terra: Look Ma, Literacy!

Alex (

terra) wrote,
@ 2008-05-09 00:05:00

Entry tags:

alex reads, is virgil gonna have to choke a bitch?!, when memes attack!

Look Ma, Literacy!
Stealing this from angelamaria. I haven't done a book post in a while, and really guys I read more than Twilight and sixties Jimmy Olsen comics. Really.

Below are the top 106 books tagged “unread” in Librarything.

The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your TBR list.

Mostly I'm using underline as books I own but haven't gotten to yet.
Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
~~Ulysses~~ (I hate James Joyce.)
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace (I'm still reading this, it's pretty awesome.)
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian
~~A portrait of the artist as a young man~~ (I still hate James Joyce.)
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince** (Really guys? This is short.)
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners (This is the exception to me hating James Joyce.)
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

52: Unread, mostly stuff I don't care about. (Feel free to convince me otherwise :D)
40: Read
8: Owned, haven't started.
4: Started, not finished.
2: James Joyce.

(Post a new comment)

	curtissed 2008-05-09 07:25 am UTC (link)
	You haven't read Brave New World? I reccomend it. It's amazing. And still relevant to today's society. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-09 10:07 pm UTC (link)
	You and everyone else, apparently :P I'll have to check it out now, although dystopic novels aren't really my genre, I like most things if they're done well. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	oilysheep 2008-05-09 08:16 am UTC (link)
	i agree with you on james joyce. only one i could stand was a portrait (Reply to this)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-09 10:12 pm UTC (link)
	James Joyce gets worse as he goes on, so I like the earlier stuff much much more than Ulysses or Finnegans Wake. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	this is some list archdukefizix 2008-05-09 08:19 am UTC (link)
	The Silmarillion is actually a lot like the Iliad, except with elves, and thus more emo. Also I have to agree, Brave New World is the shits, if you are into the whole "mind control state and how that sucks" genre. Which I am (Reply to this)(Thread)

	curtissed 2008-05-09 08:40 am UTC (link)
	Dystopic novels are amazing, am I right? (Reply to this)(Parent)

	omame 2008-05-09 02:32 pm UTC (link)
	LOL Everyone else was poking about Brave New World, which is also a really good title to check out. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-09 10:06 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, now I pretty much have to read it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

seraphjewel
2008-05-09 02:38 pm UTC (link)

I recognize a lot of these. I had to read God of Small Things for my Senior Seminar. It's pretty intense. I've read Anna Karenia and Life of Pi. I would really recommend Life of Pi; it's FANTASTIC.

I had to read Brave New World, too. I didn't like it much. Read Sound and the Fury. A little o__O for me but not bad. I enjoyed Wicked but it's the kind of book you have to be ready to read. They have a lot of discussions about evil and what makes one "wicked" so you might like it.

I honestly don't blame you about Moby Dick. I got about halfway through and he spent a whole chapter on the different kinds of whales. ... That's when I gave up xO

(Reply to this)(Thread)

terra
2008-05-09 10:05 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, someone gave Life of Pi to me a long time ago and I never got around to it, whihc I regretted when I saw this list.

Dystopic novels aren't really my thing, so that's why I haven't read Brave New World yet. I'm more into books set in the past than the future? And political parables get ooolld.

Lol, I've never had Moby Dick assigned to me and though I don't think I'd hate it I also don't see myself seeking it out on my own either :P

(Reply to this)(Parent)

rinnia
2008-05-09 06:53 pm UTC (link)

Oh god, James Joyce. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the only book I read the Cliff's Notes for instead of actually reading in high school. I just couldn't stand it. At all.

As far as poking goes, I say you should give The Sound and the Fury a chance. I'm a fan of Faulkner.

I'm not sure whether I should be disappointed or pleased about the lack of Steinbeck on that list. I mean, it is stuff labelled "unread", but I hate missed chances to spread love for East of Eden.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-09 10:02 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I've actually been meaning to catch up on my Faulkner/Hemingway. I think I need to read more from that era, and I've read pretty much everything by Fitzgerald already. Booo James Joyce, he just gets worse as he goes along. I would take it as a compliment! Most of the books on this list are pretty long and/or boring so yeah :D (Reply to this)(Parent)

