I can’t remember where I copied this list. I really like book lists, don’t you?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series – JK Rowling
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
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller Probably not.
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
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 I’m not a Steinbeck fan.
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
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 – AA 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 Tried it, didn’t like it.
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 Maybe.
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 (why is this on the list?)
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 Life is too short.
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
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 The movie was enough.
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom I’m looking forward to meeting my Saviour face to face, and then I’ll let Him introduce me around. I’m not sure Mr. Albom knows much about it.
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
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole Tried it; maybe I’ll try again someday.
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

I couldn’t figure out how to underline the ones I loved, but since I loved almost all the ones I read, the ones in bold print, I suppose the underlining part was unnecessary.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson. Fantastically disturbing (in a good way) YA fiction. Read it if you like to think about the implications of technology and futuristic scenarios. Semicolon review here.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Semicolon review here.

Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Brown Bear Daughter and I read this book out loud together to get a head start on her literature class for next year.

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. I didn’t review this one, but it was just as good as Jayber Crow, if not better.

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. Semicolon review here.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. Semicolon review here.

Niner by Theresa Martin Golding. I think I picked this one up at the library because the main character, a girl, had nine fingers, one thumb missing, and one of my urchins was born with twelve toes. There’s a connection there somehow. It’s sort of sad YA fiction, where mom’s a runaway, dad’s wonderful and nurturing, the girl’s adopted, and the kids get into trouble while keeping secrets from the adults in their lives.

them by Joyce Carol Oates. Semicolon review here.

The Queen’s Man: A Medieval Mystery by Sharon Kay Penman. I had to go back to the middle ages, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard I, and Prince John, to get some relief from all the modern violence and angst. Still violent, but very little angst, and the violence was logical violence, if you know what I mean, not irrational.

By A Spider’s Thread by Laura Lippman. Not bad, but I’ve already forgotten the details.

The Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman. Semicolon review here.

You Know Where To Find Me by Rachel Cohn. Semicolon review here.

The Missing: Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Semicolon review here.

Abbeville by Jack Fuller. Semicolon review here.

100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson. Semicolon review here.

Blue Like Friday by Siobhan Parkinson. Semicolon review here.

When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin. Semicolon review here.

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry.

Messenger by Lois Lowry.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton. Semicolon review here.

The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish by Claudia Mills. A divorce book. I got mad at the parents, felt sorry for Amanda, and wanted the author to tell her characters, especially the dad, to grow up and take responsibility.

Don’t Talk To Me About the War by David A. Adler.

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury. A road trip turns into a mystery turns into a coming of age story about two buddies who choose different roads to adulthood.

Chasing Normal by Lisa Papademetriou. Semicolon review here.

Tennyson by Lesley M.M. Blume. Semicolon review here.

Old School by Tobias Wolff.

My Enemy’s Cradle by Sara Young. Semicolon review here.

Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom. Semicolon review here.

Best Book Read this Month: Old School by Tobias Wolff. I’l try to review it soon.

Second prize for the month: The Man Who Was Thursday, since I’m still thinking about it.

Several of the others were pretty good, too. It was a good reading month.

I am asking my children —and my husband— to read at least ten of the books on their individualized list before August 18, 2008. I also want each of them to memorize two poems this summer and present them for the family. I will take each family member who does so out to eat to the restaurant of his choice, and I will also buy a book for each one who finishes the challenge. This list is for Engineer Husband. It’s my sneaky way of recommending books that I’d like for him to read and think he would enjoy.

Just in time for Father’s Day:

1. Romans from The Bible.

2. I Samuel from The Bible.

3. 1984 by George Orwell. Classic, futuristic fiction, in spite of the dated title, it’s also on Computer Guru Son’s Summer Reading List.

4. Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. Because Engineer Husband needs some adventure in his life.

5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. He’s been planning to read this one since the kids became fanatics several years ago. I refuse to read the series out of pure perversity.

6. The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios.

7. E=Mc Squared by David Bodanis.

8. Ask Me Anything by J. Budziszewski. Professor Theophilus gives provocative answers to college students’ questions. The book is written by a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. It’s also on Computer Guru Son’s Summer Reading List.

9. The Periodic Table: Elements with Style by Adrian Dingle. For sixty-four of the elements, each has its own ‘home-page’ in this introduction to the periodic table. Also on Karate Kid’s Summer Reading List, perhaps the two of them should enjoy an element together every evening.

10. How Math Explains the World: A Guide to the Power of Numbers, from Car Repair to Modern Physics by James D. Stein. I chose this one not because I’ve read it or intend to do so, but because it sounds like something Engineer Husband would like.

The Telegraph lists their 110 Best Books: The Perfect Library.

I’m a sucker for booklists.

Josh Sowin at Fire and Knowledge links to his own list of favorites in the following categories: Literature, Reading/Literary Criticism, Biography and Autobiograpy, Cultural Studies, Art and Aesthetics, Food and Agriculture, Science and History, Economics, Finances, Writing, Education, Humor and Satire, Marketing, Web Design, Music, and Other. I’m impressed that he’s actually read good (recommended) books in all these categories. I’m a little weak on the marketing, food and agriculture, and web design myself.

The Telegraph also lists 50 “Cult Books”. I remember jumping on a few of these bandwagons: Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, Dune by Frank Herbert . . . Ahhh, yes, those were the days, my friend.

What is a cult book? We tried and failed to arrive at a definition: books often found in the pockets of murderers; books that you take very seriously when you are 17; books whose readers can be identified to all with the formula “ whacko”; books our children just won’t get…

Three manly guys make a list of The Essential Man’s Library: 100 Must-Read Books. Far be it from me, being of the female persuasion, to even comment on their list, except to say that it looks like a good start on a library for persons of either gender.

Have you seen any good booklists lately?