The unread books meme

[green_amber]

OH alright.

Cute to get empirical data on this - I certainl;y recognise quite a few of these on my shelves..

"The normal, bold those you've read, italicise those you've started but haven't finished; the number in brackets is the number of library thing users who have these on their unread shelf."

A shame there's apparently no coded distinction to make between "haven't read" and "own but haven't read" (or even "thought of buying but knew I'd never get through it" which is exactly how I feel about no 1 on the list.)




Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and punishment (121) (but I have seen it as a play)
Catch-22 (117)
One hundred years of solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110) (but I would never have read the second half if it hadn't been for school)
The Silmarillion (104)
Life of Pi : a novel (94) (loved it)
The name of the rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A tale of two cities (80)
The brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and peace (78)
Vanity fair (74) (truely hated it and again would never ever have finished it if it hadn't been school book)
The time traveler's wife (73) (what? unputdownable!)
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73) ((Not bought - have run out of energy for Atwood since, um, the last good one:)  But- Do have at least 2 unread around the place.))
The kite runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great expectations (70)
American gods : a novel (68)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas shrugged (67) (what not The Fountainhead?)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66) (hated it but it was a holiday read)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West … (65)
The Canterbury tales (64)
The historian : a novel (63)
A portrait of the artist as a young man (63)
Love in the time of cholera (62)
Brave new world (61)
The Fountainhead (61) ((Ah!!!))
Foucault's pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A clockwork orange (59)
Anansi boys : a novel (58)  ((Glad it wasn;t just me.))
The once and future king (57)
The grapes of wrath (57)
The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & demons (56)  ((But other Carters, yes.))
The inferno (56)  ((ONly the Larry NOven version :-((( )
The satanic verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55)
The picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One flew over the cuckoo's nest (54)
To the lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's travels (53)
Les misérables (53)
The corrections (53)
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel (52)  ((One of my all time FAVOURITES!!))
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (52) ((Fuck's sake this is like readinga  book in crayon))
Dune (51)
The prince (51)
The sound and the fury (51)
Angela's ashes : a memoir (51) ((Why would ANYONE want to read this??))
The god of small things (51) ((Owned but never started 0- eventually gave to Oxfam))
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50) ((Again - unputdownable!!))
Neverwhere (50) ((ffs - again, practically a picture book..))
A confederacy of dunces (50)
A short history of nearly everything (50) ((An obvious one this - Bryson's first non-narrative book.))
Dubliners (50)
The unbearable lightness of being (49)
Beloved : a novel (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The scarlet letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Pu… (48) ((AGain to be fair like the Bryson more something to be kept around the house. I kept it in the loo for ages :) ))
The mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47) ((See above re later Atwood.))
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud atlas : a novel (47) ((ADored it))
The confusion (46) ((Is this a Chris Priest novel???))
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger abbey (46) ((The only Jane Austen I really liked. I had to read the whole damn lot for an exam and it nearly killed me - esp bloody Mansfield park - why isn't it on this list??)
The catcher in the rye (46)
On the road (46) ((Again, went to Oxfam.))
The hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of… (45) ((<lj  user="andrewducker"> stle it before I could finish it.))
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into … (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)  ((I just hate heroic fantasy. Too many Capital Letters.))
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its … (44)
White teeth (44) ((YES!! I regard this as the ultimate unfinshable novel.))
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The three musketeers (44)
What this brings home to me is (a) I was a very dutiful school girl - if I had to read the damn book, I did. (b) I am a very undutiful adult - if I think I won't want to read a book, largely I just DON'T BUY it. I do not need to prove anything :)

Having said that I do in fact have a shelf staring at me of books I bought and do not apparently want to read; Anyone want to talk me into any of these, or alternately, want the book?

Clara - Janice Galloway
Summertime - Michael Chabon
All is vanity - Christina Schwartz (also Drowning Ruth - I think my sister gives giving me books by her)
We Need To Talk to Kevin bla bla
Moo - Jane Smiley
Dead Air - ian Banks
The Hippoptamus - Stephen Fry
Everything You Need - A L Kennedy
Lights Out for the Territory - iain Sinclair
The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
Bl;ack Swan Green - david Mitchell ((I loved al the others, can't seem to get into this one))
Uglies - Scott Westerfield
The Feast - Antony Sher
The Bitch Goddess Notebook - Martha O'Connor
The Anxiety of Everyday Objects - Aurelie Sherman (for V that one..)
Everything is Illuminated - JOnathan Foer

Comments

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Throw away 'Dead Air', it's embarrassingly shite. 'Everything Is Illuminated' I wouldn't bother with personally. 'The Hippopotamus' is rude and very funny.

[darth-tigger.livejournal.com]

Yep,the Hippopotamus is great, do read it. I haven't read any of the others you're asking about.

Incidentally, the lj-cut didn't work.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I know I've just spent hrs trying to fix it! effing RTF format..

[pennski.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I didn't enjoy the Stephen Fry - disappointing - but "Uglies" was great fun and I heartily recommend it.

[zotz]

The Business was pretty poor, but I liked Dead Air quite a bit.

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

The Business was _dreadful_ !

[andrewducker]

Not read Everything is Illuminated, but I'd agree on the other two - Dead Air had no plot and about three paragraphs worth of writing worth reading. The Hippopoamtus was frankly inspired.

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

I loved Shipping News - give it a try!

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Of the books on your 'unread' shelf the only one I've read is Dead Air, and it was terrible. Give away without reading. Or Amazon it.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

I don't read anything improving on principle. Combination of pushy school and mother with an English Lit degree :)

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

Another vote for not bothering with Dead Air. I liked We Need To Talk About Kevin, but it's not a give to other people, rave about book.

[anef.livejournal.com]

Summertime is charming, and a very easy read. It helps if you have a mild interest in baseball, though I managed without.
Bitch Goddess Notebook looks fun but is actually awful.
Moo is not Jane Smiley's best - academic satire, nothing wrong with it but nothing new if you've read David Lodge.