otrops: jeff van campen’s personal blog

I haven’t posted in a while. To remedy this, I’ve decided to use some memetically generated content, rather than bothering to actually write something original. I noticed this particular meme on some of the science blogs I read. It’s a bit stale now, but it’s my kind of fun.

Below are “106 books of pretension,” compiled from the books most frequently marked unread by Library Thing users.

Books I’ve read are in bold; books I’ve stared but haven’t finished are in italics; books I own but haven’t read are marked with an dagger (†). I was tempted to annotate all the books, but you can probably read about books I love
elsewhere on this blog. So I’ll only annotate (*ahem* make excuses about) the books I haven’t finished or the books I own but haven’t read yet†.

Here is the executive summary for those of you who don’t want to slog through all of the titles:

• Read: 55
• Haven’t finished: 5
• Own, but haven’t read†: 9

And here’s the list:

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell† - Joanne started reading this, but she found it pretty boring. If anyone out there read this and enjoyed it, let me know. If you’re convincing enough, I’ll give it a go.
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion - I could never really get into this. I’ve read Lord of the Rings three times, but I’ve never managed to finish this
8. Life of Pi : a novel
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick - I got most of the way through this book, then I got to an incredibly vivid description of whale carcasses floating abandoned in the sea. It made me sick to my stomach. I put the book down, and I’ve never picked it up again. This is a book I really need to finish.
12. Ulysses - I started this one summer when I was in University. I had at least two books of annotations, and I was ready for anything. I got close to halfway through, then the fall semester started. I never quite had the time to finish it.
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies† - I bought this a while ago in at the used book stall on the beach in Brighton. I keep coming across references to this and other books by Jared M. Diamond in a number of books I’m readying (usually biology related), so it’s quite likely I’ll actually read this soon.
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife† - Joanne read this and liked it a lot. I think it’s currently on loan to someone. If we ever get it back, I’ll read it.
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin† - I need to read this. I like Margaret Atwood a lot, but I just haven’t gotten around to reading this one. Actually, this one may be on loan, too. I couldn’t find it on our shelves, but I’m pretty sure it was at one point.
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha† - Another one that Joanne has read (twice). She says that it’s a much better book than the movie they made out of it. I’d like to read it to find out if that’s true.
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury tales
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New world
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible : a novel† - This was in a £1 book bin at Eridge station, which means it’s been sitting unread on my shelf for about three years. The shame.
53. 1984
54. Angels & Demons
55. The Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses† - Of all the Rushdie I’ve read, how have I not read this one? One day, very soon, I’m going to read this.
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables
66. The Corrections
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury - I may have actually finished this. I was a bit preoccupied at the time. Most of it was read on a plane between the France and the U.S. In any case, I need to reread this.
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces† - I think we own this, though I couldn’t find it on our shelves. I know Joanne has read it. I guess I should probably read it, but I really don’t want to. I think I just got sick of hearing about it in the early ’90s. In fact, I feel like I’ve read it already. If you’ve read this one, and think I should read it, let me know.
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-five
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake : a novel
87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity’s Rainbow† - I picked this up at the gift shop at Herstmonceux Castle. That was almost a year ago. It’s probably time to actually read the book.
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
103. White Teeth
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers - Technically, this one is unfinished, but I’m reading it right now.

If you’ve made it this far, you are obviously at least as pretentious as I am, and are hereby tagged. Which of these books have you read? Which didn’t you finished? Which do you own, but have yet to read?