BBC Top 100 discussion

BBC Top 100 List of 2012
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
...Fellowship of the Ring
...The Two Towers
...Return of the King
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
...Sorcerer's Stone
...Chamber of Secrets
...Prisoner of Azkaban
...Goblet of Fire
...Order of the Phoenix
...Half-Blood Prince
...Deathly Hallows
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
...The Golden Compass
...The Subtle Knife
...The Amber Spyglass
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma -Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
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
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
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
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 Inferno – Dante
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 Mitchell
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 – E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (In French)
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

have requested the following books:

1.) Crime and Punishment(#66-2011, #27-2012, #8-2013 Classics, “C” for Read Your Name Challenge)

2.)Noughts and Crosses(#67, “N” for Read Your Name Challenge)

3.)The Remains of the Day (#84-2012, first “R” for Read Your Name Challenge)

4.)The Light Between Oceans towards my Book Buddy Challenge.

I'm currently reading Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet working my way through the Complete Works of William Shakespeare (#14) on the 2012 list.

All of these will fit neatly into the Read the Alphabet Challenge, and helps finish my 2013 Book Challenge and personal goals for 2013.

Finished The Remains of the Day, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet. Am starting The Light Between Oceans

I have been without Internet for a couple of weeks. I finished Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet, as well as Crime and Punishment, Noughts & Crosses, and The Light Between Oceans.

I have requested the following:

1. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. (#55 - 2011 & 2012, "A" for Read Your Name)

2. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (#58-2011, #19 Classics Challenge)

3. Ulysses by James Joyce (#78-2011, #75-2012, #27-Classics Challenge)

4. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (#82-2011, "I" for the Read Your Name Challenge)

and

5. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (#82-2011, #29-Classics Challenge, "A" for the Read Your Name Challenge).

All fit the 2013 Personal Reading Challenge

Picked up the following from the library last night:

1. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Giaman (#68 - 2011)

2. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White (#87 - 2012)

3. Holes by Louis Sachar (#83 - 2011)

and

4. Dracula by Bram Stoker (#72 - 2012)

So this week, I’ve finished Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Giaman, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, and Holes by Louis Sachar. I’m starting on Dracula by Bram Stoker right now.

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, Ulysses by James Joyce, and I Capture the Castle have arrived from the library. Boy, A Suitable Boy is another huge one!

FINALLY finished Ulysses... now on to A Suitable Boy.

Finished The Stand earlier this evening. Will start on Lord of the Flies tonight. I have The Color of Magic and Love in the Time of Cholera on the table waiting.

Finished Lord of the Flies and Love in the Time of Cholera. Started The Color of Magic tonight.

So I finished The Woman in White. Loved it. Twisted plot. Picked up The Twits, The Godfather, The Princess Diaries, and The God of Small Things.

Finished The God of Small Things this evening. Odd style of writing, meaning the time line. I find myself forgetting the Indian style of writing until I pick an Indian book up, and am caught off guard a little each time! LOL!

Will finish The Princess Diaries while I'm at home (almost finished), and will start on The Godfather at work tomorrow.

I finished last week and this evening. Going to start in the morning.

I have finished The Kite Runner and The Magus. Working on some Shakespeare pieces.

Just finished Hamlet and The Taming of the Shrew towards "The Complete Works of Shakespeare". I've started Othello and have King Lear and Macbeth after that in the same book.

I got halfway through Katherine, and the library wouldn't renew it because someone else needed it. Now, I'm halfway through "A Suitable Boy"... Easier to read than Tolstoy, but still kind of blah to me.

I honestly didn't think I would ever complete A Suitable Boy. It just seemed to keep going on and on. I think I got carpal tunnel syndrome from keeping the book lifted up to read! He spent so much time building up the characters and setting the stage that it really didn't start getting good until the last 100 or so pages.

Next up? Mort, Kane and Abel, Atonement and The Shadow of the Wind.

Just ordered the following book for this list from the Public Library:

Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome

Hope to get it soon.

Finished "Guards!Guards!"
Absolutely love how Terry Pratchett writes. I've suggested Discworld series to my husband for when he's finished with The Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind.

I've picked up "Vicky Angel" and "Double Act" by Jacqueline Wilson, "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and "Cold Comfort Farms" by Stella Gibbons.

Finished Cold Comfort Farm. Wasn't very impressed. The way she described the Starkadders reminded me of my ex-husband's family. All that torture of her manipulation and never do we hear about what the "rights" were, or what "nasty" was seen in the shed! I have a hard time when an artist writes quotes in dialect, and I'm sure that people in the waiting room were not thrilled when I was whisper-reading to make sure I understood what the characters were saying!

Reading "Kane and Abel" and "Double Act".

Finished Double Act. Cute. Whimsical.

Now I can focus on Kane and Abel, with Gormenghast waiting on the counter. While the list calls for just Book #2, I'm reading all three books in 1.

Finished Kane and Abel. Absolutely loved it. The plot itself was kind of predictable, but I love the entwining of true historical events and conspiracies. A prime example is when William Kane's father, a banker, died on "a" ship. There's a conspiracy that says JP Morgan (banker and financial backer of the Titanic) lowered standards on the Titanic as guided by the book "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan (1898) to kill Benjamin Guggenheim, Isa Strauss (actual name Isidor Straus), and John Jacob Astor IV, all opposers of the creation of the Federal Reserve. Interestingly enough, less than a year later, the Federal Reserve was created by the Rothschilds, Rockefeller, and JP Morgan. They were known as the Federal Reserve Cartel. Also to fuel this conspiracy was the insurance scandal that involved the Titanic and its sinking. 'Conspiracies: Titanic, the ship that never sank' and The Titanic Conspiracy: The Great Deception are great videos to watch.

On to The Gormenghast Novels.

Oh my God!!! The Secret History just dragged on and on and on... I didn't think it would ever end. It just kept going and going. It was so dull that I had trouble keeping at it.

I tried to read The Gormenghast Novels, but couldn't renew it because someone else wanted it. I've re-requested it, but it hasn't come in yet.

I've started the Magician today.

I finished the Handmaid's Tale. I honestly can say that I don't understand the political use of it latter last year. Ridiculous@

I've requested
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

Started 95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole this morning

I just finished

95. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Thank god! I found it very hard to get through it. Main character reminded me of certain people in my life, vulgar individuals who no respect for anyone or anything and always made excuses for both his failures and his lack of drive. I don't see how it won a Pulitzer Prize over So Long, See You Tomorrow. I read somewhere that it won because it has been cited as the most accurate literary representation of Yat. I believe that it has reached cult status much in the same way that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did. What I didn't realize is that the book was published some 12 years after the author's loss in the battle against depression.

The title was derived from a quote by Jonathan Swift: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

As my reward for persevering, I'm going to read the next book in the Wheel of Time series: The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan