The Well-Read Canadian

I might have failed again.  I posted Book Riot's "Well Read" list last week.  I did okay, having read about a third of the books.  John from The Book Mine Set put together a Canadian version of the list and I did worse.  I'm not even going to post my numbers.  I've read a lot of the authors on the list, like Rohinton Mistry and Carol Shields, but not the books that are listed.  I thought I was pretty well-read as a Canadian... I took an entire class on Can Lit in University.  Some of those authors became favourites and I've read more of their work.  What I have now is another mountain of books to add to my to-read list.  

1. Lucy Maud Montgomery- Anne of Green Gables

2. John Vaillant- The Tiger

3. Modecai Richler- Barney's Version

4. Rohinton Mistry- A Fine Balance

5. Miriam Toews- A Complicated Kindness

7. Susanna Moodie- Roughing it in the Bush

8. Wayne Johnston- The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

9. James Houston- White Dawn

10. Michael Ondaatje- In the Skin of a Lion

11. Robert Munsch- The Paperbag Princess

12. Christian Bok- Eunoia

13. Pierre Berton- the Last Spike

14. Margaret Laurence- Stone Angel

15. Seth- It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken

16. Ken Dryden- The Game

17. Farley Mowat- Never Cry Wolf

18. Carol Shields- The Stone Diaries

19. M. G. Vassanji- the In-Between World of Vikram Lall

20. Michel Tremblay- The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant

21. Elizabeth Hay- Late Nights on Air

22. Sheila Watson- the Double Hook

23. Robertson Davies- Fifth Business

24. Richard Van Camp- Lesser Blessed

25. Ann-Marie MacDonald- Fall on Your Knees

26. Kit Pearson- The Sky is Falling

27. Kenneth Oppel- Silverwing

28. Margaret Atwood- The Handmaid's Tale

29. Marshall McLuhan- Understanding Media

30. Alistair MacLeod- No Great Mischief

31. Alice Munro- The Love of a Good Woman

32. Guy Vanderhaeghe- The Last Crossing

33. Emma Donoghue- Room

34. Guy Gavriel Kay- The Summer Tree

35. Douglas Coupland- Generation X

36. Tomson Highway- The Rez Sisters

37. Leonard Cohen- Beautiful Losers

38. Phoebe Gilman- Something From Nothing

39. The Complete Poems of Robert W. Service

40. David Adams Richards- Mercy Among the Children

41. Joseph Boyden- Three Day Road

42. Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki- Skim

43. Ivan Coyote- Bow Grip

44. Naomi Klein- No Logo

45. Will Ferguson- Why I Hate Canadians

46. Lisa Moore- February

47. Mary Watson- Crow Lake

48. Alan Bradley- The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

49. Cory Doctorow- Little Brother

50. P.K. Page- Planet Earth: Poems selected and new

51. Lawrence Hill- The Book of Negroes

52. Timothy Findley- The Wars

53. Margaret Atwood- Alias Grace

54. Jane Urquhart- The Stone Carvers

55. Mavis Gallant- From the Fifteenth District

56. Hugh MacLennan- Barometer Rising

57. Joy Kogawa- Obasan

58. Wayson Choy- Jade Peony

59. Chester Brown- Louis Riel

60. Yann Martel- Life of Pi

61. Gabrielle Roy- The Tin Flute

62. W.P. Kinsella- Shoeless Joe

63. Elizabeth Smart- By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

64. Thomas King- Green Grass, Running Water

65. Sara Gruen- Water for Elephants

66. William Gibson- Neuromancer

67. Margaret Laurence- The Diviners

68. Marie-Claire Blais- A Season in the Life of Emmanuel

69. Brian Moore- The Luck of Ginger Coffey

70. Ethel Wilson- Swamp Angel

71. Stephen Leacock- Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

72. W.O. Mitchell- Who Has Seen the Wind?

73. Robert Sawyer- Flashforward

74. Roch Carrier- The Hockey Sweater

75. Eric Walters- Camp X

76. Bryan Lee O'Malley- Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

77. Jeff Lemire- Essex County

78. Hubert Aquin- Next Episode

79. David Bergen- The Time in Between

80. George Elliott Clarke- Wylah Falls

81. Lynn Coady- Saints of Big Harbour

82. Michael Crummey- Galore

83. Esi Edugyan- Halfblood Blues

84. Rawi Hage- De Niro's Game

85. Bernice Morgan- Random Passage

86. Peter C. Newman- The Canadian Establishment

87. bpNichol- The Martyrology

88. Louise Penny- Still Life

89. Paul Quarrington- Whale Music

90. Sinclair Ross- As For Me and My House

91. Nalo Hopkinson- Brown Girl in the Ring

92. Vincent Lam- Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures

93. Dennis Lee- Alligator Pie

94. John McCrae- "In Flanders' Fields"

95. Zoe Whittal- Bottle Rocket Hearts

96. Andrew Davidson- The Gargoyle

97. Al Purdy- Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets

98. Pierre Berton- The Arctic Grail

99. Stephen Galloway- The Cellist of Sarajevo

100. Lynn Johnston- Something Old, Something New

Which books have you read?

How Well Read Are You?

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.

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
3. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4. All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque
5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay  by Michael Chabon
6. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
9. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
11. Beloved by Toni Morrison
12. Beowulf
13. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
14. Brave New World by Alduos Huxley
15. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
16. The Call of the Wild  by Jack London
17. Candide by Voltaire
18. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
19. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
20. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
21. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
22. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
23. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
24. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
25. The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
26. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor 
27. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
28. Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
29. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
30. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
31. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
32. Dream of Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
33. Dune by Frank Herbert
34. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
35. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
36. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
37. Faust by Goethe
38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
39. Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
40. The Golden Bowl by Henry James
41. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
42. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
43. The Gospels
44. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
45. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
46. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
47. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
48. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49. Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
50. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
51. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
52. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
53. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
54. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
55. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
56. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
57. if on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
58. The Iliad by Homer
59. The Inferno by Dante
60. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
61. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
62. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
63. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
64. The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
65. The Little Prince by Antoine  de Saint-Exepury
66. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
67. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
68. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
69. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
71. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
72. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
73. The Odyssey by Homer
74. Oedipus, King by Sophocles
75. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
76. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
77. The Pentateuch
78. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
79. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
80. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
81. Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
82. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
83. Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
84. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
85. The Stand by Stephen King
86. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
87. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
88. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
89. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
90. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
91. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
92. Ulysses by James Joyce
93. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
94. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
95. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
96. Watchmen by Alan Moore
97. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
98. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
99. 1984 by George Orwell
100. 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?