Thursday, August 13, 2009

On Reading

So I recently came across a book list on a friend's Live Journal (which she hasn't updated since September 2008) listing 100 books with the statement that the average adult has only read six of the books/series' on that list. I, myself, have counted 15 books on the list that I have read (leaving out the abridged illustrated classic versions) and recognize a good deal of them that I have started but never finished, Lord of the Rings and Dracula to name a few.

From this I realized that I have not read for pleasure in quite a while. Even as I read Terry Pratchett'shilariously entertainingly satirical books The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic I found it difficult to focus. No, that's not true, I found it quite easy focusing and visualizing an image while reading those books. However, that was little over a year ago. I have not read a book for pleasure in a year, which is sad because so much of my youth was comprised of reading since I was not allowed to watch T.V. on a regular basis.

I think around the end of Middle School was the end of my regular enjoyment when it came to reading books. I don't know why or how but gradually I began putting down my books and finding entertainment elsewhere, which is sad because I think that a lot of my imagination stemmed, in a way, from reading and the way my mind would visualize what I was reading to the point where it was the equivalent to watching a movie. Then again, it might have actually been the start of college and my comic book frenzy that injured my ability to visualize what I read. Despite all of this I do actually enjoy reading. so why haven't I picked up a book in over a year? I can still visualize what I read. Have I just written it off as too much work when I'd rather be sleeping, drawing or attempting to write in my free time?

No matter the reason, I've decided that I need to read more.



Originally I wasn't planning on posting this but I changed my mind. Here's the book list:

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

01. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
02. Italicise those you intend to read
03. Underline the books you LOVE.
04. Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them.

001 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
002 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
003 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
004 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
005 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
006 The Bible
007 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
008 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
009 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
010 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
011 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
012 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
013 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
014 Complete Works of Shakespeare
015 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
016 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
017 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
018 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (started it)
019 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
020 Middlemarch - George Eliot
021 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
022 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
023 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
024 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
025 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
026 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
027 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
028 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
029 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
030 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
031 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
032 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
033 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
034 Emma - Jane Austen
035 Persuasion - Jane Austen
036 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
037 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
038 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
039 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
040 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
041 Animal Farm - George Orwell
042 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
043 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
044 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
045 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
046 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
047 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
048 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
049 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
050 Atonement - Ian McEwan
051 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
052 Dune - Frank Herbert
053 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
054 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
055 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
056 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
057 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
058 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
059 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
060 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
061 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
062 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
063 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
064 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
065 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
066 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
067 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
068 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
069 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
070 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
071 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
072 Dracula - Bram Stoker
073 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
074 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
075 Ulysses - James Joyce
076 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
077 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
078 Germinal - Emile Zola
079 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
080 Possession - AS Byatt
081 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
082 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
083 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
084 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
085 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
086 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
087 Charlotte's Web - EB White
088 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
089 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
090 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
091 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
092 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
093 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
094 Watership Down - Richard Adams Cried like crazy.
095 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
096 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
097 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
098 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
099 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

2 comments:

  1. not to discourage your goals to read--pero we def read animal farm & brave new world [your] senior year. with the craze.
    -10 for forgetting yet another epic class with yours truly.

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  2. correction, YOU guys read Animal Farm and Brave New World my senior year. I, at best, skimmed through a few chapters and then pretended I read the material like I usually do.

    ReplyDelete