MEME: Top 100 Books of All Time!
Stolen from here (I’m only using the top 100 because 778 is way too big). I’m going to mix up the rules a bit this time. Rules: Bold the titles you’ve read. Italicize the titles you really want to read. Put ** by titles you hated or couldn’t finish reading or won’t read again. If you’ve read the book more than once, put the number of times you’ve read it in ( )s somewhere. Tag people. I’m tagging SQT, Tia, and Carraka. Anyone else who wants to do this is more than welcome. Here goes: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (2) Hamlet by William Shakespeare 1984 by George Orwell (5) The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (3) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (3) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (2) Night by Elie Wiesel The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien The Bible The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez I, Robot by Isaac Asimov The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Dune by Frank Herbert Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse The Stand by Stephen King** Ulysses by James Joyce Paradise Lost by John Milton** (2) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig Watership Down byRichard Adams The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell Roots by Alex Haley The Giver by Lois Lowry The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (3) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton Animal Farm by George Orwell Macbeth by William Shakespeare Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle The World According to Garp by John Irving Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden King Lear by William Shakespeare A Theory of Justice by John Rawls Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Moby Dick by Herman Melville Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer** (3) Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey The Inferno by Dante Alighieri (2) Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison The Red Tent by Anita Diamant Death in Venice and Other Stories by Thomas Mann Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling** Les Miserables by Victor Hugo The Trial by Franz Kafka Ada by Vladimir Nabokov Middlemarch by George Elliot Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut The Way Things Work by David Macauly Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berndt David Copperfield by Charles Dickens A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess My Name is Asher by Lev Chaim Potok The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon The Princess Bride by William Goldman Neuromancer by William Gibson The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein Prufrock and Other Observations by T.S. Eliot Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman Exodus by Leon Uris The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick And there you go. So I’ve read a pathetic 29 of the 100 on this list. Very sad indeed. What about you?
Ask the Bloggers Series: Question #6 (I’m in it!)
Grasping For the Wind has put up yet another of the Ask the Bloggers questions, which, of course, I answered. You can find out more about it here. The question this time was: What kind of book cover attracts your attention? What attributes of the cover make you more or less likely to take it off the shelf? Does the spine of the book have any effect on your choices? Yeah, so what about you? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Steam Engines Sample: Your Thoughts?
Okay, so my girlfriend and I have been discussing the opening paragraph of a new story I’ve been working on. She’s been mostly displeased with it because she doesn’t know what the engines actually are, and I’ve said that I shouldn’t have to say what the engines are or what they necessarily do in that opening paragraph. My argument is that it’s not really important at that moment. But we disagree on this whole thing, so I’m bringing it to the readers. Below you’ll find the paragraph as it currently stands. It’s not polished, so it may need some mild tweaking in my mind.What do you think? Hate it or like it or neither? Comments? The air grew silent as the steam engines became still in the sky. Chains held them as their massive turbines seized up; I watched them settle, the metallic roar of suspension bridges being pushed to their limits and the screams of workers, dozens of them, suddenly struck with the realization that their skyward employment had breathed its last breath. And all around me the voices of the many, their eyes peering to where the chains dug into the floating islands, shocked into curiosity, like cats roaming their mythical histories, rose up like a collective burst of terror, piercing the now dormant sky with their cries and hushed whispers. Alright. That’s that.(Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)