Books

[brigdh]

Taken from solo____!

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.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Baby, we've had a printer crisis, now averted -- am plowing through my work -- may need an extra 20 -- where are we eating?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's fine.

I dunno, have no ideas in particular. I'm thinking warm food, though. Do you have any preferences?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Into the warm. Rules out Japanese for me. Otherwise I'm at your mercy. Spicey? Steaky?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Either. I'm kinda feeling soup or chili, something like that, but that's pretty wide-ranging.

[rm.livejournal.com]

That is very wide ranging. Let me ponder.

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

When it comes to really good children's book, I always recommend Roald Dahl. Mathilda was my favorite book as child. That could be good for the nine year old, I would think. Also, Neil Gaiman has some picture books that I really like.

Man, I wish that I could remember the titles of all the girly-girl stuff that I used to like.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Sherwood Smith's Wren to the Rescue and sequels are charming fantasy with princesses (as is her Posse of Princesses); fine for a 9-year-old, too advanced for a 6-year-old.

Also Pat Wrede's Enchanted Forest novels.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, I adored the Enchanted Forest novels when I was little! Excellent idea. I'll have to check out the others.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman is a good idea. I got them 'The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish' a year or two ago. And Roald Dahl, excellent!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Steak place and Molly's both have great French onion soup.

And you will hate the sequels to Dune. Because they suck. But still have really interesting ideas and compell you to keep reading.

Also, Clive Barker has the Arabat kids books.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha.

What's steak place? The place we go after Dances of Vice? Because either that or Molly's sound excellent.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yup, the place we go after DoV. It's actually called L'Express.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's good, I like that place.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Okay, you choose which.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, let's go to Molly's. Fireplace for the win; it's bloody cold out tonight.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Cool. We can reprise the scene of the crime. Except, with like,a ctually knowing what the fuck we're doing now.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee.

[kessie.livejournal.com]

*clears throat*

For the 6 year old:

Completely not the Fergie you're talking about, but Fergie the ex-Duchess has a book called Tea for Ruby (http://www.amazon.com/Tea-Ruby-Paula-Wiseman-Books/dp/1416954198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229133724&sr=1-1) out--a beautiful book, and very popular this year. Depending on her reading level, The Daisy Meadows Fairy series of doom is still weirdly popular and Vivian French's The Tiara Club series is also sill popular.

Also, I am going to be mean and push a beautiful new version of Cinderella (http://www.amazon.com/Cinderella-Max-Eilenberg/dp/0763638560/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229133792&sr=1-1) out by an Irish author called Niamh Sharkey (Niamh = Nee-uvvh). Interesting fact: Niamh actually researched the clothing designs from the historical-ish era the Cinderella myth started to surface, so her designs are all historical based. It's reallllly pretty.

For the 9th year old:

Inkheart has been doing well with me, including Inkdeath and the trilogy boxset. So has Gregory Maguire's new book What the Dickens (re-imagined tooth fairies!). I've given The Graveyard Book to a few people, too, but it might depend on her reading level. Ummmm (*visualises book shelves in her head*), Siobhan Dowd's The London Eye Mystery has been doing well, but a quick Amazon search told me it's not out in the US in paperback until February. I'm not sure if she's available over there but Enid Blyton (who is a seriously enduring for almost the last century popular children's author over here) wrote gazillions of books for the 8-12/MG range.

Also, there are the classics: Little Women, Black Beauty, The Secret Garden, White Fang. There was a beautiful new edition of Anne of Green Gables released lasted year to celebrate its 100th anniversary. We got a bunch of classics in with new covers and font to appeal to younger readers a year or so ago and they keep selling.

For both: Roald Dahl. He has some shorter ones like The Selfish Crocodile that you can get for your younger cousin. Also, annuals are still very popular and you can get ones for the TV characters you mentioned them liking too. There's also those old-fashioned Lady Cottington's fairy journals which they might like.

Disclaimer: These are only suggestions off the top of my head etc. etc. and entirely dependent on the US and UK publishing circles being any way similar right now, and US and UK/Irish girls also having similar taste. (Also, I gave up on amazon links, lol, but amazon.com is telling me things are available, so hopefully they actually are.)


...man, you can totally tell I do this for a job, can't you.

[pineapplechild.livejournal.com]

The Inferno only gets interesting in the context of other things.
And Le Miz is... well, I could do a lot without "20 pages about GOING TO BUY AN EGG!"

[iilii.livejournal.com]

For the 9-year-old, I would recommend Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Season of Ponies. I loved all of her books when I was that age. It looks like you can order it used from Amazon. The hardcovers all have gorgeous illustrations, but the paperbacks might be easier to find. And what girl wouldn't love a book about a herd of magical ponies?

And you should totally read Life of Pi. It's all about human nature and storytelling.

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

Heh, abridged French Dumas brings back some very fond memories of high school French. Particularly the entire class bursting into giggles when the verb embracer was used between Athos and D'Artagnan in Les Trois Mousquetaires.

[torenheksje.livejournal.com]

The Princess and the Goblin, The Secret Garden, and the Alice in Wonderland books were all favorites of mine at about 9. Also, I got into the Narnia books at about that age.

My 7-year-old reads pretty far above level, but still likes lots of pictures in her books. Unfortunately, most of what she reads are Dutch authors which won't help you much. Oh! Phantom Tollbooth and Wind in the Willows. Also, The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes.

[hazard-us.livejournal.com]

Chiming in for saying E.B. White's books were my staple at those ages. I loved Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web, but by far my favorite was the Trumpet of the Swan.

I am definitely dittoing Roald Dahl, I loved the BFG and Danny, the Champion of the World.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Depending of course on reading level, interests, blah, blah, blah!

For the 9-year-old: I just got my niece the first Young Wizards book, So You Want to Be a Wizard. Donna Jo Napoli writes excellent work, but can be depressing. Beast is pretty good and not too sad, and I like Bound very much. Her tales are set all over the world, and are deeply respectful to their cultures.

For the 6-year-old: Yes, yes to E.B. White and Roald Dahl. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me is particularly good for young'uns. I also want to recommend the ludicrously overmarketed but remarkably good Disney Fairy books-- there are two by Gail Carson Levine, but they're all remarkably consistent in tone and quality. The fairies have agency, they have fun, and their toys and merch aren't insanely overpriced like, say, the American Girl dolls. Marc Brown's Arthur books are also popular for good reason. There are picture books and chapter books, and again the kids solve their own problems and have real personalities and interests.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I **loved** A Season of Ponies! Is it even still in print?

And if they like Faeries, and want to know what Auntie P-- finds so enticing about NYC, may I recommend Delia Sherman's CHANGELING?