*~Can't Stop Reading~* discussion
1001 Personal Lists
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Geoffrey's 1001 books (with comments)
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More of my individual comments :-)521.The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway (read this in school. At the time I wasn't sure I liked it, but the story lingers and over time my appreciation has grown)
526.Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham (more solid scifi)
527.Foundation – Isaac Asimov (Asimov's Foundation series is fascinating, because it is utopian more than dystopian)
529.The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger (read this in school, too, and liked it, but perhaps not for the reasons I was supposed to!)
532.The End of the Affair – Graham Greene (discovered this after seeing the film with Fiennes)
536.The 13 Clocks – James Thurber (wonderful writer Thurber)
537.Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake (am reading this now - another book that sat on my shelf for years!)
538.The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
539.I, Robot – Isaac Asimov (Asimov's robot stories are still a reference, even for scientists!)
547.Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell (archetypal dystopia)
553.Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann (pretty sure I read this version - I read all the versions of Faustus several years ago, out of interest)
561.Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
564.Animal Farm – George Orwell (satire at its most biting, comparable to Swift)
565.Cannery Row – John Steinbeck (Steinbeck always writes duch human drama!)
574.The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (read this in both French and English versions, as well as several others by the same author - captivating)
576.The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse (read this last year, related to my own writing project - loved it)
579.The Outsider – Albert Camus (Read this in French at university in my French class - loved it. Beautifully written)
586.Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
590.The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati (first book I read in Italian - loved it!)
592.The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
599.The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
602.Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre (read this when I was on a Sartre kick, along with Being and Nothingness and No Exit!)
603.Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (another horror story I liked)
604.Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler (I've read most of Ambler's gritty yarns)
605.Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
608.Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
610.The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien (Read this many times. Recently read a critique of this that separated out the parts that were written before LOTR was written...quite fascinating)
619.Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell (Am contemplating rereading this)
649.Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (dystopia a la Huxley)
652.The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett (discovered this as part of my hardboiled crime readings)
660.The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
675.Orlando – Virginia Woolf (one of my favorite books)
676.Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence (the language doesn't shock any more... so the book is less interesting than it used to be...)
684.Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
685.Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust (read this in French original ... much better than the English versions I think...)
699.The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (reread this recently as a result of the new film version)
717.Siddhartha – Herman Hesse (still a rather fascinating intro to Buddha's life)
723.Ulysses – James Joyce (I have never stopped reading this since I discovered it)
726.The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
728.Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
742.The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
747.Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
750.Death in Venice – Thomas Mann (have been rereading this)
767.The Jungle – Upton Sinclair (loved the Lanny Budd books. Have been reading The Jungle on my iphone...)
769.The Forsyte Saga – John Galsworthy (read this recently, after watching Downton Abbey...)
780.Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad (I have struggled to read this for years, the theme interests me. Have almost finished :-) )
781.The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (is this horror or mystery...)
789.The Turn of the Screw – Henry James (Another interesting horror story)
790.The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells (read again recently)
791.The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells (reread recently)
794.Dracula – Bram Stoker
797.The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
More comments799.Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy (my mum's fave book - but very dark and sad)
804.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (sherlock is still the template for all other crime fighters)
808.Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy (almost as dark as Jude the Obscure, but Tess has a luminous quality Jude lacks)
810.The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy (read this last year, great story and writing)
811.La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola (more dark stuff)
818.The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy (one of my favorites, the opening scenes are extraordinarily moody)
821.The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy (brisk story with a dark twist)
822.Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson (classic Stevenson)
825.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain (this story illuminated my childhood, but it still stands up to an adult reading too)
826.Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant (de Maupassant writes with surpassing humanity about people on the edge of life)
831.Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson (my favorite Stevenson, I reread this every few years!)
836.Nana – Émile Zola (all Zola's writing is dark, but Nana has its brighter moments)
839.Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy (Really, I like all of Hardy's work - it is still topical today)
840.Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (considered by many the greatest of Tolstoy's, I've always had trouble with this, although many of its scenes haunt me)
844.The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy (lesser known Hardy but still woth the effort)
846.Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy (my favorite Hardy book, more positive in its outlook than most of his other works)
854.Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll (Carroll needs to be reread - what at first seems simple is actually full of interesting depths)
857.War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (my second favorite Tolstoy - love the juxtaposition of large scale history against micro events in daily lives)
862.The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins (a classic who-dun-it, before we had who-dun-its! gorgeous)
863.Little Women – Louisa May Alcott (I finally read this a year or so ago, and caught up on why this is such a favorite)
866.Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne (my favorite Verne - adventurous, inventive, atmospheric)
867.Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky (read this a few years ago, super study of guilt)
868.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll (more of the fabulous Carroll)
869.Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens (wonderful story of personal integrity)
872.The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley (my mum read this to us as children)
873.Les Misérables – Victor Hugo (I like Hugo, but it is a bit sentimental and melodramatic in places)
874.Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev (fascinating study of the clash between generations)
876.Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (my favorite Dickens, although partly, I think, because of the old Lean film of this - still, the writing is wonderful)
877.On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev (i barely remember this - I think I need to reread it!)
