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1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die - challenge


frankie

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Adding The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (I didn't realise this was on it) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (I knew this was but forgot to update) to the list.

 

This takes my totals to 51 of the original 1001 list and 54 of the 1294 combined list. :)

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My reads so far:

 

Pre-1700

997. The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius

 

1800s

794. Dracula – Bram Stoker

 

1900s

767. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair

649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

508. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

494. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien

301. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

210. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams

 

 

 

Have to start somewhere I guess.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thought I should add the ones I've read to this thread seeing as though I am picking books off the list every so often. I'm working from the 2008 edition, I have the list as an Excel Doc, if anyone wants it, PM me an email add and I'll shoot it your way.

 

Justine - Marquis de Sade

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan

Siddharta - Hermann Hesse

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Animal Farm - George Orwell

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

Junkie (Junky) - William Burroughs

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

Stone Junction - Jim Dodge

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink

Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho

Fear and Trembling - Amelie Nothomb

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

Edited by Brian.
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  • 3 weeks later...

I need to get reading more, I've got a very low number compared to everyone else sad.gif

 

Oh honey, you are young and vibrant, unlike me! You'll catch up in a matter of months by the way you're going ;):friends3:

 

I bought Atomised (aka The Elementary Particles) by Michel Houllebecq this week.

 

Edit: This is no great worry and doesn't need immediate attention, but does anyone know why my own list (first page of this thread, second post), or rather the font on the list is all different sizes? It's annoying :( Will it sort itself out soon or do I need to work on it? I suspect it went whack when we switched to the new softa or what have you.

Edited by frankie
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I've ticked off a few more titles since my last update.

 

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (I loved this book so much)

Snow - Orhan Pamuk (I enjoyed this book despite it taking some effort to read)

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (nice easy book to read)

White Noise - Don DeLillo (didnt enjoy this one as much as I thought I would)

Money - Martin Amis (I found this to be a good read, very enjoyable)

 

Frankie the odd size text might have been due to it being copy and pasted? I noticed earlier that with the new board software if you C&P something it retains its original size unless you manual change it. I can't see it doing this with a post so old but its the only logical thing I can think of. You should be able to set it all to the correct size and font by highlighting it all in one go and choosing the font you want and the size I think.

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hehe that did make me giggle, sometimes I really don't feel like it! I really need to do some more reading for this challenge in the new year!

 

I think I need a kick in the behind with this challenge, I suggest we do a mini group read at some point in 2012 :)

 

 

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (I loved this book so much)

Snow - Orhan Pamuk (I enjoyed this book despite it taking some effort to read)

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (nice easy book to read)

White Noise - Don DeLillo (didnt enjoy this one as much as I thought I would)

Money - Martin Amis (I found this to be a good read, very enjoyable)

 

Nice going! :) I liked The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway was one of the authors I read this year who was new to me and with whom I fell in love, I am going to have such a wonderful time reading all his book and knocking some titles off from my 1001 list :)

 

Frankie the odd size text might have been due to it being copy and pasted? I noticed earlier that with the new board software if you C&P something it retains its original size unless you manual change it. I can't see it doing this with a post so old but its the only logical thing I can think of. You should be able to set it all to the correct size and font by highlighting it all in one go and choosing the font you want and the size I think.

 

Yeah I suppose that's the case, but I haven't touched my own list in ages and now on this new softa it's just gone bollywonkers. It doesn't bother me too much, it's not like the whole list is bollywonkers, just a few titles here and there, but I'm worried that I'll have more problems with this in the future. And I'm a bit annoyed that I have to go and rearrange it now eventhough I've done nothing for it to go wrong in the first place. Oh, make me shush and whack me in the head, it's really not that big of a deal and I hate to be a whiner.

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I like that suggestion, I think we really should do, maybe focus both of us a bit more!

 

Indeed we must, and I think we might be able to persuade some other people as well :)

 

Aw Frankie, the post/s should be easy to fix. Just select all the text and change it to the correct size (14, I think). It looks like it's only a problem on the second post.

 

Doh! Thanks Kylie for that, I thought I was going to have to highlist all the mismatched lines individual in order to tweak them, I didn't have the brain to just select the whole text and do a 14. Feeling really silly right about now :D

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Doh! Thanks Kylie for that, I thought I was going to have to highlist all the mismatched lines individual in order to tweak them, I didn't have the brain to just select the whole text and do a 14. Feeling really silly right about now :D

 

Hehe. Don't feel silly. :) At least the bolding didn't change.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm happy sticking to the 2006 list.....

