
94. Frankenstein, Marry Shelley
95. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
96. The Grapes of Wrath, same
97. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
98. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, same
99. Dracula, Bram Stoker
100. A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift
101. Waterland, Graham Swift
102. Walden, Henry David Thoreau
103. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
104. Anna Karenina, same
105. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
106. Candide, Voltaire
107. Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
108. God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, same
109. The Invisible Man, HG Wells
110. War of the Worlds, same
111. The Time Machine, same
112. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
113. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
114. Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
115. Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf
116. Mrs. Dalloway, same

ok, that's my progress so far. I'm kind of combining the two lists, in that I'm replacing books from the old one that I very much so DO NOT want to read with books from the new that I do want to read. So it will end up being a combination of the two editions. At any rate, I'm going to update here, because progress makes me happy. :)

Message edited by its author, Feb 20, 2009, 3:25pm.

117. Elizabeth Costello, J.M Coetzee
Interesting...obviously a novel by a novelist for a novelist. Kind of self important. Didn't like it.

118. Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Very engaging story! Enjoyable and optimistic, but not sacchrine (sp?- you know what I mean).

119. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

120. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

121. Silk by Alessandro Baricco. Can't decide if it's painfully romantic or painfully silly and sentimental. Both? I dunno.

122. Villette by Charlotte Bronte

123. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

124. The Reader by Bernard Schlink

125. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

126. Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac

127. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

128. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. Meh.

129. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre. Great, old fashioned story telling. Engrossing!

130. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

Ohhh so the way a women is complete is through a MAANNN...oh I didn't KNOW that. (found it a little sexist. if you can't read the sarcasm :) )

lol, maryjane! Lawrence wrote a lot of books from the "woman's" point of view. I'm using the scare quotes there because it seemed to me that not only did he not understand women and how they think, but I almost doubt he actually knew any.

131. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

132. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. I had a conversation with my friend today about reading Dickens, and she pretty well summed up my feelings: "When you're halfway through, you think it will never end and that you just can't finish it, but when you do finish it you're overcome with just how stinkin' GOOD he is." Ha! So true!

#17- lol! probably true. I find it a funny how often doing something first (like writing a lot of over sexed fluff) is confused with doing something well.

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2009, 4:21pm.

133. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.

This was really entertaining. What's great about it is that nothing really happens. BUT you're so into the characters that you don't really notice until the end. I finished, and sat back, and thought...huh...that was really just a few years in the life of a quiet English town. It's funny.

I'm quite jealous of how many books you've read already! Which one did you like the most so far? :)

#21- I would have to say it's a tie between Villette, the Remains of the Day, and Nicholas Nickleby. I honestly think I could have died without reading the others, but am still glad for the experience. Mostly. :)

134. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien- so great! Wish they would make a companion movie- other than that creepy cartoon that scared the wits out of me in third grade. Eek.

I think that they might be making 'The Hobbit' now or very soon.

135. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. Really like a series of shorts, from which producers drew bits to make the movie. Really interesting, poses a lot of questions about mankinds direction in regards to robotics and technology in general. The only complaint I had was the dialouge was kind of forced sometimes.

136. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Had a hard time getting into it, the way the two story arcs are constructed is a little confusing at first...but one of the MOST...CREATIVE things I've ever read ever ever.

137. Contact by Carl Sagan. Ok, the writing's a little stilted, and the characters are almost archetypal..BUT..it's still a grabber. And Carl Sagan admits something in this book that I've never heard a scientist admit- that human science doesn't know everything, and is more often than not, wrong. It's nice to read a scientist who doesn't worship his own reason as the beginning and end of knowledge- which is an altogether goofier religion than any the scientific community criticizes. It's a page turner!

Carl Sagan is one of my favorite authors. I strongly recommend The demon-haunted world if you feel like a non-1001 book. I think it's his greatest book.

138. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee...umm..nothing happens. The end.

