I came across this list over at Book Riot, "From Zero to Well-Read in 100 Books". I was intrigued to see how well-read I was. If you asked me before I read the list, I would say I was very well-read. I read a wide range of books from classics to zombies, genre to award-winning literary fiction. I've read books from around the world - though always in English.
I've copy and pasted the Book Riot list and I've crossed off the books I've read. I've put in bold the books I own, but haven't read yet and I've italicized books I want to read, but don't own. Not too complicated, I hope.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Beowulf
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- Brave New World by Alduos Huxley
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- Candide by Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
- The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
- The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- Dream of Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
- Faust by Goethe
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley- Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
- The Golden Bowl by Henry James
- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- The Gospels
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles DickensThe Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldHamlet by William ShakespeareThe Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret AtwoodHarry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone by J.K. RowlingHeart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas AdamsThe Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien- House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
- Howl by Allen Ginsberg
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins- if on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
- The Iliad by Homer
- The Inferno by Dante
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Life of Pi by Yann MartelThe Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exepury
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia WoolfMurder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie- The Odyssey by Homer
- Oedipus, King by Sophocles
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
- The Pentateuch
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen- Rabbit, Run by John Updike
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
- The Stand by Stephen King
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee- Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte1984 by George Orwell- 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James
Results
Read: 26
Own, un-read: 14
Want to read: 21
Not-interested: 39
These were not the results I was expecting. I'm going to be honest and say there are definitely 39 books on this list I have no interest in reading right now. I may change my mind in the future and say to myself, what was I thinking, I absolutely have to read 50 Shades of Grey (for example), but not now. I want to mention, after just quickly reading through the list, there seems to be an okay amount of women on the list, and a few minorities. Could there be more? Maybe, maybe not. Culture was taken into account when creating this list, that means including who is on his best-sellers list and what authors have impacted the world around the list's creator.
I'm certain my list would be different. If I made a list like this, there would likely be a lot more Canadians on the list, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje and Douglas Coupland. Again, that's culture. (I have to say that I love that Their Eyes Were Watching God is on this list. It's an amazing story.) There are a lot of American authors on the list, great ones like Faulkner and Hemingway, both of whom I've read, just not the books on the list. If this list were made in England, Australia, Japan or India, I'm sure it would be different too. Though there would definitely be some cross-over. Maybe I'm being too analytical. Maybe not analytical enough.
Do you think you are well-read? What books would be on your list?
I've read 46 of them. (Possibly 48, but there are 2 I'm unsure whether or not I didn't just read abridged versions way back in the day). My wheels are turning for an all Canadian version...
ReplyDeleteAnd I've made one.
ReplyDeleteInteresting list--I appreciate that it includes both popular works (Dan Brown, EL James) as well as the upper echelons of literary works, like James Joyce. You don't often see all of them on the same list, you know? I've read 41 of those. There would be another 5-6 that I've tried reading and didn't get anywhere with (Ulysses by Joyce for one). And like you, there are some on this list that I have no interest in and will likely never read (EL James again, for one. I did actually read the Dan Brown).
ReplyDeleteThere are authors I've read, but not the books that are listed. I think the varied authors, topics and genres are part of what makes it so interesting.
DeleteI might read Ulysses one day.
Hooray lists! I'm (if you don't mind) going to do a similar list. I like the way you marked off those you own but haven't read and those that you really have no interest in
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see your list!
Delete(I have so many books, unread, it can alternate between depressing and exciting.)
Consider it all of the GREAT books that you get to eventually one day read! Glass half full and all that jazz
DeleteGlass overflowing :)
Delete