Sunday, May 07, 2006

Well, I'm ashamed to say it's taken me as long to work out how to do the format tags for this list as it would to read all these books, but finally I'm able to respond to Debra and Patti's challenge about what books I've read. Thanks guys, this was fun and I've learnt something! I will be underlining and striking with abandon from here on! So this is the list I received, with instructions....
Look at the list of books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you might read.
Cross out the ones you won’t.
Underline the ones on your book shelf.
Place (parentheses) around the ones you’ve never even heard of.
Here goes nothing!

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (and went back to this recently because of the Capote film)
The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (this one's on the bookshelf but I'd be cheating to claim it because it's my kids!)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling (but it's on the bookshelf and much loved by the kids)
The Life of Pi—Yann Martel (heavily overrated in my view but I've got friends who LOVE it, so might have to go back and read again)
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (on the bookshelf but I've never actually finished it!)
The Hobbit--J.R.R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell (a treasured one, this one)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban—J.K. Rowling (as above - not being snobby about not reading this, but I've tried and can't get into them at all)
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Probably my favourite on this list)
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (made me weep and weep)
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Atonement - Ian McEwan (cop out ending)
The Shadow of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert (keep getting recommended this)
(Sula by Toni Morrison) (hah, was feeling cocky, but am now ashamed. How have i not heard of this!)
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Was on my shelf but has gone walkabout)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
The Moor’s Last Sigh - Salman Rusdie
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Schriver (Was reading this morning about the struggle she had to get this published!)
Disgrace - JM Coetzee
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kuresh (I love this man ... as a writer)
Small Island - Andrea Levy
Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
Ivanhoe - Walter Scott
Patrick Suskind - Perfume
Bernand Shlink - The reader
(Father and Son - Larry Brown)
(Crooked Hearts - Robert Boswell)
(She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb)
Postcards - E. Annie Proulx
(A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (stories) - Robert Olen Butler)
(Defiance - Carole Maso)
Being Dead - Jim Crace
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, by John Berger - Wonderful!
(Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard) (ashamed I haven’t heard of this – will read)
(Bear Attacks--Their Causes and Avoidance, by Stephen Herrero)
(Desert Notes--Reflections in the Eye of a Raven, by Barry Lopez)
(River Notes--The Dance of Herons, by Barry Lopez)
The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
(Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow)
(The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus)
(The Last of the Just by Andre Schwartz-Bart)
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Loved the film of this too)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (keep getting mixed reports on this one)
(A Bell for Adano by John Hersey)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Herzog by Saul Bellow

The books I would add are...
Ripening Seed, Colette
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
The Woman Warrier, Maxine Hong Kingston
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
The Lover, Marguerite Duras

And I'm tagging ...

Clare
Susannah
Shirl
Abhay
Keris

8 comments:

Susannah Conway said...

hello! thanks for the tag - yikes, you mean i'll have to work out the html stuff too? there must be a way around it.... Hmmm
susannah x

ps. glad you found me - i've been enjoying your blog for a while

White Square said...

Hi Sarah,thank you so much for tagging me but how do i get that list...I don't know how to do it.Any instructions...?

Emmy Ellis said...

Cripes, there are so many that I would have to put brackets round...

HA!

:o)

Sarah Salway said...

Ah Abhay, what I did was copy and paste into a word document which meant it lost all the html from Patti's and then I could add my own when I put it into my blog. Hope that works for you! Susannah - it was OK-ish in the end. To underline was just < u > at start and < /u > at end - and to score out was < score > at start and < /score > at end. Bold was < b > and < /b >, but you leave the spaces out - I can't do it properly in this comment as it keeps questioning it. Hey, look at me, I sound a bit as if I know what I'm talking about! Looking forward to seeing all the results - and also what you add!!! Shell - you've just been tagged too. hahahaha!!!!

White Square said...

Hi Sarah, Thanks for the suggestions. By the way I have worked out another way. In place of crossing the books I'll never read I have put them in Red and one that lie in my book shelf in Green. Rest of them as per the rules...

P. A. Moed said...

Of course. How could I forget Madame Bovary and Maxine Hong Kingston! Thanks for reminding me.

Anonymous said...

Well Sarah - this is the first time I've been tagged and it's also only just been found because I was in France for a fortnight! However, I will give it a go soon - once I've worked out what to do...ah, just read your own comment--wonder if Frontpage will help...

Anonymous said...

Yes, I've completed the task on my blog. It taught me a lot about my reading habits of late...and I have to admit I've included a few titles on my bookshelf that no longer reside there as I have to cull my books regularly (small apartment.