	improved 2008-05-09 09:22 pm UTC (link)
	You really should read Neverwhere. I truly think it's one of Neil Gaiman's finest. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-09 09:59 pm UTC (link)
	Gaiman is one of those authors I feel I should like more than I do-- I think Good Omens was the only thing I read by him that I really enjoyed, and that was co-written. But I'll definitely keep your rec in mind, because yeah-- I want to like his stuff really badly. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	margyydoodle 2008-05-09 10:10 pm UTC (link)
	Only thing I have read on here is the Hobbit :( (Reply to this)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-09 10:14 pm UTC (link)
	Hahah, well at least it's a good one? Unless you don't like the Hobbit. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	margyydoodle 2008-05-09 10:15 pm UTC (link)
	I loved Hobbit!! Bilbo was awesome! Screw saving the world, he just wanted tea time! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	dwimmer 2008-05-10 03:28 am UTC (link)
	Angela's Ashes is very good but very very sad. It's a great book if you feel like sobbing for awhile. Beats therapy xD (Reply to this)

gamera
2008-05-10 08:29 pm UTC (link)

Brave New World is quite good, and The Once and Future King is okay (I'm not a big fan of T.H. White, but it has its moments). If you hated James Joyce you'll probably hate The Sound and the Fury as Faulkner is basically what Joyce would be if he were a southern hick instead of Irish. (I hate Faulkner. And Joyce.)

I have Jonathan Strange but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I should probably remedy that!

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-10 08:39 pm UTC (link)
	I have Jonathan Strange but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I should probably remedy that! Cameo by Lord Byron. CAMEO BY LORD BYRON. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	gamera 2008-05-10 08:41 pm UTC (link)
	OKAY I NEED TO START READING IT RIGHT NOW. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	gamera 2008-05-10 08:45 pm UTC (link)
	Also, I should point out that Lord Byron is pretty much the entire reason I'm downloading a torrent of the entire Highlander series now (it's 40GB, it will seriously take me like two weeks to download, this is epic). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-10 08:46 pm UTC (link)
	OMG. OMG. I'VE SEEN THAT EPIC EPIC EPIC IT HAS SHELLEY BONUS POINTS. I wish I could watch it with you. (Reply to this)(Parent)

rara_x_avis
2008-05-11 03:31 am UTC (link)

Ah, so you clearly are not a huge fan of the fantasy/sci-fi dystopia books, and I am clearly a huge fan of them BUT -

like everyone else said, you should read Brave New World. It's a pretty amazing book.

Oryx and Crake is also a great novel. I've read The Handmaid's Tale and I think Oryx and Crake is the better of the two tries at crazy future dystopia. (And 1984 was better than The Handmaid's Tale.) Oryx and Crake is really beautifully written and touching... and scary. Truly scary. I think it's actually pretty amazing how she balances the coming of age with the end of the world themes and post-disaster narrative. Z for Zacharia has nothing on this book.

Also, DUNE! I can't believe you've never read Dune! I was given this book by a friend for my 16th birthday and the 3 sci-fi books I brought to college with me are Dune, Ender's Game and Hitchhiker's Guide. There is a reason this book has a cult following.

I'd also like to recommend Stranger in a Strange Land, as long as we're on the topic of future dystopias, by Robert Heinlein, if you haven't read it yet. I've been meaning to get a copy of this book actually, so I can just have it and reread it whenever I want. Though the political metaphors are practically transparent, but I think that's what makes the book so accessible and so damn hilarious. This is another book with a cult following... and a church.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

terra
2008-05-14 12:12 am UTC (link)

Wow, thanks a lot for all the recommendations :D

It's not so much that I dislike the sci-fi/dystopia genre persay, but I'm naturally more oriented towards the past than the future. Hahaha. Also, obvious political metaphors are obvious. I do like pretty much every genre when it's done well, so I'm definitely gonna check out Brave New World.

I've read The Handmaiden's Tale, and I liked it okay, so if Onyx and Crake is better it's probably worth checking out.

My not reading Dune reflects my general unwillingness to be sucked into big long series with cult followings. I haven't read Ender's Game either :O Or Lord of the Rings :O I'm like some kind of uncultured heathen.

I've wanted to read Stranger in a Strange Land for a while just because I like the title.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	errorism 2008-05-16 03:36 pm UTC (link)
	Hi, uh, you totally don't know me, but I was the one who got thrives into Runaways and she said she'd been talking with someone about it at F!S so I went to look and oh god is it okay if I friend you too because I love talking to comics-inclined people (ESPECIALLY Young Avengers). I'm so hyped up for Secret Invasion I don't think about anything else lately. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-16 06:06 pm UTC (link)
	YESSSSS. I am mostly excited about THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE: I'm a huge Nick Fury fangirl too, so THIS IS PRETTY MUCH THE BEST THING EVER. Yeah, I need people to fangirl comics with so you are definitely welcome :D A+++ Iron Man/Dr. Doom userinfo pic. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

errorism
2008-05-16 06:08 pm UTC (link)

AHHH YESSSSSS

I nearly had a heart attack when I first saw that cover. Kate is seriously the best female comics character in forever (for me at least) - I'm glad she's getting some panel time with my two favourites plus Nick.

I actually read this today and got way too overexcited. Read it if you haven't yet! NICK IS MENTIONED

edit: ROFL I GOT SO EXCITED I GAVE YOU THE WRONG LINK

Edited at 2008-05-16 06:11 pm UTC

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-16 06:15 pm UTC (link)
	I KNOW I KNOW I WAS TOO BUSY FANGIRLING TO EVEN LINK IT RIGHT. I also loooooove Kate. I can't wait for her YA Presents issue. SRS, her meeting Clint = HILARITY. You mean this? AHAHA, I read that last night, for I am OBSESSIVE and FANGIRL. I'm really excited for this though I hope Xavin isn't evil at the end of it all. :/ (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

errorism
2008-05-16 06:20 pm UTC (link)

You see what SI has done to people like us? I keep getting all my links and typing wrong, I just have to try saying everything at once.

I can't WAIT to see Kate and Clint in that issue - I love the guy, and the art looks REALLY great from the one pencil page I saw (smirking? Hot). I just can't wait to see the YA in action again, and with such huge roles.

I'm more terrified of what might happen to Hulkling, honestly. ): Sounds like Yost is very reluctant to kill anybody off, though, so I guess that's good? Xavin's a badass. I'm also excited about the return of the Fistigons.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

terra
2008-05-16 06:25 pm UTC (link)

CURSE YOU ~~RICHARDS~~ SKRULLS!!

I KNOW. This is the one I've been looking forward to the most, why is it the last to come out??? (I've been looking forward to all of them kind of though, because YOUNG AVENGERS, but eee.) Kate + Clint is even better to me than Eli + Bucky.

Where is this pencil page you speak of??

THEY CAN'T KILL ANYBODY OFF. I MEAN, THEY CAN'T. I REFUSE TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE.

YESSS FISTIGONS.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	errorism 2008-05-16 06:31 pm UTC (link)
	~~Haha my surname actually is Richards I GET THAT ALL THE TIME~~ I like (read: am annoyed by) how Cassie pretty much gets two issues to herself. I mean, I don't hate the character or anything, but Wiccan and Speed had to share! Here's that page. That bottom right panel is possibly my favourite picture of Clint's face. Edited at 2008-05-16 06:32 pm UTC (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-16 06:36 pm UTC (link)
	HAHAH LOL, I find that kind of awesome. Yeaaaah, but Billy's showed up in a lot of the issues, at least? But I feel you. I was like, "Why is this VIsion issue turning into a pro-reg manifesto??" D: THAT IS THE SEXIEST THING I'VE SEEN ALL WEEK. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

errorism
2008-05-16 06:41 pm UTC (link)

Personally I love how Kate and Billy have been able to show up in almost every issue somehow. It was kinda cool to see Cassie talking about her side of things, and I'm looking forward to seeing them approach that in her issue (if it's set after CW, which I assume it is?). I do hope she goes back to them eventually, though.

Oh god, this is bugging me - what issue is your Kate icon from? I can't place it, but I know that I know it.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-16 06:44 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I think it's cute, and I'm sympathetic to Cassie and her issue I'm also looking forward to because it's nice to see his side of things. I would like to see the team reunited though, just because. Winter Soldier: Winter Kills. I can upload if you haven't read :O (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	errorism 2008-05-16 06:50 pm UTC (link)
	Oh my god, I love Winter Soldier - I reread it just the other day, weirdly enough! I'm a genius for forgetting that quickly. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	terra 2008-05-16 06:54 pm UTC (link)
	YESSSSS I AM FREAKISHLY OBSESSED WITH BUCKY AND IT IS BAD. My friends kind of think I am crazy. D: (Reply to this)(Parent)

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