Books read, unread, read elsewhere, forced to read

Okay, so I, too, stole this from Bobgirrl, who stole it from Earl, and on and on,

but, since I normally don’t do memes or follow up on stuff like this, I thought I’d jump outside the pantry corner I’ve been wallowing in and take a shot. My bolding and underlining isn’t consistent and makes not sense. I don’t care.

I’ve scored myself as having read 51.25 of these books. I awarded myself .25 points if I actually had the book in my possession and .5 if I think I read it at some point or it annoyed me so badly that I felt I deserved the half point.

“Take the below list of books, bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. (If you read it for school, do you bold and underline? I’m not clear on this. I’m just going with underline.) This list is purportedly the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. (I have no idea what LibraryThing is nor who its users are.) These are the books that sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.”

I’m really bad about starting books and leaving them to moulder on a  nightstand, but I figure if I even acknowledge that I know about them makes me really, really smart and stuff.

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Does reading the first chapter count?
2. Anna Karenina - pretend it’s underlined. I need to reread it. Though I think it may be a couple centuries’ ago Danielle Steele offering.
3. Crime and Punishment - pretend it’s underlined. I need to reread it. etc.
4. Catch-22 - Read it and totally loved it when I read it. Which was in the late 60’s or 70’s. Can’t remember. My sensibilities have morphed since then. 
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude - never read
6. Wuthering Heights - mentally deranged soap opera characters
7. The Silmarillion - Thought of buying. Didn’t.
8. Life of Pi- heard of, never read 
9. The Name of the Rose - had at some point. Maybe read two pages and then fell asleep. Boom.
10. Don Quixote - Probably read during  a mad dash to get my degree during which I was taking some extra course in English.
11. Moby Dick - I might have had it in my possession, but, I’m sorry. You have to be shackled to a stone wall in a prison to get through this one.
12. Ulysses - Read a chapter or two. Can you say-High school senior aspiring to be a total intellectual for two seconds, thinking she’d actually read this SHIT? I received it for my birthday from my Mom, who was a great reader. I think she knew I’d never EVER make it through. I know she didn’t. What a bunch of excretory hallucinations. Holy crap.
13. Madame Bovary - another Danielle Steele read
14. The Odyssey - I guess.
15. Pride and Prejudice - Loved it and read most of her others and now DEFINITELY need to reread. I loved her stuff.
16. Jane Eyre - Another deranged sitcom
17. The Tale of Two Cities - I did, indeed, love this book.
18. The Brothers Karamazov - I think. Maybe. Can’t remember.
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies - ?
20. War and Peace-Bought it and read a couple of chapters while trying to get a tan once. 
21. Vanity Fair - Yes, and enjoyed it.
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Thought of buying.
23. The Iliad - Some in school.
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin - If this is Margaret Atwood, yes. It’s been awhile.
26. The Kite Runner - neighbor lent it to me. I lent it back.
27. Mrs. Dalloway - Nope.
28. Great Expectations - Parts. Bits and pieces. 
29. American Gods - Do what?
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Yes! Dave Eggers! It’s fabulous!
31. Atlas Shrugged - Read it and thought, wow, this is awesome, and then realized I was only 18.
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books - Partially. It annoyed me.
33. Memoirs of a Geisha - Yes! Fabulous!
34. Middlesex - Yes! Fabulous!
35. Quicksilver - Um, what?
36. Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West - Fun and quick.
37. The Canterbury Tales -Oh help me, yes. Enough.
38. The Historian: a novel - ?
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - I can’t remember. I was so pissed about Ulysses, probably not.
40. Love in the Time of Cholera - Nope.
41. Brave New World - of course. Whatever.
42. The Fountainhead -See Atlas Shrugged.
43. Foucault’s Pendulum - Nope.
44. Middlemarch - Nope
45. Frankenstein - I honestly don’t remember.
46. The Count of Monte Cristo - I think this was when I was in my Victor Hugo phase.
47. Dracula - I don’t think I’ve ever read this.
48. A Clockwork Orange - I tried last year. It is dumpster fodder.
49. Anansi Boys - Never heard of.
50. The Once and Future King - npe
51. The Grapes of Wrath- Of course, read most of Steinbeck’s. Loved them at the time. 
52. The Poisonwood Bible : Yes! Fabulous!
53. 1984 - Yes. yawn
54. Angels & Demons - Started it. It sucks.
55. The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) - Embarrassingly, no.
56. The Satanic Verses - nah, but may.
57. Sense and Sensibility - yeppers
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray - yeppers
59. Mansfield Park nope
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Yes, and I think I liked it.
61. To the Lighthouse - nope
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - possibly
63. Oliver Twist - bits and pieces
64. Gulliver’s Travels -yep
65. Les Misérables - Yep. And liked it at the time.
66. The Corrections - Loved it.
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Bought it. Didn’t get through the first chapter.
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime Nope
69. Dune - I actually read much of the series and totally enjoyed it.
70. The Prince - bought last year, read a chapter or two and thought, holy crap, they called this guy a genius?!?!
71. The Sound and the Fury - I did a paper on William Faulkner in highschool. I read most of his crap. He was seriously nuts.
72. Angela’s Ashes: noT
73. The God of Small Things - nope!
74. A People’s History of the United States: no.
75. Cryptonomicon - noNeverwhere
76. A Confederacy of Dunces- yes and liked it but couldn’t tell you what happened now. 
77. A Short History of Nearly Everything -nope
78. Dubliners - hell no.
79. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - bought it a few years ago finally and couldn’t get through the first chapter. Sucked.
80. Beloved - nah
81. Slaughterhouse-Five - Well, of course.
82. The Scarlet Letter - well, of course.
83. Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Nope
84. The Mists of Avalon- nope 
85. Oryx and Crake: Yes! Margaret Atwood, though not her best. 
86. Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed - ?
87. Cloud Atlas ? 
88. The Confusion ?
89. Lolita - maybe 3/4
90. Persuasion ?
91. Northanger Abbey - yep
92. The Catcher in the Rye- yes and reread it a few years ago. It’s fairly stupid. Why is it such an icon?
93. On the Road - Yes. Last year. At times it was engaging, otherwise, just a bunch of derelicts.
94. The Hunchback of Notre Dame - yeah, yeah, whatever
95. Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything - nope
96. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: nope.
97. The Aeneid - nope
98. Watership Down - Liked it.
99. Gravity’s Rainbow - nope
100. The Hobbit - Much better than the trilogy
101. In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences - of course
102. White Teeth - White Fang…Both. White Fang of course is great. White Teeth is wonderful!
103. Treasure Island - no!
104. David Copperfield - bits
105. The Three Musketeers -nope