Saturday, April 4, 2009

Merry Monteleone's List

1. A Mercy – Toni Morrison
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khalad Hosseini
3. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
4. “...And Ladies of the Club” – Helen Hoover Santmyer
5. Atonement – Ian McEwan
6. Being Committed – Anna Maxted
7. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
8. Catch – 22 – Joseph Heller
9. Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
10. Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier
11. Coraline – Neil Gaiman
12. Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? – Erica Orloff
13. Drowning Ruth – Christina Schwarz
14. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
15. Ella Enchanted – Gail Carson Levine
16. Empire Falls – Richard Russo
17. Faust – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
18. Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce
19. Firefly Summer – Mauve Binchey
20. Ghosts of Belfast – Stuart Neville
21. God: A Biography – Jack Miles
22. Harvesting the Heart – Jodi Picoult
23. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – Jamie Ford
24. Howard’s End – E.M. Forster
25. I Know This Much Is True – Wally Lamb
26. I So Don’t Do Mysteries – Barrie Summy
27. Inkheart – Cornelia Funke
28. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
29. La Storia ; Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience – Jerre Mangione &
Ben Morreale
30. Lady of the Glen – Jennifer Roberson
31. Le Morte D’Arthur – Sir Thomas Malory
32. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
33. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
34. Lucia, Lucia – Adrianna Trigiani
35. Magickeepers – Erica Kirov
36. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
37. Mercy – Jodi Picoult
38. Needful Things – Stephen King
39. Nights of Rain and Stars – Mauve Binchey
40. No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew it Cause Bill
Bailey Ain’t Never Coming Home Again – Edgardo Vega Yunque
41. Nobody’s Fool – Richard Russo
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. Orange Mint and Honey: A Novel – Carlene Brice
44. Paradise – Toni Morrison
45. Redheaded Stepchild – Jaye Wells
46. Sacajawea – Anna Lee Waldo
47. Saint Thomas Aquinas Selected Writings (Heritage Press)
48. Savvy – Ingrid Law
49. Seabiscuit: An American Legend – Laura Hillenbrand
50. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
51. Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia – Cindy Pon
52. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
53. Terms of Endearment – Larry McMurtry
54. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie
55. The Beautiful and the Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald
56. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
57. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
58. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
59. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
60. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
61. The Forest House – Marion Zimmer Bradley
62. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
63. The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
64. The Green Mile – Stephen King
65. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
66. The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova
67. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
68. The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
69. The Iliad - Homer
70. The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
71. The Killer Angels – Michael Shaara
72. The Kite Runner – Khalad Hosseini
73. The Lady of Avalon – Marion Zimmer Bradley
74. The Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
75. The Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan
76. The Lords of Discipline – Pat Conroy
77. The Mermaid Chair – Sue Monk Kidd
78. The Mommy Myth – Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels
79. The Pickwick Paper – Charles Dickens
80. The Ragamuffin Gospel – Brennan Manning
81. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
82. The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi – Jacqueline Park
83. The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
84. The Shipping News – Annie Proulx
85. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
86. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
87. The Winner – David Baldacci
88. The Woman Next Door – Barbara Delinsky
89. The Woman with the Alabaster Jar – Margaret Starbird
90. The World According to Garp – John Irving
91. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – Michael Chabon
92. Undaunted Courage – Stephen E. Ambrose
93. Under the Tuscan Sun – Frances Mayes
94. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thacheray
95. Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightening – Danette Haworth
96. Walk Two Moons – Sharon Creech
97. Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
98. We Were the Mulvaney’s – Joyce Carol Oates
99. White Oleander – Janet Fitch
100. Why I am a Catholic – Garry Wills

13 comments:

Emily Cross said...

Merry i love your list, oh i've almost read nothing on it *sigh* i thought i was well-read too!!

Merry Monteleone said...

Hi Emily,

Actually, I started Faulkner and hated it.. but I've always wanted to make myself read the whole thing because it's so blasphemous for a writer not to like Faulkner, so I feel like I must've been missing something.

Sense and Sensibility I did read a long time ago, but I don't remember much of it, and I think I might have been a little young to get it, so I've always wanted to reread that one.

This should be a really fun project. Thanks again for taking the time to set all this up! The blog looks great.

Stacy said...

You are brave to take on James Joyce.

Amanda said...

Merry - In terms of Faulkner, As I Lay Dying is far superior to The Sound and the Fury, and is much easier to read (while still being in the stream of consciousnes style). I loved AILD but really didn't like TS&TF.

Merry Monteleone said...

Hi Freddie,

Thanks *gulp*

Hi Amanda,

Moonrat said the same thing, and I thought about starting with A Fable... I'm going to try this one first though - if I absolutely hate it, I might switch to a different one... but in fairness, I first tried Faulkner when I was pretty young, so maybe it just wasn't the right time for me. (I did the same thing with Melville, when I was twenty he was too dry - tried him again ten years later and loved it).

Jen A said...

I personally LOVED The Sound and The Fury, but it was definitely very challenging. If you want to try something a little less dense from him, though, Sanctuary and Go Down Moses are both great and much easier reads.

moonrat said...

yeah, i REALLY love sound & fury. like, it's my favorite book. but yeah, it's hard.

J.C. Montgomery said...

Wow, Faust and Ivanhoe. I wish I were so inclined. Too much of a classics wuss.

Mya Barrett said...

*Scribbling down book titles that sound awesome and somehow missed on my list*

Amanda said...

Merry - #97 Water for Elephants - I entered the author as Sarah Gruen in the master list. I'm assuming that's what you meant? If I'm wrong, let me know and I'll correct that.

Merry Monteleone said...

Hi JC,

I love classics, but I've fallen away from them over the last few years, reading newer releases a lot more. We'll see how I do with these - they've actually been on my shelf for a long time.

Mya,

That's funny - I've been reading everyone else's lists and there's always a few that make me want to kick myself because I didn't include them in mine :-)

Hi Amanda,

Yes, it's Sara Gruen! I'm an idiot. I must've gotten confused copytyping it so it would be alphabetical - Frances Mayes wrote Under the Tuscan Sun. Thanks for catching it - I'll see if I can edit the post.

Amanda said...

Merry, I think we ALL have that same issue. I had Babbitt under Sinclair instead of Lewis, and the wrong author for The Secret Garden...yeah. I think that's natural for 100 lists. :)

Merry Monteleone said...

Okay Fixed.

Jen and Moonie,

Thanks - I'm going to stick with this one, but I'm adding your suggestions to my to be read pile if this one doesn't kill me :-)