Big Read Update - Mystery Solved!

Courtesy of Laughing at the Pieces:

"UPDATE: Alan M. informs me that 44 and 51 have been left off the list since time immemorial, but he discovered them on the original list and I put them in their respective positions. He also found this link about the murky origins and intentions of the list. Thanks, Alan!"

I don't know who Alan is, but would like to add my thanks!

In case you're too lazy or just not interested enough to read the whole murky history, the answer to the burning question of where this list came from is: the Brits. At least some of them. There was a poll asking people for "the most precious book they have read." I can only assume the Brits interpret "precious" as "dear" rather then "cutesy." The list, published in the Guardian, is entitled, "Books you can't live without."

P.S. I have updated my original entry to add in the elusive #44 and #51.

The Big Read - Updated!

Courtesy of ktbuffy:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Asterisk (*) the books you LOVE.
Courtesy of SharonGR, I'm adding:
4) Exclaim (!) those you HATED.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
!!7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
!12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
!18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
**19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
**21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
!22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
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
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
*36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
**37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
*48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
*68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
**82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
!!!85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
!!95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

More Mini-Book Reviews

What have I been reading lately, you ask?

Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner - I'd been curious about this one for awhile. I liked the beginning, liked the main character, was startled by how well the author nailed the whole body image thing, but thought she just sort of copped out with the (literally) "Hollywood ending."

Plan B by Jonathan Tropper - Same guy who wrote "Book of Joe" and "Everything Changes," both reviewed previously. Kind of like a male chick-lit author--light, quick reads with good dialogue, likable characters and some fairly incisive insights on the 30-something crowd. This book was sort of a Big Chill for my generation (I really hate that word: "generation").

Queen of the Oddballs by Hillary Carlip - a memoir by this woman who grew up in LA in the 70s and did some really outrageous things like stalking Carole King and winning the Gong Show. Entertaining in a surreal sort of way--what a life. California people are definitely different than the rest of us.

I think that covers it...I didn't have much time to read last week because I was finishing my short play which will be featured in week 1 (Sept 19-22) of ManhattanTheatreSource's Estrogenious Festival.

Netflix for Books!

As those of you who know us already know, the hubby and I were early subscribers to and are huge fans of Netflix. Our queue currently hovers in the 350 range.

And, ever since we joined Netflix, I have lamented the fact that there wasn't something similar for books. But now there is! The very inaccurately named Booksfree.com works basically like Netflix, i.e., you put books in a queue, they send them to you (2 at a time), you keep them as long as you want, and then you send them back (2 at a time). Since our home is already in a bookshelf-space deficit, and since I'm now spending every other weekend pretty much sitting around reading, this promises to be a god-send. I got my first shipment a couple of days ago and am halfway through Everything Changes by Jonathan Tropper. Next up is Mohawk by Richard Russo (which I think is the only one of his novels I haven't read yet).

I'm sure this service won't totally counteract my bookstore addiction, but it should mitigate it somewhat.

Books, books, books!

Well, sooner than I expected, I'm ready to write about something other than the big C.

One of my (and the hubby's) favorite things to do is go to bookstores. Especially used bookstores and independent bookstores, but Barnes & Noble will do in a pinch. We've squirreled out some great places in and around Woodstock, NY; Asheville, NC; Cambridge, MA; the Lower Cape; and, of course, NYC. We even managed to find a great English-language store in Paris, which should demonstrate the extent of our dedication to this endeavor.

It was at the Strand--the flagship used/independent store--that I first came upon Edith Wharton. Of course I had heard of her. But I had never read her. (No, I didn't read "Ethan Frome" in high school.) To be honest, I always thought her name sounded boring. Shallow, but true. But I took a chance and picked up "House of Mirth" on the $1 rack. And read it. And LOVED it. And then found out that Edith Wharton wrote tons of novels, short stories, and even ghost stories. The only thing better about finding a "new" author to love is finding out that they have more stuff for you to read. And in this case it's tons more stuff. Yippee! So, for the past couple of years, I've been digging into her collection, picking up books as I find them at used bookstores across the country.

Her eye for detail is amazing and she has a gift for capturing the limitations society places on people (whether they realize it or not).

My favorites are:
House of Mirth
Ethan Frome (perhaps one of the most perfect books ever written. a gripping plot, incredibly economical prose, and real depth of character)
Ghost Stories

Any other closet Edith Wharton fans out there?