100 Book Meme

I stole this from Transcendental Musings, a Meme I've avoided because I think I'm going to be embarassed. But since I'm working on humility, well...maybe this is a good day to do it.

Basically, the idea is to bold the books you've read and highlight the books you'd like to read. And per my usual style...commentary will accompany some of the selections.

1.Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - I'm neutral on this one. It's a classic I've never read but I think I can live my life without reading it.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - But I saw the movies!
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - I LOVE THIS BOOK! Read it on my own and then had to read it in a class in High School...and have read it again several times since.
6. The Bible – maybe not all, but at least MOST! I do think I've read the entire thing by now, though.
7. Wuthering Heights - mostly neutral on this one, but think I should read it "just because"
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman - I have no need to read transparent atheist anti-Catholic propaganda.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy – I saw parts of this made into a movie...was bored. Can't imagine how boring the book must be!
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller I read this but can't remember anything about it.
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - I've read many of his works, so bolding, but would desire to read them all.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier – I think I read this...I'm not sure!
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien – I read this in college, and had a hard time getting through it. It was a good story, but the style seemed somewhat dry to me...it's the reason I haven't tackled Lord of the Rings.
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife -
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Saw the movie in High school...hated it. No desire whatsoever to read the book.
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll –
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - read all, once as a child, once as an adult.
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres –
.38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - I tried. But he is such a hack I couldn't even get out the door of the store with it. I prefer to read edifying things or at the very least, something that contributes to honest imagination.
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - The whole series....a few times!
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - I've seen excerpts of this one due to a local controversy...and have to say that it's a pornographic book thus I have NO INTEREST in reading it.
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan –
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - have read it a couple times
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - we're living this one.
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Read it, wasn't a fan.
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - one of my favorite books growing up, was given to me by my Dad, which makes it more special.
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson\
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White - over and over again and I cry EVERY TIME!
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - lotta hype on this one...I wasn't impressed.
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -
9. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
100.The Outsiders

I have to wonder at the absence of GK Chesterton and some other authors. Is there a list of 100 CATHOLIC books out there? Or general Christianity? That would be an interesting Meme...must research. If none exists...maybe must create!