{"id":1213,"date":"2009-02-18T17:29:23","date_gmt":"2009-02-18T22:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2009-02-18T17:29:23","modified_gmt":"2009-02-18T22:29:23","slug":"literary-pursuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=1213","title":{"rendered":"literary pursuits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hillary<\/a> invited folks to discuss books by posting a survey result and a meme on her blog. It was about books. How could I resist?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
What Kind of Reader Are You?<\/b> <\/p>\n
Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm<\/b><\/div>\n
\n
 <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

You’re probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people’s grammatical mistakes make you insane.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Dedicated Reader<\/td>\n\n
\n
 <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Literate Good Citizen<\/td>\n\n
\n
 <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Book Snob<\/td>\n\n
\n
 <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Non-Reader<\/td>\n\n
\n
 <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Fad Reader<\/td>\n\n
\n
 <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
What Kind of Reader Are You?<\/b><\/a>
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

It’s true. They do.
\n
\nThen the meme, which is designed to make us readerly folks feel good about ourselves, because apparently the average American has only read six of the following:<\/p>\n

Here’s the challenge –
\nBold the books you have already read
\nItalicize the books you intend to read
\nNotes in parentheses next to note-worthy titles.<\/p>\n

1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen<\/strong>
\n2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien<\/strong>
\n3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte<\/strong>
\n4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling<\/strong>
\n5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee<\/strong>
\n6) The Bible<\/em>
\n7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte<\/strong>
\n8) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell<\/strong>
\n9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman<\/strong> (I still have the final volume to read, but I think we’ll count it anyways.)
\n10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens<\/strong>
\n11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott<\/strong>
\n12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy<\/em>
\n13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
\n14) Complete Works of Shakespeare<\/em> (I haven’t even read half. I’m trying to read one or two plays a year.)
\n15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier<\/strong>
\n16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien<\/strong>
\n17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (I own it, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever read it.)
\n18) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger<\/strong>
\n19) The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger<\/em>
\n20) Middlemarch by George Eliot<\/em>
\n21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell<\/strong>
\n22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/strong>
\n23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens<\/em>
\n24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
\n25) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams<\/strong>
\n26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh<\/em>
\n27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
\n28) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
\n29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll<\/strong>
\n30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame<\/strong>
\n31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
\n32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens<\/em>
\n33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis<\/strong> (Again, I haven’t read the final volume, but Amani tells me I shouldn’t bother.)
\n34) Emma by Jane Austen<\/strong>
\n35) Persuasion by Jane Austen<\/strong>
\n36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis<\/strong> (I’m not quite sure why this gets its own line when the whole series is included, but whatever…)
\n37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
\n38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
\n39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (This might be another book I own, although I’m not positive…)
\n40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne<\/strong>
\n41) Animal Farm by George Orwell<\/strong> (Although I haven’t read it since elementary school. Maybe I should re-read it?)
\n42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
\n43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez<\/em>
\n44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving<\/em>
\n45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins<\/em>
\n46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery<\/strong>
\n47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
\n48) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
\n49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
\n50) Atonement by Ian McEwan
\n51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel<\/em>
\n52) Dune by Frank Herbert
\n53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons<\/em>
\n54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen<\/strong>
\n55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
\n56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
\n57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens<\/strong>
\n58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
\n59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
\n60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez<\/em>
\n61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
\n62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov<\/em>
\n63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt<\/em> (Jenn<\/a> sent me a copy a few years ago. I should dig it out…)
\n64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold<\/em>
\n65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas<\/em>
\n66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac
\n67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
\n68) Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding<\/strong>
\n69) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
\n70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville (This would be the first work of literature that I started when it was assigned, but that I just could not<\/em> get through…)
\n71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens<\/strong>
\n72) Dracula by Bram Stoker<\/em>
\n73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett<\/strong>
\n74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson<\/em>
\n75) Ulysses by James Joyce<\/em>
\n76) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath<\/strong>
\n77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome<\/strong>
\n78) Germinal by Emile Zola
\n79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray<\/em>
\n80) Possession by AS Byatt<\/strong>
\n81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens<\/strong>
\n82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
\n83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker<\/strong>
\n84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
\n85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
\n86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
\n87) Charlotte’s Web by EB White<\/strong>
\n88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
\n89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<\/strong> (Well, some of them. Not all.)
\n90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
\n91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad<\/strong>
\n92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery<\/strong> (In English and in French)
\n93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
\n94) Watership Down by Richard Adams<\/strong>
\n95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Hated the main character. Put it down and haven’t felt compelled yet to change its status.)
\n96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
\n97) The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
\n98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare<\/strong>
\n99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl<\/strong>
\n100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo<\/em> (I love the musical. I keep thinking I might love the book too. But what if Eponine isn’t as lovable in the novel?)<\/p>\n

I’ve read 42 and have another two dozen on my TBR pile.<\/p>\n

First off, as with any survey of books you’ve read, it’s subjective. Interestingly, although this list is associated, according to Hillary’s source, to The Big Read, an American initiative, this list was clearly compiled by someone British. I don’t know that Birdsong<\/em>, for instance, made its way across the Atlantic. And while you can get Enid Blyton books and The Swallows and the Amazons<\/em> (a great series, btw) here in the U.S., they aren’t commonly read by American children in their formative years.<\/p>\n

Secondly, I agree with Hillary. It’s far more important to me that you read something you love than that you read Important Works of Literature. If it’s Stephen King or graphic novels or Mary Higgins Clark or auto repair manuals that you enjoy, read them and don’t worry about silly lists. (I considered calling it a canon, but no canon I know of would include Mitch Albom, regardless of how beloved his works are.) I love lots of books, so these lists are fun for me because they boot books I’ve been meaning to read back onto my radar screen.<\/p>\n

So my message is this: don’t let lists like this one distract you from just enjoying the sheer fun of being transported somewhere new through a book. But do remember that the reason certain books are still being read 50, 100, 400 years later is because they contain some kernel of universal truth in them about the human condition. Shakespeare might have used a lot of fancy words (and made up several turns of phrase as he went along, for that matter), but Romeo and Juliet<\/em> still comes down to the fact that a boy and a girl fall madly in love and their parents don’t want them to date. Doesn’t seem so irrelevant when you put it that way, does it?<\/p>\n

(Oh, and if you need a recommendation, let me know…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hillary invited folks to discuss books by posting a survey result and a meme on her blog. It was about books. How could I resist? What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm   You’re probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"\nliterary pursuits - sprite writes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=1213\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"literary pursuits - sprite writes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hillary invited folks to discuss books by posting a survey result and a meme on her blog. 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