How many have you read?
Brittany, a fellow book critic over at Perfectly Tolerable, has picked me, along with several others, to take part in her book tag.
The 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime list, which was compiled by the Amazon Book editors after much debate, was apparently influenced by two objectives: a) that the selection should cover “all stages of life” (hence the inclusion of children’s titles) and b) that it “didn’t feel like homework”.
It is certainly different from other lists of this type in that there are very few ‘heavy’ classics or challenging tomes included. Looking through the titles, I can see immediately that I read several of them many years ago, others more recently. A number of them are currently sitting on my overburdened book shelves (or creaking Kindle) waiting to be read (I have marked these TBR) and, rather embarrassingly, one or two are completely unknown to me (Moneyball and Daring Greatly, for instance). Although, the fact that the list is aimed at US readers may be the reason.
Totting up, I see that my score is a rather disgraceful 22, with a further 9 on standby. This must be remedied.
100 Books to Read in a Lifetime
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1984 – George Orwell ✓
- Age of Innocence, The – Edith Wharton
- Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Michael Chabon
- Autobiography of Malcolm X, The – Malcolm X
- Bad Beginning: Or, Orphans!, The – Lemony Snicket
- Brief History of Time, A – Stephen Hawking ✓
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll ✓
- All the President’s Men – Bob Woodward
- Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir – Frank McCourt
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume
- Bel Canto – Ann Pratchett
- Beloved – Toni Morrison
- Book Thief, The – Markus Zusak TBR
- Born to Run – Christopher McDougall
- Breath, Eyes, Memory – Edwidge Danticat
- Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The – Junot Diaz
- Catch-22 – Joseph Heller ✓
- Catcher in the Rye, The – J.D. Salinger ✓
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
- Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
- Color of Water, The – James McBride
- Corrections, The – Jonathan Franzen
- Cutting For Stone – Abraham Verghese
- Daring Greatly – Brené Brown
- Devil in the White City, The – Erik Larson
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Jeff Kinney
- Diary of a Young Girl, The – Anne Frank ✓
- Dune – Frank Herbert TBR
- Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury ✓
- Fault in Our Stars, The – John Green
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson TBR
- Giver, The – Lois Lowry
- Golden Compass: His Dark Materials, The – Philip Pullman TBR
- Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
- Goodnight Moon – Margaret Wise Brown
- Great Expectations – Charles Dickens ✓
- Great Gatsby, The – F. Scott Fitzgerald TBR
- Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond
- Handmaid’s Tale, The – Margaret Atwood ✓
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J.K. Rowling ✓
- House at Pooh Corner, The – A.A. Milne ✓
- Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, A – Dave Eggers
- Hunger Games, The – Suzanne Collins
- Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The – Rebecca Skloot
- In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
- Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri
- Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
- Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth – Chris Ware
- Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
- Liar’s Club, The – Mary Karr
- Life After Life – Kate Atkinson ✓
- Lightning Thief, The – Rick Riordan
- Little Prince, The – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ✓
- Little House on the Prairie – Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov ✓
- Long Goodbye, The – Raymond Chandler
- Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, A – Ishmael Beah
- Looming Tower, The – Lawrence Wright
- Lord of the Rings, The – J.R.R. Tolkien ✓
- Love in the Time of Cholera – Garbriel Garcia Marquez
- Love Medicine – Louise Erdrich
- Man’s Search For Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl
- Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, The – Oliver Sacks TBR
- Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
- Middlesex: A Novel – Jeffrey Eugenides TBR
- Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
- Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game – Michael Lewis
- Of Human Bondage – W. Somerset Maugham
- Omnivore’s Dilemma, The – Michael Pollan
- On the Road – Jack Kerouac ✓
- Out of Africa – Isak Dinesen TBR
- Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood – Marjane Satrapi
- Phantom Tollbooth, The – Norton Juster
- Poisonwood Bible, The – Barbara Kingsolver ✓
- Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
- Power Broker, The – Robert A. Caro
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen ✓
- Right Stuff, The – Tom Wolfe
- Road, The – Cormac McCarthy
- Secret History, The – Donna Tartt ✓
- Selected Stories: 1968-1994 – Alice Munro
- Shining, The – Stephen King ✓
- Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
- Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut ✓
- Stranger, The – Albert Camus
- Sun Also Rises, The – Ernest Hemmingway
- Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
- Things They Carried, The – Tim O’Brien
- To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann
- Very Hungry Caterpillar, The – Eric Carle
- Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein
- Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak
- Wind in the Willows, The – Kenneth Grahame ✓
- Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The – Haruki Murakami
- World According to Garp, The – John Irving
- Wrinkle in Time, A – Madeleine L’Engle
- Year of Magical Thinking, The – Joan Didion ✓
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It is now my turn to tag the following five bloggers (but please don’t feel obliged to take part if you would rather not):
1) Books Are My Favourite And Best, 2) Books Coffee And Repeat, 3) Curiouser and Curiouser, 4) Excuse My Reading and 5) Vishy’s Blog. Plus anyone else who fancies taking part.
The rules are as follows:
- Include a link back to Amazon’s official 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime page.
- Tag Perfectly Tolerable, the creator of this meme (to whom I say a big thank-you).
- Tag the person who nominated you – that would be me, Book Jotter.
- Copy the list of books and indicate which titles you have read.
- Tally up your total.
- Comment on the post you were tagged in and share your total count.
- Tag five new people and comment on one of their posts to let them know.
Voila!
Why not take part yourself? I would love to know how many of these books you have read. Please post below and let me know.