From ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadowkat
bold = have read
italics = started but did not finish
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series J. K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens... Required for school, naturally it's one of the worst Dickens novels I've read.
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - I own it all but haven't had the desire to read it all.
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell -- I don't like the movie!
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy... I've read it several times in both Russian and English.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams... Didn't like it.
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky - another one I've read in Russian and in English, actually an easy read in Russian.
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame... I liked the Disney cartoon version.
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy... Most Russian majors either prefer this or War and Peace. For me Anna rates five yawns.
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – Meh
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -- tried...
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden - Another one I own but haven't opened.
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell ... My cat agrees that some animals are more equal than others. ;o)
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown So badly written, it's funny. I don't think that's why it was so popular.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving Loved this book in my twenties.
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding .. I'm probably one of the few who didn't read it for a class.
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan -- hated this book. It was a painful read.
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert ... I like the book better than any of the movie or TV adaptations.
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 - I like the book and the movie with Lon Chaney Jr. and Burgess Meredith.
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
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
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 – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
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 – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ... I've read most but not all of the stories.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
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
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
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
I guess that's more than six, I've read. What's with all the Thomas Hardy? They didn't even list Return of the Native which I've read.
shadowkatbold = have read
italics = started but did not finish
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series J. K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens... Required for school, naturally it's one of the worst Dickens novels I've read.
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - I own it all but haven't had the desire to read it all.
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell -- I don't like the movie!
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy... I've read it several times in both Russian and English.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams... Didn't like it.
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky - another one I've read in Russian and in English, actually an easy read in Russian.
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame... I liked the Disney cartoon version.
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy... Most Russian majors either prefer this or War and Peace. For me Anna rates five yawns.
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – Meh
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -- tried...
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden - Another one I own but haven't opened.
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell ... My cat agrees that some animals are more equal than others. ;o)
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown So badly written, it's funny. I don't think that's why it was so popular.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving Loved this book in my twenties.
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding .. I'm probably one of the few who didn't read it for a class.
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan -- hated this book. It was a painful read.
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert ... I like the book better than any of the movie or TV adaptations.
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 - I like the book and the movie with Lon Chaney Jr. and Burgess Meredith.
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
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
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 – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
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 – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ... I've read most but not all of the stories.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
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
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
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
I guess that's more than six, I've read. What's with all the Thomas Hardy? They didn't even list Return of the Native which I've read.
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Wondering the same thing. I'm thinking we have a bored 19th Century English Lit major doing this?
Interesting -- we are flip sides, I read all the Brontes and Austen stuff, you read the Dickens and Stoker stuff. (I also read it all as a teenager.)
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky - another one I've read in Russian and in English, actually an easy read in Russian.
Curious. Is the Russian version easier to read than the English version? It may just not translate well.
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Dostoevsky is a little tricky. Dostoevsky always seems dead serious in English, but he can start you laughing in odd places in Russian. May be translators don't quite get the flow right, and 19th century Russian culture isn't perfectly relatable for English language readers, which may throw things off.
I started reading Pride and Prejudice and really was enjoying it. I decided to go back before I finished, and reread it carefully, which was a mistake. I saw all the problems with Austen's English and really got sick of it. Much better for a quick read than serious analysis. I may go back to it someday and try again.
Brontes: I did read The Tennant of Wildfell Hall, all the way through! (A friend of mine wrote her Master's thesis on it.)
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Dostoevsky always seems dead serious in English, but he can start you laughing in odd places in Russian. May be translators don't quite get the flow right, and 19th century Russian culture isn't perfectly relatable for English language readers, which may throw things off.
I'm wondering if Russian humor is translatable to English? The people I know who loved The Master and The Margarita either read it in Swedish, German or Russian. Not necessarily in English. This may be true of Tolstoy as well. There may be Russian ways of thinking that just don't translate well. When reading a translation -- I'm basically reading another person's interpretation of the work not the actual work or the actual words the original writer chose. Unless the writer does their own translations -- some do.
I started reading Pride and Prejudice and really was enjoying it. I decided to go back before I finished, and reread it carefully, which was a mistake. I saw all the problems with Austen's English and really got sick of it. Much better for a quick read than serious analysis. I may go back to it someday and try again.
It's a good comedy of English manners -- Austen was a bit of a satirist. But, her books get repetitive, she does the same tropes over and over. And if you don't appreciate or like the epistolary style (which was apparently popular back then) -- it won't work for you. Her novels feel a bit like reading a series of formal letters. The characters are held a bit at a distance, emotion is suppressed in an odd manner -- with overwrought angst brimming beneath the surface. And they are "romance" novels -- in some respects critiques of romance novels written at that time. The Brontes wrote in a similar manner. As did Bram Stoker. Which a sort of combination of narrative and epistolary. I don't really like it. Which is why I only read Austen, who did less of it than others at that time, and was less flowery than either Dickens, Hawthorn, Henry James, or the Brontes -- and far less melodramatic.
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Most of the people I knew who read Master and Margarita read it in English for a survey course in English they were taking. Everyone I heard talking about it (mostly Russian majors I knew) loved it and thought it was hilarious. I was in the same room when my father was reading it in English and he burst out laughing. I hadn't read it yet. I'd read other things by Bulgakov and liked them all. Then I decided to switch from Psychology to Russian for graduate study and read many things in Russian literature in a short time to catch up. M & M fell flat for me. Maybe I went in expecting, too much. I don't think I'd think Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog would be any less funny today, and I doubt I'd laugh at Master and Margarita if I tried reading it again now. Humor just doesn't work for some people sometimes.
Anyone reading Dostoevsky in Russian or English should be told that he started out wanting to write just like Gogol (though he would take his subject matter generally more seriously). Gogol is funny in any language, but if you don't know anything about Russia you could easily take it the wrong way. In the required writing course I took as a college freshman, we read Gogol's story "The Overcoat." Our instructor took it very seriously and we students followed her lead. A couple years later, after I'd learned something about about 19th century Russia and about Gogol from the Russian side, and overheard Russian professors talking about "The Overcoat," I realized my English instructor and our class had it all backwards. We thought it was a socially responsible look at conditions in Russia. Actually Gogol was making fun of that kind of story. But if you didn't know the little details of Russian culture... the protagonist's name could correctly translate to "Poo-poo, son of Poo-poo," that the protagonist's job was firmly middle class not on the low end, and so forth... you wouldn't see anything of how ridiculous the story was.
I got into the swing of Pride and Prejudice and was taking it very well for what it is. It's just that when I stopped going with the flow and looked more closely, her English was very repetitive and sometimes not grammatical, and paying attention to that was what drove me away. I stopped reading Jane Eyre at a slow point, but I intended to get back to it. Just never have.