Meme: My Top 100 Books

[rispacooper]

I totally gakked this idea from perverse_idyll and pir8fancier, but I'm avoiding work today. They suggested this after reading the BBC's "Big Read" meme listing the top 100 bestselling novels and wanting to see who had read what.

So this is my top 100 books/stories/poems/plays, based on how many times I've reread them or just how much I feel they've influenced me, even if I only read them once. They are in no special order, and as I'm doing this, I'm noticing how much I veer toward fantasy. Also, there's almost no new or modern fiction at all. Oops.

This was HARD by the way. All my books are still packed away from the move. I'm going on memory here, dammit.



1.Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Salinger (insane, brilliant, and different every time you read it, high school angst aside)
2.Crime and Punishment- Dostoyevsky (Talk about sin and redemption and beauty and symbolism...)
3.Slaughterhouse Five- Kurt Vonnegut (fucked up and awesome)
4.Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters!- J.D. Salinger (the structure is close to perfection)
5.Hamlet- Shakespeare (oh all the lovely pain)
6.Much Ado About Nothing- Shakespeare (my ideal couple to this day)
7.Twelfth Night (or What You Will)- Shakespeare (stupid ending, sexy as hell anyway)
8.Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen (Darcy, the prototype of all romance heroes)
9.The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammett (hardboiled crime fiction, core of beauty under it all)
10.Farewell, My Lovely- Raymond Chandler (detective fiction, and pure poetry)
11.Casino Royale- Ian Fleming (The first Bond novel...not what you think it's going to be at *all*)
12.The Outlaws of Sherwood- Robin Mckinley (I think I still want to be her, understated and quiet and strong and intelligent, for all that she writes for young girls)
13.Beauty- Robin McKinley (perfect, at least until the "golden arms" moment)
14.The Blue Sword- Robin McKinley (you can tell what I read growing up)
15.The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe (especially, the Cask of Amontillado for awesomeness, and the Raven for that *rhythm*)
16.The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
17. Bullfinch's Mythology- (obsessed with Greek myths when I was younger)
18. Jackaroo/On Fortune's Wheel-Cynthia Voigt (more Young Adult fiction)
19. The Bible- (yeah I know, but I was raised Catholic, and the influence is there. But Song of Solomon...hot. So's all that vengeance and piercing flesh talk).
20. The Song of the Lioness- Tamora Pierce (4 books I *devoured* at 13...and then promptly got pissed off by the rest of her writing)
21. Through the Looking-Glass (and What Alice Found There)/Alice in Wonderland-Lewis Carroll
22. Peter Pan- JM Barrie
23. East of Eden- John Steinbeck (the first half is on the boring side, the second half is pure evil and pain and love and just general goodness)
24. The Painted Bird- Jerzy Kosinsky (FUCKED UP, scarring, real and horrid)
25. Around the World in 80 Days- Jules Verne
26. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- Mark Twain (adorable, and also I just wanted some Huck/Tom)
27. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain
28. Leaves of Grass- Walt Whitman (poems I do not actively avoid and instead *seek out*)
29. Emily Dickenson (well her poems anyway. they're...strong and fragile at the same time)
30. The Vorkosigan Saga- Lois McMaster Bujold (she shows you how to write action right, and incidentally created one of the most original and challenging characters Ever)
31. Ping!- Speranza (DS fanfiction. It's basically porn. It's basically simple. But it gets me every time, because she works simple and she works it WELL).
32. The Works of Wilfred Owen- Wilfred Owen (a War Poet, real then and now)
33. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock- T.S. Eliot (so very...tangled)
34. The Wheel of Time- Robert Jordan (I am still in love with the first 6 books...and Matrim Cauthon as a character)
35. A Room With A View- E.M Forster
36. Anne of Green Gables- L.M. Montgomery (kindred spirits! carrots!)
