A New Reading List

I did a quick browse through the library when I came across the title 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.  I looked at that and thought, That’s a dare.

I skimmed through all the titles, expecting to be unimpressed, but the truth is, the books I have already read were generally really good ones.  A more accurate title would have been 1001 Novels You Must Read… but whatever.  I decided to take them up on that challenge and read every title they have in there, see if all these books are worth reading before I die.

This project will take at least five years, but I will be back to report on each one I actually finish, perhaps on a Thursday or Saturday.  I don’t know which yet; I’ll be playing this by ear.  It won’t be every week because I do have other obligations and there are other books I’d like to read in the meantime.

If you’re interested, here’s a list of the books I’ve already read on this list and what I think of them.  I’ve already read 46 of them over the years.

The Thousand and One Nights—No argument.  The only making it a novel is the Scheherazade frame to unify these short stories (much like Ray Bradbury does in The Illustrated Man) but it’s a rare case that the frame is as interesting as the stories themselves, all of which are adventurous, beautiful, sexy, and deeply human.

The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan—Read it in my Children’s Literature college class.  This is one I will reread to remind myself of what’s in it; I remember the allegory being very heavy-handed but certainly is important for historical purposes and the fact that it’s never been out-of-print says a lot after 400 years.

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift—Hilarious, and certainly condemning to the aristocracy of the times.

Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen—Her first novel is gorgeous, and it incidentally has my favorite movie adaptation of her works, with Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet in one of their best films ever.  I have gotten sick of Pride and Prejudice, and it’s not the book’s fault.  The writing witty and has a bite to it, and the story has brilliant characters and fascinating twists and turns.  But I have seen too many adaptations—most of them really good adaptations, but I’ve been so inundated with this story that I’ve ceased to care.  Not on the edge of my seat to see whether Elizabeth and Darcy get together.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens—Here is where I make no sense.  I’ve also seen a lot of adaptations for this book and many of them range from the mediocre to downright awful, but I still love this book.  Maybe it’s the chord it rings with me; truth is, the story is not about Christmas but rather uses Christmas as the setting.  The real story is about a poor man who became rich, and in doing so forget where he came from, thereby neglecting the people he ought to have been the most charitable towards.  (And something that almost all the movies have neglected are the two children beneath the skirts of the Ghost of Christmas Present.  That was more heartbreaking to me than Tiny Tim and the true symbol not only of Scrooge’s neglect, but the society in which he lived.)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas—Yes.  Excellent book.  One of my favorite sequences is when D’Artagnan makes his return trip from his current mission and goes to collect his three friends… only to find that he has to twist all of their arms to get them back into the service.  I laughed throughout the whole thing.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë—An unexpectedly creepy romance.  Although, maybe romance is the wrong genre to put this book in.  There is a love story between Jane and Mr. Rochester, but truth is, it never dominates the plot.  It’s really a drama about the life of a meek, unattractive woman and the tragedies she faced from childhood through her adult life until she finally makes peace who she is.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville—It is worth reading but nobody could fault you for skipping every other chapter.  It seriously alternates between an epic story of vengeance, madness, and the eternal struggle of man versus nature, and then the minutiae of whaling, whales, whalers, whale ships, and the economy of whale oil.  That will wear you down.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo—Overwritten, for sure.  There is not a character who isn’t compelling, though, and Valjean is in contention for greatest hero in all literature.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll—There really aren’t any books like them.  They’re not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re bizarre enough and the dialogue is clever enough that I wouldn’t mind repeat readings.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky—I’m blown away that this was only supposed to be Part 1 of a larger epic called The Life of a Great Sinner.  That’s almost as audacious as Chaucer’s plans for The Canterbury Tales.  Great story that stands on its own legs, though.

Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson—The epitome of adventure stories.  A terrific, bloody tale of the ultimate treasure hunt.  I hate what recent film adaptations have done to Long John Silver in making him a pseudo-father figure to Jim Hawkins; this is one of the most heinous and traitorous villains written, and Jim standing up to him increases my respect for the kid.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain—My favorite novel they made us read in high school, period.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson—I’m not a fan.  It’s honestly kind of boring, but it is essentially a type of the werewolf story and deserves recognition for that if nothing else.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde—I like it.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—Except for “A Scarlet in Bohemia,” this is a rather forgettable collection.  Most of the mysteries weren’t that compelling for me.  Doyle improved his craft much by the time his second collection came out.

The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells—Meh.  He gets props for being one of the originators of the sci-fi genre and bringing out these cool ideas of time travel and genetic manipulation but… meh.  Later authors told better stories with these ideas.  However, The Invisible Man is also on this list and that was enjoyable.  Griffin is such an enjoyable criminal psychopath.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James—I like to believe she was seeing ghosts, but I’m down with the madness theory, too.

Ulysses by James Joyce—I will not finish this book.  It’s not that I lack for courage; I got through 400 pages before I gave up.  However overwritten Moby Dick and Les Misérables are, Ulysses is 20 times worse, and given that I don’t really like Homer’s Odyssey to begin with (The Iliad is much cooler) and Joyce turns it into an even more boring allegory of some Joe Shmoe whose wife is cheating on him, I just can’t do it.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald—It does bring into light how shallow the lifestyles of the rich and popular will be, but I didn’t actually need this book to tell me that.  I got the message in junior high.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque—One of the few novels of the time that was truly about the infantrymen and not the commanders over them.  It’s worth reading just for that, but boy is it sad.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien—Hobbit’s all right, but I’ve read Lord of the Rings twice and want to reread it a couple times more before I die.  I never reread books, so this is one of the highest compliments I can give to a story.

Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and Cannery Row by John Steinbeck—Like the first, hate the second, love the last one.  Cannery Row is the best thing Steinbeck wrote.  A group of guys trying to do a nice thing for someone only to have it bite them in the butt because of their own failings is the story of my life.  I appreciate that this one has a happy ending.

Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell—They’re easy books to hate but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in them.  My problem is that I have too much optimism to believe in the dystopia.

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger—Caulfield needs to grow up.  I can’t argue against the existence of his type, though.  I’ve seen people like him way too often and I have no idea how to bring about a change in these individuals.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov—Brilliant book.  It’s a great tale of how civilization develops.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway—I rather like the old man.  Really is a shame he lost his fish to the sharks.  Really a shame there were no chapters, either.  It was such a pain finding a good place to stop.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding—I didn’t like it when I read it in high school, but I think I would enjoy it much more now that I have a few extra years under my belt.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White—I love King Arthur and this is the ultimate novel of his life, from his tutelage from Merlin to the breaking of Camelot.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee—I understand the hype.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller—I don’t understand the hype.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein—Boo!  Best science-fiction novel, my ---.  It had such a great start and descended into the promotion of a free-love society.  I don’t want to know how many STD’s the major characters contracted by the end of the book.

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien—Really weird and an ending that’s too familiar to Roland Deschain’s reaching the highest room of the Dark Tower.  Still, it wasn’t a terrible ride to the end.

Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.—this one actually is in contention not only best alien abduction story, but best take on time travel ever.

The Shining by Stephen King—It is a joke that this is the only one of his novels on the list.  He’s had more influence on 20^th Century literature than anybody else until Rowling brought us Harry Potter (none of those books are on the list either, which I also can’t take seriously.)  The Shining is good, but what about The Stand or The Dead Zone or It?  Heck, if they don’t want any horror on the list, throw in “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” or “The Body” from his Different Seasons collection.  Hearts in Atlantis would be a respectable choice.  Whatever.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams—It’s fun the first time, but ever since I discovered Terry Pratchett, Adams has never been as funny to me.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons—I was a little surprised to see a graphic novel on the list, but I wasn’t surprised that this one would make it.  It’s the only comic book to win the Hugo, and I did enjoy this sad drama of flawed superheroes.  It begins as a simple murder mystery and turns into a war tale in which they fail to save the world without great sacrifice, and the sacrifice is their honor.

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro—I’ve written about this one elsewhere.