Literary Meme

I could use a distraction this Wednesday morning, so I'm posting a meme that's been floating around the blogosphere for a few months, especially on writer blogs.

The inspiration for the meme: The NEA reported that American adults have, on average, read just 6 out of the (NEA-selected) top 100 literary works of all time. So bloggers started posting their own "scores."

You can see from my list that I've read fewer than half the titles. Is that good? Is it bad considering my profession? Does it matter?

I don't know . . . although I read quite a few on my own, I can claim many of these reads only because they were educational and/or occupational requirements. I enjoyed all of them, though. And I've read gazillions of works not mentioned (including stuff I personally think should be on a list of musts), as have most writers and reading-inclined adults I know.

I haven't looked into the NEA's specific concerns re the list — as in whether they feel adults should have been exposed to these works in school or should be seeking them out in lieu of watching American Idol (a winning idea, btw). But reading is good no matter what. And playing with lists is fun!

The instructions:

1) Look at the list and bold the titles you have read. (For books I started but didn't finish, I've bolded a roughly proportionate amount of text.)

2) Place an asterisk* next to the books you LOVED.

3) Flag those you've read multiple times.

4) {Bracket} the titles you have viewed in the form of a movie/miniseries.

5) Reprint this list on your blog.

1. {Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*}
2. {The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien*}
3. {Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*} (5)
4. {Harry} Potter Series - J. K. Rowling (I'm reading Book 4 now.)
5. {To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*}
6. The Bible
7. {Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*} (3)
8. 1984 - George Orwell (2)
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. {Great Expectations - Charles Dickens} (3)
11. {Little Women - Louisa May Alcott*} (4)
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. {Catch-22 - Joseph Heller*}
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*
16. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien* (2)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger (2)
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. {Middlemarch - George Eliot*}
21. {Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell}
22. {The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald}
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. {War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy}
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
26. {Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh}
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. {Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll}
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame* (4)
31. {Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy}
32. {David Copperfield - Charles Dickens}
33 The Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
34. {Emma - Jane Austen}
35. {Persuasion - Jane Austen}
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis* (2)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. {Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden}
40. {Winnie the Pooh - A. A. Milne}
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving*
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins*
46. Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
47. Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood* (2)
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding* (2)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. {Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen}
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. {Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck}
62. {Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov}
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones
65. {Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas}
66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. {Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding}
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. {Moby Dick - Herman Melville}
71. {Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens}
72. {Dracula - Bram Stoker}
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett* (2)
74. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath*
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. {Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray}
80. Possession - A. S. Byatt
81. {A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*}
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. {The Color Purple - Alice Walker}
84. {The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro}
85. {Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert}
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. {Charlotte's Web - E. B. White*} (3)
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. {The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*}
90. The Faraway Tree Collection
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams* (2)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. {The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas}
98. {Hamlet - William Shakespeare} (5)
99. {Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl}
100. {Les Miserables - Victor Hugo*} (2)