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Taken from

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What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicise the ones you started but didn't finish.

- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Quite good. I should reread this at some point.
- Anna Karenina Blah.
- Crime and Punishment Good, but not my favorite Dostoevsky.
- Catch-22
- One Hundred Years of Solitude Blah. I don't quite get Márquez, apparently, even though everyone else adores him.
- Wuthering Heights EVERYONE IN THE BOOK NEEDS TO BE PUNCHED IN THE FACE. And that is all I have to say.
- The Silmarillion I had too much free time in middle school.
- Life of Pi : a novel
- The Name of the Rose
- Don Quixote
- Moby Dick
- Ulysses
- Madame Bovary Eee! I adored this. It's way more entertaining if you picture Madame Bovary as a teen girl who's read too many romance novels, though.
- The Odyssey
- Pride and Prejudice Twice, even, on the thought that eventually I had to like it as much as everyone else does. But no.
- Jane Eyre Very good! But I don't have much to say about it.
- The Tale of Two Cities ARGH. How can any book which features body snatchers, switched places by look-alikes, the French Revolution, and evil knitters be as boring as this one?
- The Brothers Karamazov Love it! I adore this book.
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies It would be better without the environmental determinism, but probably is the current best pop-history book out there.
- War and Peace Way better than everyone says it is. You expect it to be all dense and philosophical, and it's mostly like Jane Austen crossed with The Three Musketeers.
- Vanity Fair LOVELOVELOVELOVE.
- The Time Traveler’s Wife
- The Iliad Eh. Glad I read it, wouldn't do it again.
- Emma Snark galore!
- The Blind Assassin
- The Kite Runner HATE HATE KILL IT WITH KNIVES HATE.
- Mrs. Dalloway
- Great Expectations
- American Gods Very, very good. My favorite part is all the little asides telling how the gods got to America.
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- Atlas Shrugged
- Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
- Quicksilver I ADORE this trilogy.
- Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West Much better than the sequel, though I feel like this book had a better idea than it had execution. Should see the play sometime.
- The Canterbury Tales Entertaining, what I read of it, but have yet been motivated to read the rest.
- The Historian : a novel
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Love in the Time of Cholera Again, just not that big of a fan of Márquez. I liked this one better than 100 Years of Solitude, though.
- The Fountainhead
- Foucault's Pendulum
- Middlemarch
- Frankenstein I really need to finish this at some point.
- The Count of Monte Cristo Kinda? I read a heavily abridged version when I took French in high school.
- Dracula Good! But not as scary as you'd think.
- A Clockwork Orange Meh on the plot and characters, but fantastic language. Had me wanting to speak like that for days.
- Anansi Boys Great, very funny.
- The Once and Future King Very good. Darker than I expected.
- The Grapes of Wrath
- The Poisonwood Bible : a novel This was my favorite book when I was in high school, but I haven't reread it in years.
- 1984 Rats still horrify me.
- Angels & Demons
- The Inferno Interesting, but not really very engaging.
- The Satanic Verses
- Sense and Sensibility So. Boring.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray Good! Creepy.
- Mansfield Park Very enjoyable.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I don't really remember much of this. Read it ages ago.
- To the Lighthouse
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles
- Oliver Twist
- Gulliver's Travels
- Les Misérables Took me four tries, but I finally made it all the way through! The musical's better. NO NEED FOR OVER-100 PAGE TANGENTS, HUGO.
- The Corrections
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Fine, but I don't really get the hype.
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- Dune Awesome ideas. Should try the sequels sometime.
- The Prince
- The Sound and the Fury I went through a Faulkner phase for a while. Good stuff.
- Angela's Ashes : a memoir
- The God of Small Things LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE!!.
- A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
- Cryptonomicon Really great. So much fun.
- Neverwhere I like this less than most people seem to, but it's good.
- A Confederacy of Dunces
- A Short History of Nearly Everything
- Dubliners
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Beloved Whew, depressing. That's all I remember, really.
- Slaughterhouse-five
- The Scarlet Letter HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!!
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves
- The Mists of Avalon
- Oryx and Crake : a novel
- Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
- Cloud Atlas
- The Confusion
- Lolita Eh, whatever. Good first line, though.
- Persuasion
- Northanger Abbey
- The Catcher in the Rye Adequate, but not quite sure how this became the defining rebellious-teen novel.
- On the Road
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame Awesome! Though Hugo still has issues with tangents.
- Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
- The Aeneid
- Watership Down I learned that rabbits are scary.
- Gravity's Rainbow
- The Hobbit I remember trying to read this to my grandmother, but she couldn't understand fantasy.
- In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
- White Teeth
- Treasure Island
- David Copperfield
- The Three Musketeers So much fun! And surprisingly hilarious!

Also speaking of books, are there any children's books you would recommend for a 9 and/or 6 year-old girl? My baby cousins need Christmas presents. They are into the Jonas Brothers (Hannah Montana is out, they tell me), Fergie, Totally Spies, princesses, make-up, and fairies. I've been reading more YA, but generally not at this level, so I would love any suggestions.