880.The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins (story of betrayal that bears witness to an awareness of the problems women faced in his era)
883.A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens (an easy read, although a dark subject-possibly the most well known opening line in the English language!)
895.The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne (ghost story par excellence...at least that's how I remember it!)
896.Moby-Dick – Herman Melville (long, slow read - but I think that might have been intentional; quirky and interesting characters though)
898.David Copperfield – Charles Dickens (my grandad's favorite book, I liked it, but not as much as I expected to)
899.Shirley – Charlotte Brontë (another one I don't remember well)
902.Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë (one of the most haunting stories in the English language - the second part of the book is less well known than the first part)
904.Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë (reread this recently, found the brooding master to be less sympathetic than I remembered)
905.Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray (story of scheming Becky Sharpe - a lesson in what women had to do to get ahead in Victorian times)
906.The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas (I love this story of vengeance)
And the final batch :908.The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas (I always felt it should be called the Four Musketeers...)
909.The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe (classic horror)
911.The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe (even more classic, even more horror)
913.A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens (My second favorite Dickens, so full of memorable scenes and lines)
916.The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe (atmosphere, atmosphere)
918.Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens (my third favorite Dickens - I read this as a child, when I found the writing dense and opaque, and reread it last year,when I found it luminous...)
923.The Red and the Black – Stendhal (read this story of coming of age and dealing with authority in the original French - another story my grandfather liked)
925.Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper (the brooding forests are almost a character in their own right)
931.Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (so different from the film treatments, a story of humanity rather than monstrosity)
932.Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen (More satirical than most of Austen's work, I found this somewhat less memorable)
933.Persuasion – Jane Austen (solid Austen, not quite as striking as P&P, S&S or Emma, though)
936.Emma – Jane Austen (Austen's tale of a strong willed woman who almost certainly resembled herself in certain ways)
937.Mansfield Park – Jane Austen (another solid but less memorable Austen)
938.Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (probably the most accessible of Austen's stories - sheer brilliance)
940.Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen (almost as good as P&P, a little more subtle)
970.Candide – Voltaire (I probably should reread this one, I remember Candide simply as a troublemaker...)
974.Fanny Hill – John Cleland (definitely off-colour, but a lot tamer than much modern erotica)
975.Tom Jones – Henry Fielding (Both romantic and bawdy... fun and serious... a great combo!)
977.Clarissa – Samuel Richardson (I get these two mixed up, they are interesting as early examples of the novel)
978.Pamela – Samuel Richardson
982.A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift (satire at its most biting)
983.Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift (satire disguised as a fantasy adventure)
985.Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe (I actually know Moll better than Crusoe, I found it easier to read)
987.Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe (worth reading however, for its memorable portrayal of Crusoe and his friend)
992.Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Ah, Sancho, Rozinante, etc. - a real romp!)
996.The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous (I'm not sure I've read them all! but I sure do like the first hundred or so!)
1001.Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus (part of our understanding of animals!)
I was enthralled with the 1001 book list, although ai do have some critical feelings about it as well. I went back to the original site to try to see how it was constructed. I believe it under-represents top writing from the 20th (and 21st) centuries in languages other than English. I propose to start another list on this topic in a separate posting.
Turns out I have read just shy of 200 books from the list (196 by my count). In addition to these, I own many others that I haven't got around to reading... I shall have to see how many of these there are :-). Here is the list of what I have read. (I have divided them into groups of ten). I have added a few comments where pertinent.
1.Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro (loved the book more than the film)
42.Atonement – Ian McEwan
49.Life of Pi – Yann Martel (a Canadian writer- Quebecois even!)
63.The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood (I've read Atwood from the beginning)
72.Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson (I've read Stephenson from before anyone talked about Snowcrash...)
75.Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb (An underappreciated Young French writer - read this in French original)
86.The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver (I love puzzles, especially in books)
93.Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (interesting outsider's persoective on Japanese culture)
125.The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami (I'm working my way through Murakami's quirky books)
129.Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres (good film too...)
135.Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks (everything Faulks writes is good - this was one of his first)
141.A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth (I've read Seth since he wrote a novel in sonnets - Goldengate - extraordinary)
156.The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje (another Canadian - the film drops all reference to the Canadian part of the story - and loses much as a result)
157.Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg (Scifi disguised as something else!)
183.Possession – A.S. Byatt (read this after seeing the film - and discovered Byatt as a result!)
190.Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (I've been reading Ishiguro since An Artist From the Floating World - nobody talked about him back then!)
195.Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel (loved the book, but not the film)
196.A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving (love all of airving's work - another quirky writer)
199.Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
200.Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco (not all academics are dull! - although Eco does get longwinded at times)
207.The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks (my brother insisted I read this as most like my own writing - but I have trouble with Banks' style...)
213.The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy (dark, dark, dark...)
