100 Best Books

A booklist from the Deputy Headmistress. As she did, I've bolded the ones I've read, italicized the ones I want to read, left alone the ones I don't have an opinion on and put a comment after those I really liked or disliked.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - I can't remember if I've actually read this one all of the way through
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - not planning to read it either
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens I've read it once and I'm reading it to my older children right now
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - I much prefer Far From the Madding Crowd
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - I've read and/or seen an assortment but not all of them.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - I might have read this but can't remember so it doesn't count.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - heard enough about the steamy bits to decide I wasn't going to read it.
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 - I may have tried this once but obviously didn't get far
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - see Crime & Punishment
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 This was for the library book club last year. I found it to be so sad and tragic, especially since the main character didn't seem to realize how sad and tragic it really was
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - not planning to either
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - I think I read the first 5 pages and off it went to the library. I thought it was boring.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving Why is this one considered to be such a classic? I found it tawdry and sad.
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - fun read!
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - and, of course, all the books in the series. Anne of Ingleside is my favourite.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - no thank you
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding Junior High - I'm not asking my kids to read it!
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - again for the library book club. Ick.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - another one that seems to be recommended as a classic that I didn't get
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 - very interesting and different but at least not as icky as some.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - no, thank you
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - highschool. I think I liked his writing or at least the word pictures.
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov :P
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold :p
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 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
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 Alborn
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
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 struggled through this in highschool and eventually finished it. I started it again about 3 or 4 years ago and couldn't get through all the political meanderings. One of these days, I'll read it again and skip those parts!

I think this is a funny list because it's got such a variety of books on it. I guess everyone has a chance at it, anyway.

What about you?

A Fantasy Book Meme

I got this from the Deputy Headmistress, who in turn got it from someone else, who ...

Mark the selections you have read in bold. If you liked it, add a star [*] in front of the title, if you didn't, give it a minus [-]. Then, put the total number of books you've read in the subject line.

The Chronicles of Prydain - Alexander, Lloyd
Carrie's War - Bawden, Nina
Death of a Ghost - Butler, Charles
Ender's Game - Card, Orson Scott I'm actually just finishing this today- I haven't decided yet if I like it
Summerland - Chabon, Michael
King of Shadows - Cooper, Susan
- The Dark is Rising sequence - Cooper, Susan - (I didn't like any of these books.) Stonestruck - Cresswell, Helen
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Dahl, Roald (I can't actually say when I read this but I'm sure I must have in elementary school. I remember reading James & the Giant Peach so I suspect I read this one too)
Matilda - Dahl, Roald
Ingo - Dunmore, Helen
The Sea of Trolls - Farmer, Nancy
Madame Doubtfire - Fine, Anne
Corbenic - Fisher, Catherine
***Inkheart - Funke, Cornelia (Funke is a wonderful writer. We really enjoyed the sequel to this, and another one as well - Dragon Rider.)
*The Thief Lord - Funke, Cornelia
The Owl Service - Garner, Alan
Happy Kid! - Gauthier, Gail
Stormbreaker - Horowitz, Anthony
Whale Rider - Ihimaera, Witi
Finn Family Moomintroll - Jansson, Tove
Fire and Hemlock - Jones, Diana Wynne (I have read another one by Jones and plan to start working through the series.)
* The Phantom Tollbooth - Juster, Norton
* The Sheep Pig - King Smith, Dick
Stig of the Dump - King, Clive
-A Wizard of Earthsea - Le Guin, Ursula (Again, read it in highschool, remember not liking it and haven't picked up a title by her since)
**The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - Lewis, C S (And the whole Narnia series. I think Prince Caspian is my favourite)
The House at Norham Gardens - Lively, Penelope
Goodnight Mister Tom - Magorian, Michelle
The Changeover - Mahy, Margaret
The Stones are Hatching - McCaughrean, Geraldine
The White Darkness - McCaughrean, Geraldine
*Beauty - McKinley, Robin (again, a great writer. I really like her other series as well - The Blue Sword? is the title, I think)
Sabriel - Nix, Garth
* The Borrowers - Norton, Mary
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - O'Brien, Robert
Z for Zachariah - O'Brien, Robert
A Dog So Small - Pearce, Philippa
Life As We Knew It - Pfeffer, Susan Beth
A Hat Full of Sky - Pratchett, Terry
His Dark Materials sequence - Pullman, Philip (haven't read them but have heard enough negatives about them to have no desire to start)
How I Live Now - Rosoff, Meg
*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Rowling, J K (and the rest of the series!)
* Holes - Sachar, Louis
The Foreshadowing - Sedgwick, Marcus
Marianne Dreams - Storr, Catherine
When the Siren Wailed - Streatfield, Noel
The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Stroud, Jonathan (this series is a little darker than others. I would recommend it but with a few caveats)
* The Hobbit - Tolkien, J R R (which serves as an introduction to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I prefer to The Hobbit).
* Charlotte's Web - White, E B

The nice thing about this list is not what I have already read but what I haven't read. My kids are always on the lookout for new fantasy and this gives us a place to start.

Books

Last week, I read a book that I really enjoyed, even though the title is somewhat unfortunate. It is To Hell with All That by Caitlin Flanagan. I'll review it in a moment but humour me with a little sidetrack.

Rebecca was asking for some booklists last week. As I was reading the Flanagan book, it made me think of other books about women's issues, most of them written from a non-Christian perspective, that critique what we now see to be the results of the feminist movement. I decided to make a list of these books I've read. I hope that some of my readers will enjoy this list.

The first one is the Flanagan book. I enjoyed reading this. It struck me as more of a collection of essays than a cohesive book. Because she is a journalist, I wondered if perhaps she had written the essays for magazines and then put them together into a book. The final essay does draw them all together.

Because it is more of a series of essays, it is somewhat difficult to tell what her perspective is. There were some seeming contradictions. She seems to advocate being a stay-at-home mom, but had a nanny for the first 3 years of her twins' lives. She recognizes the dangers of our children running our lives through their constant activities but still puts her own children in many different activities. Perhaps the subtitle of the book says it all: "Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife".

Flanagan has a gift for just the right word or phrase. I laughed out loud many times throughout the book and appreciate her wit. I would recommend this book as a way to discuss the issues that do face many women today. In fact, I think I might even recommend it for our local library book club - it should certainly lead to some interesting discussion!

Danielle Crittenden is one of my favourite authors. I wish she would write more books! Amanda brightathome (use the @ sign for "at" if you are looking it up) (2003) is a novel about a woman who ends up making some different choices about her life and is a commentary on how feminism has failed our society. What was most interesting, and sad, about the book, is how the main character reflects on what her mother knew and didn't teach her.

What Our Mothers didn't Tell Us: why Happiness Eludes the modern woman (1999) is the non-fiction version of Amanda bright@home. I thought that Crittenden identified very accurately the problems with feminism and what the feminist movement has led to. Considering that she is a non-Christian writer (as far as I know), she is devastatingly accurate about both the problems and comes close to the solution, albeit without the Christian perspective. I wish that more Christian women would read books like this and recognize how they have fallen into the world's trap.

I Don't Know How She Does it is another novel about the dilemma of the working mother. As with many of these books, there is still an uncertainty about what the outcome of choosing something different for a wife and mother will be. This one, from what I remember, is more edgy and may contain language that not everyone will be comfortable with.

Return to Modesty by Wendy Shalit was a provocative read. It's interesting to me that when I just entered the word "modesty" in the library catalogue search, there were only 6 entries that would contain that word. I'm not sure if it means anything but I think it's interesting that it's not even a word used very often in book titles. I seem to recall that Shalit is a Jewish writer and she examines the pressure put on young women not only to be immodest but to behave in ways that are definitely not modest. She considers the "3rd Wave" of feminism and how it is impacting the young women of this generation, especially those at colleges and universities.

Real Sex: the Naked Truth about Chastity by Lauren Winner is in a slightly different category but I think is worthwhile reading for Christian women (and men) who want to consider different perspectives about sexual matters. Although this book is not blatantly Christian, (I believe there is some reference to Christianity), it is a call to thinking through what sex should really mean and reasons to say no.

I think there were others I have read over the years but I'll have to look back over my very sketchy book journal and see if I can find some other titles. Readers are welcome to comment!