Sara's 1001, with Opinions

This is inspired by Bekka's list... I'm totally stealing your format too!

Pre-1700's
The Princess of Cleves
Gargantua and Pantagruel

I read Gargantua for school and don't even remember it... sorry! I loved the Princess of Cleves though. I went into it expecting a certain type of romance and was pleasantly surprised when my expectations were not fulfilled!

1700's
Candide
Fanny Hill
The Interesting Narrative

Each of these books was amusing, but I can't say that I absolutely enjoyed reading any of them. Each is just a string of events happening to the hero- event 1, 2, 3, 4 ok now here's the moral! The end. Thank god for the modern novel.

(Touchstones not working... will have to come back and try later.)

Yay! Yay for the 1800's!

1800's
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Frankenstein
The Nose
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Purloined Letter
The Scarlet Letter
Villette
The Count of Monte-Cristo
The Three Musketeers
Vanity Fair
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
The Yellow Wallpaper
Walden
Madame Bovary
The Woman in White
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Crime and Punishment
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Little Women
Treasure Island
Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Dracula

Many of my favorite books are in this group, Jane Eyre, the Austens, Madame Bovary.

My least favorites out of the group now are probably the Poe stories. When I was a goth teenager though, I literally had many of pieces memorized.

When I read The Scarlet Letter as a teenager, I found it torturous. Now that I look back and see how much I've enjoyed other books from this time period, I'm inclined to go back and give it another try.

Walden: more boring than people make it seem. Trust me. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth reading.

The biggest surprise from this group was Gogol. I LOVED his work. Very funny, loved the fantasy element in it.

The biggest disappointment was Vanity Fair. By all accounts, I should have loved it. I love Becky, and I love her for not being a sweet as molasses heroine. The problem is that this book suffers from digressions that were way more relevant to one of Thackery's contemporaries than they will ever be to you or me. I'll just stick with the film versions.

Lots of these, so I'm going to break it up a bit.

1900's

Virginia Woolf
The Voyage Out
Jacob's Room
Mrs. Dalloway
The other two don't hold a candle to Mrs. Dalloway. I agree with removing The Voyage Out.

E.M. Forster
A Room With a View
Howard's End
A Passage of India
I love these books because they exemplify the best of 1800's literature, but with a modern sensibility.

Farewell My Lovely
The Big Sleep
The Long Goodbye
The Maltese Falcon
The Thin Man
You either enjoy noir or you don't. If you do, these are all amazing.

Borges
Ficciones
Labyrinths
Hell Yeah.

Flann O'Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds
The Third Policeman
I love him. Statistically speaking, you probably won't. But then there's the chance that you will pee your pants laughing. Willing to gamble?

Nancy Mitford
The Pursuit of Love
Love in a Cold Climate
Meh.

Iris Murdoch
The Black Prince
The Sea, The Sea
Similar books. I recommend The Black Prince, however, and not The Sea.

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
The best book you've never read.

The Once and Future King
Much darker and weirder than I expected. In a good way.

John Le Carré
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
I recommend the Spy, not TTSS unless you enjoy spy literature.

Some Prefer Nettles -- All I can say about this one is... what the hell? The Makioka Sisters is one of my favorite books and is not on the list. If the Makioka Sisters were a beautiful kimono, Some Prefer Nettles would be a snotty handkerchief. I don't understand this decision at all.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Tender is the Night
I love The Great Gatsby and went on to read all of his other books looking for a similar experience. Unfortunately, nothing in this world can come close to the greatness of Gatsby.

Edith Wharton:
The House of Mirth
Age of Innocence
When I first starting reading The House of Mirth, I thought, great, just what I need to read. Another book about who's marrying whom. I couldn't stop myself though-- I was totally sucked in. I'm still honestly not sure how it happened, but even today I still feel intensely about Lily Bart's love life.

Jeffery Eugeindes
The Virgin Suicides
This is another one of those that make you go WHAT? They cut Middlesex but left Suicides?

Wittgenstein's Mistress
Not a very popular one from the list, but I enjoyed it very, very, very, very much.

Margaret Atwood
Cat's Eye
The Robber's Bride
Surfacing
The Handmaid's Tale
I've enjoyed all of her books except for The Edible Woman. Handmaid's Tale and the Blind Assassin are my favorites.

The Rest, unsorted for Now:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The Bluest Eye
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The Bell Jar
The Crying of Lot 49
Wide Sargasso Sea
In Cold Blood
The Magus
Cat's Cradle
Breakfast at Tiffany's
To Kill a Mockingbird
Solaris
The Golden Notebook
Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Rings
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Glass Bees
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
Veronika Decides to Die
The Poisonwood Bible
Elementary Particles
Fear and Trembling
The Hours
The Story of O
The Mandarins
Bonjour Tristesse
The Quite American
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
The Player of Games
The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
Brave New World
Thank You, Jeeves
Tropic of Cancer
Native Son
The Stranger
The Little Prince
Animal Farm
Under the Volcano
Exercises in Style
1984
The Catcher in the Rye
Molloy
Memoirs of Hadrien
The Old Man and the Sea
Casino Royale
Fear of Flying
The Dispossessed
Kiss of the Spiderwoman
Interview with the Vampire
Delta Venus
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Confederacy of Dunces
The Color Purple
Neuromancer
Flaubert's Parrot
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Cider House Rules
Love in the Time of Cholera
Beloved
Watchmen
The New York Trilogy
Kitchen
Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency
Focault's Pendulum
Like Water for Chocolate
The Things They Carried
Memoirs of a Geisha
Tipping the Velvet
Sputnik Sweetheart
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Immoralist
Rashomon
Siddhartha
Gone with the Wind
Absalom, Absalom!
The Hobbit
Of Mice and Men
Their Eyes were Watching God

2000's

House of Leaves
The Blind Assassin
Middlesex
Fingersmith
White Teeth
On Beauty
Never Let Me Go
Bartleby and Co
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Platforme
Atonement
Snow
Kafka on the Shore
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Cloud Atlas
2666
The Accidental

Bartleby and Co is one of my new favorite books. It's about one of your favorite things too- books!

Cloud Atlas is another of my favorites. Just lovely.

I look forward to seeing The Accidental booted off of the list in the 2010 edition.

That brings me up to 169 if I count both editions.

"if x is a beautiful kimono, then y is a snotty handkerchief"

HAHAHAHHAHA. OH MAN. That's funny, I don't care who you are. Your reviews are great!

170. The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

Wow. What an amazingly well written book. And so short that there's no reason not to read it if you're attempting all 1001.

171. Everything that Rises Must Converge -- Flannery O'Connor

As you can see, I'm working through the short ones. That's because I have a very much not short one under way and it's killing me. I need a break.

Great reviews you've given me some great ideas about what to grab next, I'll be coming back to check out what else you are reading

Thanks for the encouragement Katrina!

172. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
I expected to love this book. That was before I realized that Miss Brodie is a ****.

HAHAHAHA!!

173. Schooling by Heather McGowan
The amazing thing about this book that gets it honored with mention on the 1001 list is that its sentences only include either a predicate or a subject, but not both. Full sentences were good enough for Flaubert and Hemingway, but I guess McGowan showed them what they were missing, huh? You have to do the mental work of completing the sentences. Dialogue is rarely attributed to a speaker, so you also get to figure out who is saying what. If that's not enough work for you, it's also written in a confusing mixture of British and American English. This was one of the most tedious books I've ever read.

To rewrite this in the style of the book.
Made it on the 1001 list. That's in a book you know. They say it's because of the style. Predicate. Subject. Never together. Smart enough to fill in the rest, huh? Who said that? You know. Want a biscuit? Not sure what type of biscuit you mean. Oh you know. She knows.

174. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Not my favorite of hers. It was definitely un-put-downable, but I just didn't enjoy it as much as I did Oryx and Crake or The Blind Assassin. Part of the problem may have been that earlier this week I read The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Even though they were quite different books, I felt like they had the same flavor and that I was just getting more of the same. Both are awesome books and I don't hesitate to recommend them. I just want a change of pace.

175. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
I expected to love this book right away, like I loved Jane Eyre. The first half of the book, though is much slower. It's not called Maggie Tulliver, it's named after the mill, and who owes debts to whom in regards to the mill makes up a large portion of the book. Things pick up when Maggie grows up and starts to create drama, but as soon as things get interesting the author cops out. Bring on the drama Ms Eliot! We can take it!

A splendid list I have read 20 of these over the years.
The one surprize was that Charles Dickens does not appear.
The last of these I read was Madam Bovary which is so sad it makes you cry.

I got some titles from this list. Long long ago I read Siddhartha and it made me investigate buddhism but the story is now largely forgotten.
Perhaps there is a case to be made for reading some books again but have we got time?

Of Tanizaki books, I have read neither Makioka Sisters nor Some Prefer Nettles, but of what I have read from him, he is dividing author...I loved first half of Key but the end deflated, and of that short story collection about half of the stories were great and the other half...meh.
But maybe there is another person somewhere who likes exactly the stuff I don't, and vice versa. So it might be that I too will like either Makioka Sisters or Nettles, and dislike the other.

I have to take a look at that Miss Brodie, I am partial to well-written *****es.

#16: The Dickens thing actually surprises me too! Somehow I've just never had one of his books given to me, or seen one turn up tauntingly cheap at a bookstore, or assigned to me in school. Dickens and I just never managed to cross paths! I'll have to look into his books and decide which to dig into first.

176. The Corrections - I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't call it the best book of the millennium, as some have.

Hiya - just found your thread and have too much to say to even cry theft :)

#3 DON'T DO IT! I am suffering through The Scarlet Letter at the moment - it so is as bad as you remember. Awful!

#11 So true!!!!!!!!!

#19 Oooh - Dickens is excellent! Enjoy.

You've definitely read more of the 1900s than me - I really must add some Raymond Chandler to my TBR pile - I've not read any as yet.

The Raymond Chandler books are "easy reads" in comparison to a lot of the other 1001 books so you have nothing to lose by trying them out!

177. Possession -- This novel is about literary research on a pair of fictional Victorian poets. Their poetry is included in the book as well. Byatt creates an entire body of non-existent literature, so in a way this is multiple works, and the literary criticism of those works. Normally, I would pee my pants with joy at discovering a book like this. At this period in my life though, it was just too much. I didn't have the energy.

178. I'm fairly certain that I've read other of the 1001 since I read Possession, but I can't remember what they were. The once that I DO remember is Cryptonomicon. I am a nerd in all of the right ways to enjoy this book. As a teenager, my dream was to be a cryptographer. I'm from a military family. And I'm a coder. It's because this book fit me so perfectly that it absolutely turned me off. Stephenson makes these activities seem more white and more male than ever before. He throws in one badass female so that he doesn't get sued or something for having a 928 page novel without one, but of course her purpose in the plot is to fall in love with the nerdy white heterosexual male. I'd give him props for having at least some LGBT characters, but history put them in the story, not Stephenson.

Hmmmm... think maybe I'll shove that a bit further down the TBR mountain. Sounds LONG and potentially irritating.

179. Passing by Nella Larsen
Irene accidentally bumps into Clare Kendry, whom she grew up with as a child. Then Clare was the poor kid in the neighborhood, an outsider. Now she's a gorgeous woman... and passing as white, which comes as quite a shock to the light-skinned Irene who identifies with her African American roots. Clare insists on building a new relationship with Irene, despite Irene's attempts to force her out of her life. Finally, driven part by pity and part by a possible lesbian attraction, Irene lets Clare into her life even though she knows that it can only end in tragedy.

A quick read, very "plotty" in the way that Dickens is*, but with modernist influences.

WHATEVER YOU DO: don't read the introduction. Nothing before you start reading the book. Even the page before the first page, which had "A note on this edition" flat out gives away the end.

*I've never actually read Dickens, believe it or not. I'm just making an assumption here. I tried Dickens though, mostly because of #16 above. It wasn't an audiobook, I was using it to exercise, and the experience didn't go well.

180. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Since this on the new list I can add it!

181. The Thirty-nine Steps
Why is this in the 1001?

I'm one of the readers who disliked the Thirty-nine Steps too. I think it's on the list because it was one of the first spy novels. But hasn't the genre improved since then? (at least I trust it has--don't read a lot of spy novels myself).