I happened upon another Bookworm who posted one of those lists of book titles where you boldface the ones you’ve already read. I’ve never done one of those before, I guess because they seemed a little show-offy. But this particular one is a bit different from the others I’ve seen because at the end you’re supposed to add three new titles of your own. The list has over 400 titles ranging from War and Peace to Neuromancer to The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Reading the list was so entertaining that I thought I’d participate and add three of my own.
- The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
- His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
- To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
- Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
- 1984, George Orwell
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
- Catch-22, Joseph Heller
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
- Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
- Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
- The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
- The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
- Captain Corellis Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
- War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
- Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
- Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone, JK Rowling
- Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
- Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
- The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
- Tess Of The Durbervilles, Thomas Hardy
- Middlemarch, George Eliot
- A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
- The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
- Alices Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
- The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
- One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
- Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
- Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
- Persuasion, Jane Austen
- Dune, Frank Herbert
- Emma, Jane Austen
- Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
- Watership Down, Richard Adams
- The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
- The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
- Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
- Animal Farm, George Orwell
- A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
- Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
- Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
- The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
- The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
- The Stand, Stephen King
- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
- A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
- The BFG, Roald Dahl
- Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
- Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
- Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
- Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
- Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
- A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
- The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
- Mort, Terry Pratchett
- The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
- The Magus, John Fowles
- Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
- Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
- Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
- Perfume, Patrick Susskind
- The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
- Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
- Matilda, Roald Dahl
- Bridget Joness Diary, Helen Fielding
- The Secret History, Donna Tartt
- The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
- Ulysses, James Joyce
- Bleak House, Charles Dickens
- Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
- The Twits, Roald Dahl
- I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
- Holes, Louis Sachar
- Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
- The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
- Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
- Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
- Magician, Raymond E Feist
- On The Road, Jack Kerouac
- The Godfather, Mario Puzo
- The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
- The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
- The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
- Katherine, Anya Seton
- Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
- Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
- The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
- Midnights Children, Salman Rushdie
- Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
- Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
- The Beach, Alex Garland
- Dracula, Bram Stoker
- Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
- The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
- Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
- The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
- The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
- The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
- Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
- The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend
- The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
- Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
- The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
- The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
- Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
- The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
- Shogun, James Clavell
- The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
- Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
- Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
- The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
- House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
- The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
- Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
- Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
- The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
- Possession, A. S. Byatt
- The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood
- Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
- East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
- Georges Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
- Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker
- Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
- The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
- Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
- Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
- Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
- High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
- It, Stephen King
- James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
- The Green Mile, Stephen King
- Papillon, Henri Charriere
- Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
- Master And Commander, Patrick OBrian
- Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
- Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
- Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
- The Fifth Element, Terry Pratchett
- Atonement, Ian McEwan
- Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
- The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
- One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Ken Kesey
- Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
- Kim, Rudyard Kipling
- Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville
- River God, Wilbur Smith
- Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
- The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
- The World According To Garp, John Irving
- Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
- Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
- The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
- The Witches, Roald Dahl
- Charlottes Web, E. B. White
- Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
- They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
- The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
- The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
- Sophies World, Jostein Gaarder
- Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
- Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
- Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
- The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
- The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
- Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
- The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
- Silas Marner, George Eliot
- American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
- The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Gross-mith
- Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
- Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
- Heidi, Johanna Spyri
- Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
- Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
- The Truth, Terry Pratchett
- The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
- The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
- Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
- The Once And Future King, T. H. White
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
- Flowers In The Attic, DC Andrews
- The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
- The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
- The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan
- Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan
- Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan
- Winters Heart, Robert Jordan
- A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan
- Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
- A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan
- As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto
- Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
- The Married Man, Edmund White
- Winters Tale, Mark Helprin
- The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
- Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
- Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell
- Equus, Peter Shaffer
- The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
- Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
- Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
- The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
- Anthem, Ayn Rand
- The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
- Tartuffe, Moliere
- The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
- The Crucible, Arthur Miller
- The Trial, Franz Kafka
- Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
- Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
- Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther
- A Dolls House, Henrik Ibsen
- Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
- Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
- A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
- ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read
- Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
- Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
- The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson
- Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
- Summerland, Michael Chabon
- A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
- Candide, Voltaire
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
- Ringworld, Larry Niven
- The King Must Die, Mary Renault
- Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
- A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline Lengle
- The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
- The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
- The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
- Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith
- Xanth: The Quest for Magic, Piers Anthony
- The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum
- Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
- Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde
- Well Of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
- Life Of Pi, Yann Martel
- The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
- A Yellow Rraft In Blue Water, Michael Dorris
- Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
- Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock
- Witch of Blackbird Pond, Joyce Friedland
- Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. OBrien
- Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
- The Cay, Theodore Taylor
- From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
- The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
- The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
- The Kitchen Gods Wife, Amy Tan
- The Bone Setters Daughter, Amy Tan
- Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child
- Wicked, Gregory Maguire
- American Gods, Neil Gaiman
- Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
- The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
- Haunted, Judith St. George
- Singularity, William Sleator
- A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
- Different Seasons, Stephen King
- Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
- About a Boy, Nick Hornby
- The Bookmans Wake, John Dunning
- The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
- Illusions, Richard Bach
- Magics Pawn, Mercedes Lackey
- Magics Promise, Mercedes Lackey
- Magics Price, Mercedes Lackey
- The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav
- Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker
- Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
- The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love
- Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace.