230.An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro (Ishiguro before he was well known)
236.Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez (took me a long time to get into this)
238.The Cider House Rules – John Irving (loved it)
241.Contact – Carl Sagan (SF - almost liked the movie more!)
242.The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (pessimistic view of the world)
243.Perfume – Patrick Süskind (changed my understanding of perfumes)
252.The Lover – Marguerite Duras (a classic - read it in original)
256.The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera (my wife did her thesis partly on Kundera, so they were must reading for me...all fascinating)
258.Neuromancer – William Gibson (another book that defined a movement)
259.Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes (quirky - read this in audiobook format)
265.Waterland – Graham Swift (not my favorite)
272.The Color Purple – Alice Walker
293.The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco (great book, although some of the "academic" passages are very long)
296.Shikasta – Doris Lessing (still unusual scifi)
301.The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (a must read for the two serious!)
303.The World According to Garp – John Irving
311.Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin (intelligent erotica?)
320.Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice (an interesting writer - Rice is popular but wrote about unpopular subjects in some of her lesser known books, including a sexual relationship between an adult and a child, if I'm not mistaken...)
339.Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré (I find it hard to identify with Le Carré's protagonists, but they are good nonetheless)
340.Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (not my favorite Vonnegut)
341.Fear of Flying – Erica Jong (still erotic...somewhat...)
344.The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino (fascinating writer - am rereading this in Italian original)
347.Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon (Pynchon is one of my favorites)
354.Surfacing – Margaret Atwood (early Atwood that takes place in Quebec)
367.I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (this book sat on my shelf for decades before I read it)
375.Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (awesome)
376.The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles (love the double ending)
389.2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke (still awesome and groundbreaking, both as a film and a book)
393.In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan (poetry as prose)
396.Chocky – John Wyndham (great scifi)
409.The Magus – John Fowles (helps one to understand Fowles as a writer)
427.Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
429.Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol (read this in French)
435.The Collector – John Fowles (unusual subject)
436.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey (liked the book better than the film)
437.A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess (book hard to read because of unusual use of language, but still fascinating)
438.Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov (more poetry as prose)
439.The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard (seeing the world through Ballard's fractured glasses)
440.The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing (like this but enjoyed The Four-Gated City more)
443.The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani (read this in Italian - wonderful story)
444.Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein (still a groundbreaker)
451.Catch-22 – Joseph Heller (book is itself kinda circular!)
456.To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (wonderful writing)
461.Naked Lunch – William Burroughs (not meant to be easy, ai think!)
477.The Once and Future King – T.H. White (what a great idea...Merlin living backwards through time!)
481.The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham (one of the few horror stories I've read and liked)
484.On the Road – Jack Kerouac (Another Quebecois!)
486.Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak (one of my favorites - love the poetry included in the book)
488.Justine – Lawrence Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet is one of my sources of inspiration for my own writing)
494.The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien (read this when I was 14... and have reread it nearly 20 times since, including once out loud in French!)
496.Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (great book if still controversial)
506.The Story of O – Pauline Réage (not such a great book...not sure why it's on the list!)
508.Lord of the Flies – William Golding (amorality play!)
510.The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley (solid reading)
511.The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler (been reading all of Chandler's work)
518.Casino Royale – Ian Fleming (all of Fleming is interesting)
521.The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
526.Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
527.Foundation – Isaac Asimov
529.The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
532.The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
536.The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
537.Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
538.The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
539.I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
547.Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
553.Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
561.Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
564.Animal Farm – George Orwell
565.Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
574.The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
576.The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
579.The Outsider – Albert Camus
586.Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
590.The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
592.The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
599.The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
602.Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
603.Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
604.Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
605.Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
608.Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
610.The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
619.Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
649.Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
652.The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
660.The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
675.Orlando – Virginia Woolf
676.Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
684.Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
685.Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
699.The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
717.Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
723.Ulysses – James Joyce
726.The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
728.Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
742.The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
747.Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
750.Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
767.The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
769.The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
780.Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
781.The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
789.The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
790.The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
791.The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
794.Dracula – Bram Stoker
797.The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
799.Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
804.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
808.Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
810.The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
811.La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
818.The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
821.The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
822.Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
825.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
826.Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
831.Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
836.Nana – Émile Zola
839.Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
840.Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
844.The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
846.Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
854.Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
857.War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
862.The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
863.Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
866.Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
867.Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
868.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
869.Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
872.The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
873.Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
874.Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
876.Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
877.On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
880.The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
883.A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
895.The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
896.Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
898.David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
899.Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
902.Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
904.Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
905.Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
906.The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
908.The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
909.The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
911.The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
913.A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
916.The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
918.Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
923.The Red and the Black – Stendhal
925.Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
931.Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
932.Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
933.Persuasion – Jane Austen
936.Emma – Jane Austen
937.Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
938.Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
940.Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
970.Candide – Voltaire
974.Fanny Hill – John Cleland
975.Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
977.Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
978.Pamela – Samuel Richardson
982.A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
983.Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
985.Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
987.Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
992.Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
996.The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
1001.Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus