Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Christel's 100

It took me way too long to come up with this list and I know the second I post it I am going to want to retract it. I could have easily listed 200 books or more (in fact, that would have been easier), but I need to be realistic here since I do have a full-time job. Okay, so this list is a mixture of classic, modern, mystery, literary, sci-fi, children's, philosophy, science, etc. (including a frighteningly embarrassing choice, you will see which one I mean). Wish me luck as I try to stick to a goal, which has never been my strength. I think we all know this story; ambitious with the ideas, total crap on the follow through. I've heard that people are more likely to stick with a goal as long as others are watching. I hope this is true. Cheers!

1. The Time Machine H.G. Wells
2. Bram Stoker’s Dracula
3. The Black Hole War by Leonard Susskind
4. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
5. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
6. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
7. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
8. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
9. Changing Places by David Lodge
10. Small World by David Lodge
11. Nice Work by David Lodge
12. The Boat by Nam Le
13. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
14. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
15. The Republic by Plato
16. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
17. Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
18. The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery
19. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
20. Chrysalis by Kim Todd
21. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
22. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
23. My Antonia by Willa Cather
24. March by Geraldine Brooks
25. The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan
26. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
27. Peony in Love by Lisa See
28. Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers
29. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
30. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
31. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
32. Journey to the End of Night by Celine
33. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
34. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
35. Candide by Voltaire
36. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
37. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
38. Les Miserable by Victor Hugo
39. The Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol
40. Foundation by Issac Asimov
41. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
42. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
43. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
44. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
45. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
46. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
47. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
48. White Heat by Brenda Wineapple
49. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
50. Victoria by Knut Hamsun
51. The Odyssey by Homer
52. Unto This Last and Other Writings by John Ruskin
53. If On a Winter’s Night by Italo Calvino
54. In the name of Salome by Julia Alvarez
55. Motherless Brookyn by Jonathan Lethem
56. Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
57. Tropic of Capricorn Henry Miller
58. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
59. Wetlands by Charlotte Roche
60. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin
61. Watership Down by Richard Adams
62. Inheritance by Lan Samantha Chang
63. Gigi by Colette
64. The Stand by Stephen King
65. Plutarch’s Lives
66. Europe Central by William Vollmann
67. The Ordinary Princess by MM Kaye
68. Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
69. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
70. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
71. Seven Daughters and Seven Sons by Barbara Cohen
72. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
73. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
74. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
75. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
76. 2666 by Roberto Bolano
77. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
78. The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
79. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
80. Love Medicine by Louis Erdrich
81. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
82. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
83. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
84. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
85. Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers
86. Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers
87. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
88. Passage by Connie Willis
89. The Moor by Laurie King
90. O Jerusalem by Laurie King
91. Justice Hall by Laurie King
92. The Game by Laurie King
93. Locked Rooms by Laurie King
94. The Language of Bees by Laurie King
95. My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
96. The League of Extraordinary gentleman by Alan Moore
97. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
98. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
99. Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey
100. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

7 comments:

Ian said...

A great list: I've even read some of them. Les Miserable is a bit of a faux pax though. Why was Les miserable?

iasa said...

I like your list, I'm missing the embarrassing book though.

Anonymous said...

There's an embarrassing book on there? Which one? I'm sure it's not embarrassing really :)

Anonymous said...

You have a great list! I accidentally went over 200, so it would've been okay if you did. Good luck!

Vasilly

moonrat said...

we have a bunch of books in common! yay!!

awesome list :)

christel said...

Thank you for the welcome and the edit:-) Yes, my French spelling and pronunciation are both atrocious. I am going to keep my Les Miserables error as proof that even book editors make mistakes. Oh, and Wetlands is the embarrassing one. It should make for an interesting review, though.

iasa said...

Ah, yes i've read the blurb on Wetlands. Perhaps I'll leave you to read that on your own, but I would love to read your review.