- The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison.
- The Cider House Rules, John Irving.
- Enders Game, Orson Scott Card
- Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
- The Lions Game, Nelson Demille
- The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust
- Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
- Foucaults Pendulum, Umberto Eco
- Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
- Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
- Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz
- The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
- War and Rememberance, Herman Wouk
- The Art of War, Sun Tzu
- The Giver, Lois Lowry
- The Telling, Ursula Le Guin
- Xenogenesis (or Liliths Brood), Octavia Butler
- A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil)
- Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill
- The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern (or William Goldman)
- Beowulf, Anonymous
- The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell
- Deerskin, Robin McKinley
- Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey
- Passage, Connie Willis
- Otherland, Tad Williams
- Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
- Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christs Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
- The mysterious disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin
- Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
- The Island on Bird Street, Uri Orlev
- Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover
- The Miracle Worker, William Gibson
- The Genesis Code, John Case
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensen
- Paradise Lost, John Milton
- Phantom, Susan Kay
- The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
- Anno Dracula, Kim Newman
- The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
- Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson
- The Winter of Magics Return, Pamela Service
- The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz
- My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
- The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
- At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime ONeill
- Othello, by William Shakespeare
- The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
- The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
- Sati, Christopher Pike
- The Inferno, Dante
- The Apology, Plato
- The Small Rain, Madeline Lengle
- The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick
- 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater
- The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier
- Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
- To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
- Our Town, Thorton Wilder
- Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
- The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass
- The Moors Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
- The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
- A Passage to India, E.M. Forster loved
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
- The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
- Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg
- The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
- Howls Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
- Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
- Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
- Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
- The Diving-bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
- The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston
- Time for Bed by David Baddiel
- Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
- Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
- The Bloody Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Sewer, Gas, and Eletric by Matt Ruff
- Jhereg by Steven Brust
- So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane
- Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
- Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz
- The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
- Neuromancer, William Gibson
- The Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
- A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr
- The Mask of Apollo, Mary Renault
- The Gunslinger, Stephen King
- Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
- Childhoods End, Arthur C. Clarke
- A Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
- Ivanhoe, Walter Scott
- The God Boy, Ian Cross
- The Beekeepers Apprentice, Laurie R. King
- Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson
- Misery, Stephen King
- Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
- Hood, Emma Donoghue
- The Land of Spices, Kate OBrien
- The Diary of Anne Frank
- Regeneration, Pat Barker
- Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia
- A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
- The View from Saturday, E.L. Konigsburg
- Dealing with Dragons, Patricia Wrede
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
- A Severed Wasp - Madeleine Lengle
- Here Be Dragons - Sharon Kay Penman
- The Mabinogion (Ancient Welsh Tales) - translated by Lady Charlotte E. Guest
- The DaVinci Code - Dan Brown
- Desire of the Everlasting Hills - Thomas Cahill
- The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris
- The Things We Carried, Tim OBrien
- I Know This Much Is True, Wally Lamb
- Choke, Chuck Palahniuk
- Enders Shadow, Orson Scott Card
- The Memory of Earth, Orson Scott Card
- The Iron Tower, Dennis L. McKiernen
- Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
- A Ring of Endless Light, Madeline L’Engle
- Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy
- Hyperion, Dan Simmons
- If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor
- The Bridge, Iain Banks
- Everythings Eventual, Steven King
- The Taking, Dean Koontz
- Many Lives, Many Masters, Brian L Weiss
- Not What You Expected, Joan Aiken
- Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
- Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark
It was hard to resist the urge to annotate the list. Some of these books I hadn’t thought of in years, like Flowers in the Attic and Ringworld. Quite a few I’d read half of; I didn’t mark them. One I am actually in the middle of reading right now. Some I’d never heard of. Some are on my TBR pile. Some I’ve written blog posts on. Some I’ve read so many times I’ve got them practically memorized. Others I can barely recall.
Thought experiment: imagine meeting someone who has read the exact same books you have. No more, no less. What would that be like?
12 Comments
Well, first off, the two things that popped out at me on reading this list (seeing what you have read and and what you have not): 1. Pick up some Gabriel Garcia Marquez. You’re missing out. and 2. You are SO LUCKY to have never read Kerouac’s On The Road. Just so lucky!
As far as your thought experiment, I would find it a bit..well..boring.
Well, Kristy, I’m sorry to tell you but One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the ones I’ve read half of. Twice! I have tried a few others by him also and they… bugged me. Magical Realism is just not my thing.