Great review on Cider with Rosie!

thanks, i try :)

139. The Godfather by Mario Puzo. You know..I appreciate "scholarly literature", stuff that was groundbreaking in its technique or whatever. But if the story isn't interesting, my heart just isn't in it. It's kind of like modern art..I mean I get it, it's just not very moving. Impressive, but not moving. This book was the opposite of that. It was just exciting. I stayed up late to finish it, which I haven't done in forever.

140. Excellent Women by Barbary Pym. Really, truly charming. Quite a pleasure.

I adored the godfather too! I really really didn't expect to like it - it's not my thing at all but I got so hooked.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 2:13pm.

141. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys- Oh, jeez. About 3/4 of the way through I stopped and thought "this is the most melodramatic, overwrought claptrap on the planet." I laughed. Out loud. It's that ridiculous. And racist. All the bad people are black and all the white people are "misunderstood". Goofy. And doesn't at all mesh with the feel of the original.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 4:12pm.

142. A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway- I read this in high school, just forgot about it.

143. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. I heart Jules Verne. Got the last installment today through dailylit.com. He's just so much fun. And his main characters are always so focused on one seemingly impossible goal, optimistic, smart, and sure of themselves. Yay.

144. Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I liked this better the first time I read it, when it was called Dune.

Foundation and DUne are two totally different books, mjm. Asimov's Foundation is the first of a trilogy, Dune was a big book written by Frank Herbert. Sorry, but not the same!

cedric- ummm yeah I know they're different. I was being a-funny. :) Dune is actually one of my favorite series ever ever.

Message edited by its author, May 9, 2009, 2:27pm.

Sorry, without the body language I couldn't tell that you were exercising humour. Forgive me!

Message edited by its author, May 9, 2009, 5:05pm.

Cedric: Forgiven! ;)

145. The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams. What a goof. That's all.

Is that a good goof . . . or a bad goof???

good goof :) I think he's hilarious!

146. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. Apparently I read these out of order? Oh well. Rolled my eyes a lot, laughed a lot, good fun!

I have both of them on the tower now - I look forward to reading them.

147. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte- This is really short, almost like a snapshot of life as a governess. It seems like she read Jane Eyre and Villette and was like, well if my sister can do it, so can I! Me too, me too! That's probably not based in reality at all, but it does seem kinda second rate compared to Charlotte's writings.

Maryjane-

Thanks for sharing all of your wonderful insights on these books. This is inspiring me to read some more classics, too. :)

148. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. Sooo great. So great. Further confirms two things for me: 1. Charlotte Bronte is my favorite Bronte. 2. Modern literature is nihilistic, self centered, and mostly drivel. I'm still hoping to change point 2, but haven't so far (with the exception of Remains of the Day.

149. Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan. I though I would really hate this, but I got it bc I found it at Goodwill for a dollar...anyway, I actually enjoyed it a lot. I've heard the book called amoral, and the main character sort of evil, but she obviously isn't. She is a child, and feels guilt, which someone amoral wouldn't. Also, written by an 18 year old! Wowser.

Message edited by its author, May 23, 2009, 6:23pm.

150. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. The parts about Helen are spellbinding, especially the unfolding of her story with her husband. However, the narrator and sort-of main character, her love interest, is annoying, whiney, presumptuous, immature and intolerable. I had this problem with Wuthering Heights, too. This solidified Charlotte as the best Bronte, to me.

151. Billy Budd, Fortopman by Herman Melville. Kind of heartbreaking. Melville's numerous asides (like in Moby Dick) are pretty annoying and detract from what you're really interested in- the plot. But a really great, short novella about the nature of good and evil.

152. Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor. This is actually a short story, not even 30 pages. This is just so great, I can't even explain it (still gonna try though). It's the story of a racist elderly woman right after integration who takes a bus ride with her "enlightened" son. The author shows how flawed and condescending "enlightenment" can be, if it's haughty and self centered. Anyway, it's fantastic.

Message edited by its author, Jun 5, 2009, 8:38pm.

I loved Everything That Rises Must Converge also. If you liked the title story, I recommend reading the rest of the collection. Some of the other stories are equally fantastic.

And if there's any LOST fans out there, Jacob was reading this book in the season finale.