Having thought this for a wee while, and having read of others doing something similar on the LibraryThing forum dedicated to this list, I think what I'm going to do is to aim (over a very long period!!) at reading 1001 of the books on the combined list (currently standing at 1294). That way I can quietly put aside those books which frankly I'm never going to read! So....106 read off the original list for 2006, and 111 read of the 1294 books that have featured on any one of the three lists, which means a little way to go yet!

Edited by willoyd
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Having thought this for a wee while, and having read of others doing something similar on the LibraryThing forum dedicated to this list, I think what I'm going to do is to aim (over a very long period!!) at reading 1001 of the books on the combined list (currently standing at 1294). That way I can quietly put aside those books which frankly I'm never going to read! So....106 read off the original list for 2006, and 111 read of the 1294 books that have featured on any one of the three lists, which means a little way to go yet!

 

Good luck, willoyd! :)

 

What? 1294 books on the combined list?? After two revisions? In 2020 it's going to be an unofficial 2002 Books You Must Read Before You Die :o

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Good luck, willoyd! :)

 

What? 1294 books on the combined list?? After two revisions?

Yes, but the second revision saw just 11 books changing - the first one the big 'un. The first one looks as if it was that big to accommodate a lot more international books, deleting mostly books by authors already represented on the list. Even so, there were some odd ones removed, for instance Ovid's Metamorphoses, and some equally odd ones (to this British reader's eyes at least!) introduced.

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This takes my totals to 51 of the original 1001 list and 54 of the 1294 combined list. :smile:

I updated last night to add Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift to my count, and discovered I'd missed a couple off. My totals now stand at 53 of the original list and 56 combined.

 

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Small Island by Andrea Levy

The Sea by John Banville

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

Atonement by Ian McEwan

I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammaniti

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Regeneration by Pat Barker

Wise Children by Angela Carter

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

In A Free State by V.S. Naipaul

A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Coming Up for Air by George Orwell

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Candide by Voltaire

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

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The 'internationality' of the list is an interesting issue (at least to me, since I'm not part of the few ethnic majorities represented on the list). If I had an infinite amount of time on my hands, I'd like to see just how many different countries have produced an author represented on the book, and how many authors, for example, UK, US, France and Russia have on the list. I'm sure those four countries combined make up at least 1/3 of the whole list.

 

And then again, this is not Around the World -challenge. But then again, there must be so many unknown, hidden gems around, that are just not getting through because they are not in English, they haven't had/don't have the same kind of marketing, or they come from so small countries and small 'language' that they just don't have as big an audience than in some other countries.

 

/random thoughts over and out.

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I updated last night to add Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift to my count, and discovered I'd missed a couple off. My totals now stand at 53 of the original list and 56 combined.

 

Yay for discoving you'd read more than had put down as read :D

 

Just out of curiosity, what's been your favorite(s) so far? And the least favorite(s)?

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Just out of curiosity, what's been your favorite(s) so far? And the least favorite(s)?

Oh gosh, quite a lot of favourites! My absolute favourite favourites are the ones in colour!

 

All the George Orwells (gotta be my favourite author!)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (we're getting a BBC TV production of this starting this Sunday!)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 

Least favourites:

 

The Sea by John Banville

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

Little Women by Louisa M Alcott

 

I really disliked those (or just found them dull in the extreme) - and The Catcher in the Rye has to be my most hated book ever - what a phoney! :lurker::P

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I really disliked those (or just found them dull in the extreme) - and The Catcher in the Rye has to be my most hated book ever - what a phoney! :lurker::P

 

Just a bit of a thread hijack, but I cannot stand this book, I literally almost threw it across the room I disliked it so much! Glad to have found someone who is of the same thought as me :D

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Same! :D

 

I think I've only come across one other person online who dislikes it too - I'm fairly certain Alexistar hated it too! :)

 

:) I wanted to throttle the main character, it was that bad I can't even remember his name!

 

 

 

 

Not a total hijack . . . I finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle earlier, which is on the list, and I'm now on a grand total of 12 books.

 

Yep 12 books out of 1001, I have a looonnnnggg way to go to even catch up with everyone on here, let alone to complete the challenge.

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Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (we're getting a BBC TV production of this starting this Sunday!)

 

Thanks for the heads up on this Janet, It's one of my most favourite books ever, I do hope the TV show does it justice! (Need a fingers crossed icon here!) :smile:

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