Sunday, March 27, 2011

Top 100 books (supposedly) and book giveaway question...



I ran across this list of the greatest novels of the twentieth century (according to a list compiled at Radcliff College) on a fellow bloggers page Sarcastic Female Literary Circle. I decided that, since I can't fall asleep and I'm bored, that I'd go through and see how many of these books I've conquered over the years!
Key: Bold means I've read it; Underline means that I've started reading it but never finished; and highlighted means that I own the book, but have not read it yet.


1. "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. "The Catcher in the Rye," J.D. Salinger

3. "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck

4. "To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee

5. "The Color Purple," Alice Walker 

6. "Ulysses," James Joyce


7. "Beloved," Toni Morrison


8. "The Lord of the Flies," William Golding
9. "1984," George Orwell



10. "The Sound and the Fury," William Faulkne
11. "Lolita," Vladmir Nabokov
12. "Of Mice and Men," John Steinbeck

13. "Charlotte's Web," E.B. White
14. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," James Joyce
15. "Catch-22," Joseph Heller

16. "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley
17. "Animal Farm," George Orwell

18. "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway
19. "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner 
20. "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway

21. "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad
22. "Winnie-the-Pooh," A.A. Milne

23. "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Zora Neale Hurston 24. "Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison
25. "Song of Solomon," Toni Morrison
26. "Gone with the Wind," Margaret Mitchell 
27. "Native Son," Richard Wright
28. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Ken Kesey

29. "Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut
30. "For Whom the Bell Tolls," Ernest 
Hemingway
31. "On the Road," Jack Kerouac
32. "The Old Man and the Sea," Ernest Hemingway
33. "The Call of the Wild," Jack London 
34. "To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf
35. "Portrait of a Lady," Henry James
36. "Go Tell it on the Mountain," James Baldwin
37. "The World According to Garp," John Irving
38. "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren
39. "A Room with a View," E.M. Forster
40. "The Lord of the Rings," J.R.R. Tolkien
41. "Schindler's List," Thomas Keneally
42. "The Age of Innocence," Edith Wharton 
43. "The Fountainhead," Ayn Rand
44. "Finnegans Wake," James Joyce
45. "The Jungle," Upton Sinclair 
46. "Mrs. Dalloway," Virginia Woolf
47. "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Frank L. Baum
48. "Lady Chatterley's Lover," D.H. Lawrence
49. "A Clockwork Orange," Anthony Burgess
50. "The Awakening," Kate Chopin  
51. "My Antonia," Willa Cather
52. "Howard's End," E.M. Forster
53. "In Cold Blood," Truman Capote
54. "Franny and Zooey," J.D. Salinger
55. "Satanic Verses," Salman Rushdie
56. "Jazz," Toni Morrison
57. "Sophie's Choice," William Styron
58. "Absalom, Absalom!" William Faulkner
59. "Passage to India," E.M. Forster
60. "Ethan Frome," Edith Wharton

61. "A Good Man is Hard to Find," Flannery O'Connor
62. "Tender is the Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. "Orlando," Virginia Woolf
64. "Sons and Lovers," D.H. Lawrence
65. "Bonfire of the Vanities," Thomas Wolfe
66. "Cat's Cradle," Kurt Vonnegut
67. "A Separate Peace," John Knowles

68. "Light in August," William Faulkner 
69. "The Wings of the Dove," Henry James
70. "Things Fall Apart," Chinua Achebe 
71. "Rebecca," Daphne du Maurier
72. "A Hithchiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Douglas Adams
73. "Naked Lunch," William S. Burroughs
74. "Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh
75. "Women in Love," D.H. Lawrence
76. "Look Homeward, Angel," Thomas Wolfe
77. "In Our Time," Ernest Hemingway
78. "The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias," Gertrude Stein
79. "The Maltese Falcon," Dashiell Hammett
80. "The Naked and the Dead," Norman Mailer
81. "The Wide Sargasso Sea," Jean Rhys
82. "White Noise," Don DeLillo
83. "O Pioneers!" Willa Cather
84. "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller
85. "The War of the Worlds," HG Wells

86. "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad
87. "The Bostonians," James Henry
88. "An American Tragedy," Theodore Dreiser
89. "Death Comes for the Archbishop," Willa Cather
90. "The Wind in the Willows," Kenneth Grahame
91. "This Side of Paradise," F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand
93. "The French Lieutenant's Woman," John Fowles
94. "Babbitt," Sinclair Lewis
95. "Kim," Rudyard Kipling
96. "The Beautiful and the Damned," F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. "Rabbit, Run," John Updike
98. "Where Angels Fear to Tread," EM Forster
99. "Main Street," Sinclair Lewis
100. "Midnight's Children," Salman Rushdie

I guess this goes to show that I spend much more time reading books that I enjoy, rather than the books that a list says I should read! I'd rather relax with a book on Tudor England, than trudge through the pages or symbolism and overly descriptive paragraphs! Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of books on this list that I really do love, but I'm surprised by the amount that I have never even heard of! Makes me think that I should branch out and start reading the books on this list! I should probably be more aware since I'm an English Teacher. It's just that I spent six years in college and graduate school reading what THEY told me to read, then I student taught and did a long-terming subbing gig, and I had to read what I was teaching my students. So, when I don't have to teach a novel or read for a class, I choose what I want to read, and as the name of my blog shows, the genre I love is historical fiction! 

Onto other updates: I received the novel TO BE QUEEN by Christy English in the mail the other day, and I am trying to hurry up and finish the current book I am reading so that I can get to hers! She sent me a review copy, and I can't stop talking about it, because it's so exciting to be able to read and review a book by and author whose writing you adore! I am currently still reading the novel SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA, that I won in a contest a little while ago. I'm a little disappointed by it, but maybe because I had built it up to be so amazing before I won it? I'll review it on here as soon as I finish it! 
I've been apartment hunting in Goodyear Arizona (40 miles west of Phoenix). It's going well so far, but definitely stressful! I can't wait until the waiting is over, and I am comfortably moved in to my new place across the country!

Finally, I was thinking of doing a book giveaway. I'm not sure if 53 followers is enough to have a giveaway, does anyone have any thoughts on this??






2 comments:

  1. Giveaway thought: I have a few less followers than you and am doing my first giveaway this month. I posted a blog and forum discussion on Book Blogs to advertise. As a result, I have people other than followers entering the giveaway.
    Interesting list, but not surprising. I wonder how books make a top 100 list?

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  2. I read nine on the list. I don't know who composed that list but any "best books" that has "This Side of Paradise," by F. Scott Fitzgerald (my thoughts on the book: http://manoflabook.com/wp/?p=87) on it loses its reliability as far as I'm concerned.

    Yes, 53 followers is plenty to do a giveaway (you only need one :) )

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