Message edited by its author, Jun 6, 2009, 10:08am.

153. No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Uh...what? Not necessary.

MKS1977- I loved it! I promised myself once I hit 200 list books, I would go read some stuff not on the list. My planned books right now are East of Eden, the Pickwick Papers, and the rest of Flannery O'Connor's short stories.

154. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I really enjoyed this. I approached it expecting a comic-booky, little boy's adventure story. It IS an adventure, very fast paced and entertaining, but it's also full of social commentary about what makes humans..human. It's not very democratic, admittedly. But whatever. I liked it. It's fun.

155. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. I finished both of these by dailylit.com today. This was a great adventure story that kind of reminded me of The Hobbit.

Message edited by its author, Jun 9, 2009, 5:55pm.

156. Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I was so confused by this little book that I had to go on sparknotes.com and read the analysis! At the end I just kind of sat there goin...wha? So what actually HAPPENED? Apparently, that's the point. Sparknotes said that James was being manipulative- that whatever you read INTO the story may or may not have happened, but says something about YOU. If so, I failed the test because I was just confused the whole time.

157. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster- Bad people are people, too. That's nice.

158. Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette- Ummm there's a Queen, a Queen mother, the Queen- Dauphin, a king, a late king, duke and duchess of hibbidy-dibbidy, not to be confused with monseuir (sp?) and madame of hibbidy-dibbidy, their neice and nephew, who may or may not be friends with the Viscount of thisthatntheother...who is in love with someone..maybe, depending on who you ask. Or something.

159. Rasselas by Samuel Johnson. Boredy McBoredBored, mayor of Boredville.

160. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien- what can I add to what has already been said about these books? They're amazing. Uplifting. Stinkin' awesome. Make me wanna kill something evil with a really big sword. Epic!

Message edited by its author, Jun 24, 2009, 3:00pm.

161. Seize the Day by Saul Bellow. Kinda reminds me of Hemingway in that it's really sparse but dense at the same time. But its different because Bellow still says what he's trying to say, whereas Hemingway kinda wants you to read between the lines. Bellow packs a lot in there.

162. Atonement by Ian McEwan. Ok, I wasn't expecting a lot from this book because I hated the movie. After reading the book, I know why: it's sooo psychological! Most of the book is in the heads of the character, listening to their thoughts and motives. You just can't put three pages of a teenager thinking about why her finger moves on screen! The scene by the fountain was SO MUCH more potent in the book with all their thoughts presented than it was in the movie. Anyway, I liked it, especially when compared to the movie, which didn't do it justice.

Bad people are people, too. That's nice.

This is now one of my favorite reviews ever. Keep reading, you're cracking me up!

163. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood- I just dont know. I just. don't. know. So I've made a list of pros and cons:

PROS: amazing technical ability on the authors part. really cool structure. great language, very cool writing. impressive control of the story.

CONS: characters are all whiny, self centered, and annoying. the plot twist is easy to see coming from two hundred pages before its announced. the plot twist doesn't come until you've invested 500 pages, and even then it's not that shocking. pacing. long. slow. tedious.

I'm TORRRRNNNNNNNN.

164. Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells. This is probably the most boring, painful thing I've ever read. Ever.

165. Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth. It's an interesting contrast between the "great house" novels of England and this one set in Ireland. It's not particularly entertaining, but it's short :)

166. Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard- woooahhh. that's intense. It's really sobering and good and fantastic.

Message edited by its author, Jul 14, 2009, 4:31pm.

#164 - Love it! You are so so right. That book really is so very very dreadful!

167. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. I approached this book with fear and trembling. I've read The Heart of Darkness but that was a million years ago and I don't remember anything about it, but everytime I talk to someone about it they bemoan how painful Conrad is to read....but I really, really liked The Secret Agent. It's not slow at all, but really fast paced and gripping. You can tell english is Conrad's second language by the weird way he words things sometimes, but it's not difficult. I enjoyed it.

My favorite review ever: 159. Rasselas by Samuel Johnson. Boredy McBoredBored, mayor of Boredville.

168. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. This one started realllllyyyyyyyyyy slowly. I had a hard time getting into it, taking about a week to get through the first 90 pages. After that, it picks up, and I sped through the rest. Pretty enjoyable.

169. Dangerous Liasons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. I KNOW I KNOW I finished way early way way early but it's so engrossing. I'll save the review for the discussion.

Hi, I'm new here, but I'm so glad I stopped in. I just love your reviews, and your attitude toward books and reading. I'm also very impressed with your high number of "1001 Books" read! (I'm still in double digits).

Karen

170. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Before I read this, I read somewhere that it is considered the thinking man's Da Vinci Code. I don't know if that's true because I've never read the Da Vinci Code, but it seems like it could be the case. I know this is supposed to be a post modernist masterpiece about relativism and the nature of truth and how books speak to other books. BUT. I just read it for the whodunit, and because I have a history degree and enjoyed all the medieval stuff. SO it's very smart blah blah whatever but it's also very ENTERTAINING, which I (sometimes) find more important.

171. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming- one of the few instances when I can definitely say- the movie is WAY better. Bond's character is flat, and Vesper is a moron. A complete, spineless moron. But Leiter is pretty awesome...and M is a man? I dunno. Movie= good. Book= stupids.

LOL - M has only been a woman in the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig incarnations of Bond - he was a man thoughout the earlier films, including the originals with Sean Connery, which are waaayyy better, IMHO.

172. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. Uh..really? There's a moment in this little book where Lotte (the female love interest) looks squarely at Werther and says "Be a man." That pretty much sums up my feelings about this book. The great thing about being a grown up is not being controlled by one's emotions. Plus I'm always bothered by romances that end that way- it makes light of real mental illness, I feel. I found out, interestingly enough, that Goethe later distanced himself from the work, saying it was horrible. Which it is.

"I found out, interestingly enough, that Goethe later distanced himself from the work, saying it was horrible. Which it is.

Someone should give the editors of the 1001 this message.

Sarasamsara- I have a lot of messages for the editors these days ;)

173. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. I LOVE HEMINGWAY. I want to resurrect him and have him give writing classes to modern novelists. I want to hang out with him and smoke cigars but I don't smoke so eat candy cigarettes and make him a pie. I hated him in high school but I can't remember why and it's obviously because I was brain damaged because this book is AWESOME. It's hopeful and hopeless, moving and unemotional, cynical and courageous all at the same time and it's just EPIC.

174. The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho- this is way better than the Alchemist, which I hated. It's very message oriented, but it's interesting and well written and I just really liked it. Although the ending left me a bit cold.

175. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. (Sometimes ex-) Communist women sleeping with married men, complaining, being depressed, not working, being lazy, crying, doing nothing....for 600 FREAKIN PAGES. I completely disagree with Lessing's thoughts about novels (which she outlines in the book) that they should be philosophy and not about life. Well she obviously went into this novel with a Great Message that resulted in manipulated, flat, annoying characters. Here's my message to novelists with a Message: write an essay. Your fiction is stifling.

The first time I tried to read the Golden Notebook, I felt exactly the same and gave up pretty quickly. The second time I found the notebook setu interesting-- seeing the same relationships reflected as "diary" versus "fiction" versus "politics". Despite enjoying it the second time around, I still didn't connect with the characters at all. I'm letting Lessing slide on that one under the assumption that even if I never met anyone remotely like these characters, there could be people who act like that somewhere. Like England. Way back in the day.

See, now I'm really worried! I've read Diary of Jane Somers and the grass is singing and loved them - the diaries in particular. I was hoping that they were all as good. Sigh...

81- Maybe you'll love it! The concept is cool, the structure is very original and interesting. It's just really preachy and the characters are all smarmy. It actually reminded me a lot of The Blind Assassin which was so well written and interesting, but the characters were all bleh.

176. The Watchmen by Alan Moore- Ok, my first graphic novel experience was good, I guess. My eyes started to cross after about the sixth chapter of speech bubbles and little frames, I started to just want it to be over. I only really enjoyed one character, Rorscharch (sp?). It seems like Alan Moore doesn't really believe in heroes or authority or blah blah...a very...well, adolescent comic booky sort of perspective. Meh.

177. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky- It's kind of an out of body experience to read a French novel about German occupation in WWII that is so kind to the German soldiers. Written by a French person. A Jewish French person. Who died in the Holocaust. There is little to no mention of the Jewish persecution by the German army, and the German soldiers are portrayed as just naive young men, out for glory and doing their duty like any other soldier. It makes you wonder how true that is. I'm much more used to WWII nazi soldiers being portrayed as pretty much totally evil.

178. A Pale View of Hills by Kazui Ishiguro- Just give the man a Nobel. Just do it. Take Al Gore's away and give it to this man. (i know they're for different things, but that would speed up the process)

Totally agree! Ishiguro does just rule all.

179. Middlemarch by George Eliot- This is a FREAKIN MASTERPIECE. I was expecting a very Jane Austen-ish sort of thing, but it's very different. She has kind of the same wry, ironic, witty voice, but this is no romantic fairy tale. It's realism- it's what happens after the wedding, it's hardships and relationships and some happy endings and some not. It's life. Five stars. Bravo. Standing ovation.

Middlemarch has just joined Mount tbr thanks to your review!

I loved Middlemarch, too. George Eliot just has such a way of describing relationships.

There is a mini-series of Middlemarch which is really pretty good (2005 BBC Video of 1994 Masterpiece Theater TV presentation).

180. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula Le Guin. It is ambiguous. I went in expecting another sci-fi socialist propoganda novel, self righteously smart because aliens are in it. But this isn't that...it's actually smart. All the aliens are actually humans, for one thing, and every form of government is represented, and all of them have problems. Very thought provoking.

181. Howard's End E.M. Forster- I quite liked this, which is great since I hated Where Angels Fear to Tread. In this book, Forster is great at fleshing out human thoughts and emotions, and lack of logic, but most of all he's really good at identifying MOTIVES, which is so hard to do with people. At the end, I was just kind of...satisfied. Like, "Yes. That IS what people are like. Very good."

182. A Room With A View by E.M. Forster. Same as above. Great. Magnificent.

183. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Ummm no me likey. A man with an inferiority complex due to a lazy father goes about beating his wives and children. There are yams. I mean I get the point. Native culture=good. New culture=bad. But it's boring, and disjointed, and the story kind of goes in spurts, when it goes at all.

Well, at least there are yams. They're high in beta-carotene you know.

BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA!

184. The Stranger by Albert Camus. I disagree with the philosophy of this novel completely..I find it juvenile..BUT it's written so well that I don't care. Very thought provoking as far as person responsibility, the justice system, absurdity, and meaning.

185. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. SPOILER: Well if that isn't just the stupidest suicide attempt method I've EVER HEARD OF.

Maryjane--I'm disappointed to see that you haven't read The Story of Lucy Gault, because I'm currently reading it, and would love to hear your impression of it. Specifically, I'd like to know if you too see it as an Irish version of Home Alone (although more literary, of course). Maybe sometime when you're bored and it's available at the library.

Well, since Home Alone is a cinematic masterpiece, anything that resembles it has to automatically be fantastic, hehe..

The funny thing is that your spoiler has now made me WANT to read the book! What could it be? Did he tie steaks to his legs and jump in the bear pen at the zoo? Did he stab himself with his pencil in hopes of getting lead poisoning? (My elementary school teaches told me that would kill me!) Or did he try to overdose on milk of magnesia? So many possibilities....

100: all of those are HI-larious and would have been an improvement. The actual suicide method has more of a pathetic ennui...it's like laughing at a mime, or a sad clown..

Totally agree re Ethan Frome - it is just so dumb it's not even funny! #100 - yours are way way better!

186. The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas. This is what life, and therefore the novel, should be. This exact thing. If it weren't for...air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and modern medicine, I would fervently wish to live in this time period. Dumas covers pretty much all relevant themes: love, hate, loss, God, revenge, war, forgiveness, honor. And you never feel like you're trudging through an epic. That's the one problem I had with War and Peace; the historical bits seem so out of place. But Dumas weaves history in so perfectly. The characters are deeply developed, as are the themes. This is actually a very Christian book, with a very Christian message...similar to War and Peace, and not just because it's long.

Hi Maryjanemanolos. Glad you liked The count of Monte Cristo. Alexandre Dumas is one of my favorite authors and has not disapointed me yet. I recommend The three musketeers when you feel like tackling another big one. It's a lot of fun!

Cheers.

You certainly are a quick reader. It took me much longer to finish the Count when I read it. But I'm a very slow reader so perhaps we average teach other out. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the book. It also became one of my favorites.

Right now I'm reading Les trois mousquetaires and it's just as full of intrigue and suspense although certainly more comedic than the Count was. You should make it your next Dumas. :)

I was enthralled with The Count, too, and when I finished that Dumas, started in on Three Musketeers. What a terrific writer Dumas is!

#105, are you reading him in French? How great is that!

Karen

106 -

I am French so yes, I am reading them in French. But with his ease of writing I'm sure the English translations are just as fantastic. :)

After the musketeers I'll take a Dumas break and read others but I have La Reine Margot on my TBR list which, just from the blurb on the back sounds fantastic.

187. The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin. I feel like if I knew anything at all about Ireland's political history, this would have been more enjoyable. It's very melancholy, and kind of boring. Reminded me of Cider With Rosie, except a little more happens. But just a little.

188. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. A family chronicle, wherein the parents are far more interesting than the whiny son. Boring...

189. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. If I swung that way, I'd swing Virginia's way. Definite girl crush. She's amazing. Her talent with language is hard to fathom. She's reallllyyy hard to read, though. Worth it!

190. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. These stories are really amusing, but do get a bit formulaic after the fifith or sixth one. But they go by fast and aren't boring, which is nice.

I just bought a beautiful B&N Edition of these - I can't wait to start reading them!

191. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert- D.H. Lawrence wishes he was that cool. But he's not. (read: this book is great).

192. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Ok, so the mother is Catholic a lot and keeps tabs on her kids and won't divorce her husband because she doesn't think it's right. And we're supposed to get like..super villain vibes from this? Like drove-her-poor-son-to-drink vibes? I don't feel sorry for anyone in this book, which seems to be Waugh's goal, except the mother. What exactly did she...do? Nothing, that's the answer. Nothing. Silly trop.

193. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. This was my second Morrison, the first being Beloved. Song of Solomon is a lot less...well, disgusting. Which is nice. Artsy as it may be, bestiality doesn't really do much to enrich a story. Anyway, I liked Song of Solomon a lot more. Didn't love, but liked.

194- just kidding. I tried, and failed, to read Vanity Fair. I got more than halfway through, so I'm thinking of going ahead and counting it. But it's just so bloody boring that I can't finish. I can't I just CAN'T. And I LOVE old english novels. But not this one because it's horrible. Ugh. Should I count it? I don't know.

I see you still have Vanity fair as your currently reading book so are you still persevering?

ugh. no. I just forgot to change it :)

194, for real: The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor. I've heard this book is funny, satirical, witty, etc. I found it totally humorless. Where's the funny? No funny here. It's disturbing, in a way where at the end instead of contemplating the book itself, or the "message" or whatever..you just think...wow. This author must have needed a therapist.

I see you decided not to Count Vanity Fair; you could just read a couple of chapters between books. Are you only reading 1001 books?

RMX-that's a great idea, I didn't think of that. I'm usually such an obsessive finisher. No, I'm not reading only 1001 books, I don't even want to finish the list, but I do like finishing what I start. In literary land, not real life, of course. In real life I'm a guilt free slacker.

119>
Flannery O'Connor is like that, her writing is indeed disturbing and very provocative and you have to get in tune with that to get the wittiness. Definitely not for everyone but there are fans, me included.

122- I read Everything that Rises Must Converge and I loved that one...maybe I can only take her in short story doses? Something to ponder... :)