Thanks for the warning about Kerouac. I wasn’t planning to read it, and now I’ll make a point not to. I did once go through a brief phase where I read several books in a row by William Burroughs, which I don’t recommend either.
And… boring? See, I think it would be fascinating. Like what other things would you have in common with that person? Would you like or hate each other? Would you ever discover that you’d read exactly the same books? I guess it boils down to pondering why you’ve read what you’ve read, why you end up with certain books but not others. And thinking about what a person’s choice of reading material says about them. And wondering why so many people added books by Roald Dahl to the list. And Jacqueline Wilson, who I’ve never even heard of.
It’s late, I’m babbling…
I’ve never heard of Jacqueline Wilson either! And she has written so many books! I decided she must write in a genre I don’t read or something. The thing is? I haven’t looked up who she is, even after having done the meme myself!
It’s a funny list, as all of these lists are. Almost all the books I read in high school are on there (with the notable relative lack of Shakespeare- did someone decide they were too obvious?) and great favorites from my childhood. And then you hit some random ones (at least, random to my mind)- The Epistemology of the Closet, Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices (is that what it really is or just a clever title?).
As for my recommendations to you- continue to stay away from Ayn Rand (I hate her with a passion one can only have when one loves books so much!). And have you tried the Jasper FForde books (the “Thursday Next” series, The Eyre Affair) etc? They are a funky mix of science fiction and literary er fiction. Lots of references to great literature and placed in an alternate universe. Nothing deep but good fun, easy read.
Ok, with a little help from Amazon I figured out which genre-we-don’t-read that JW writes for: preteen girls.
And… this is great. I hadn’t even thought of this list as an opportunity for getting recommendations. Turtlebella, yeah, I was about as eager to read Ayn Rand as I was Jack Kerouac, ha ha. The Thursday Next books I’d heard of and they sound like perfect summer reading.
Funny too about the list. Some I’m proud of having read, some I’m proud of not having read, some I’m embarrassed to admit to having read (*cough* Jonathon Livingston Seagull *cough*), some I’m embarrassed to admit not having read.
Ah, there are a couple favorites that I haven’t thought of for years there: “Cold Comfort Farm”, and “I Capture the Castle”.
Julie, have you read Steve Amick’s “The Lake, the River and the Other Lake”? It’s a perfect summer read for Michigan, especially.
The list is an interesting mix of Oprah picks, high school and college class lists, and YA and general bestsellers.
I seriously cannot imagine anyone who has read the same exact books I have - they would have to *be* me, with all the same life choices and experiences, to pick those particular books. And then they would feel about the same about what I’ve read, right?
My first reaction to your question: that would be weird. Twilight Zone. Alter ego. Odd.
I might have to do this one. It looks fun.
Oh, and you’re not missing out with Jacqueline Wilson. At least in my opinion.
hi Julie, well if I met someone who’d read the same exact books as I had, I would think we’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. But that can be a good thing, yes?
:o)
Wow, what a great list, and what a great variation on a Meme. I think I’ll take it up, but it is a biggie!
On meeting someone who had read the same books - interesting. I reckon you’d have quite a bit in common, but given that from that list my ‘read’ list is pretty broad-ranging, perhaps not…I have some of my best conversations with a particular friend about books we’ve read, but my partner and I don’t read much in common.
I think we should revise the meme to request that commenters give recommendations to the poster about what on their list they should/shouldn’t read. Thanks, you guys! :) And Sandy, thanks also for reminding me about Steve Amick. I haven’t read anything yet but I’ve been wanting to.
Well, in that case, have you given Jasper Fforde a go? Very silly, but amusing. And I’d guess that the absence of Terry Pratchett is deliberate? I’ve read a few of them, and again, they were amusing, but silly. Other than that - Thomas Hardy is good value (jude the obscure, and Tess in particular) and William Wilkie Collins (the moonstone, and the woman in white) I did do my list…
Crit, you’re the second person to mention Jasper Fforde, so I think that clinches it. But the absence of Terry Pratchett is not deliberate. I don’t even know who he (she?) is. What am I missing here?
Oh yes, and Tess is one of the ones I’d read half of. That was a weird experience, by the way: watching the movie when I’d read just half the book.
Goodness. Terry Pratchett. Is a ‘he’. English, writes absurdist fantasy (similar to Jasper Fforde) for want of a better genre title. Books are set on an alternative flat world (Discworld) populated by librarians, wizards of a sort, and morris dancers. I’ve only read a few and there are dozens. He’s very prolific, and fans can get very obsessed in a Monty Python or Star Trek kind of way. So you tend to get a very polarised thing going on. I’m strangely in the middle. I read the first 4 or so, but after that it got a bit “yeah, but what’s the point? do I really have the time and energy to invest in these amusing, but ultimately fairly stupid books?” the inevitable answer was “no” and so I stopped reading them.