37. Portrait of A Lady- Henry James (tragic)
38. We Have Always Lived in the Castle- Shirley Jackson
39. The Haunting of Hill House- Shirley Jackson (haunting, in every sense)
40. The Crucible- Arthur Miller
41. Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte (Rochester, the other romance hero prototype)
42. A Wrinkle in Time- Madeleine L'engle
43. Anything Dr. Seuss (never ever take yourself too seriously as a writer, because Dr. Seuss has probably already told the story and told it simpler, and better).
44. The Secret Garden- Frances Hodgsen Burnett
45. The Little Princess- Frances Hodgsen Burnett (my taste is forever trapped in childhood, heh)
46. An Ideal Husband- Oscar Wilde (the king of putting himself into his stories, and making you like him for it anyway)
47. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People- Lenny Bruce
48. The Odyssey- Homer (absolute poetry, and a lot more crafty than suffering high school students think it is. The Iliad is probably better, story-wise, but I reference the Odyssey a lot more in my own stuff)
49. Grimm's Fairy Tales
50. Little Women- Louisa May Alcott (But um...I'm sorry, Jo and some professor guy? Not buying it).
51. Dracula- Bram Stoker (see what it made me do to Ray?)
52. The Lady in the Lake- Raymond Chandler (Phillip Marlowe is wearing down. Breaking.)
53. Bridget Jones' Diary- Helen Fielding (no it's not perfect or especially empowering. But her voice is real and her problems just normal enough)
54. Maurice- E.M. Forster
55. The Last of the Mohicans- William Fennimore Cooper
56. Scaramouche- Rafael Sabatini (pure adventure)
57. Captain Blood- Rafael Sabatini
58. The Stories of O. Henry
59. Ivanhoe- Sir Walter Scott (kind of like a detective novel, in a really, really strange way that only makes sense to me)
60. John Donne:Poetry (not the religious crap, the sexy stuff. mmm)
61. Faustus- Christopher Marlowe
62. The Three Musketeers- Alexandre Dumas
63. The Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
64. A Tale of Two Cities- Charles Dickens (*hated* Dickens in high school. But this story strangely makes me cry, even if he did need an editor).
65. 1001 Arabian Nights
66. The Scarlet Letter- Nathanial Hawthorne (kiss my ass, you Puritan bitches)
67. Howl- Allen Ginsburg (something so primitive about it)
68. Ordinary People- Judith Guest
69. The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck (it's the simple stories that get you)
70. The Hellsing Manga- Kouta Hirano (Cool beyond words. Fucked up, and you love them for it. Villains as Heroes. Yesssss).
71. Les Miserables- Victor Hugo (but only for wanting the Valjean/Javert slash, even at 15)
72. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn- Betty Smith
73. Where the Sidewalk Ends- Shel Silverstein
74. Goblin Market- Christine Rosetti (what the fuck is this poem about other than sexy sexy sisters love?)
75. Jacob Have I Loved- Katherine Paterson
76. A Doll's House- Ibsen (what I find interesting about this play is the sheer frustration that comes through, even though it was written by a man)
77. The Metamorphoses- Ovid
78. The Day of the Locust/Miss Lonelyhearts-Nathaniel West (just kill yourself now)
79. A Streetcar Named Desire- Tennessee Williams
80. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof- Tennessee Williams (nobody does simmering sexuality like Tennessee)
81. In Cold Blood- Truman Capote (in one reading you can see why it destroyed him)
82. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?- Edward Albee (oh. my. god.)
83. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead- Tom Stoppard (No way will I ever be this clever)
84. Cien Sonetos De Amor- Pablo Neruda (*sigh*)
85. The Man in the Iron Mask- Alexandre Dumas
86. The Taming of the Shrew- Shakespeare (hard to justify liking in today's world...maybe it's the way it always makes me hope for more).
87. Goldfinger- Ian Fleming (Bond novels are never what you expect)
88. A Midsummer Night's Dream- Shakespeare (Puck, and also, some really romantic, sexy moments, despite the ridiculousness of it all)
89. Like Water for Chocolate- Laura Esquivel (my introduction to magical realism, and what an introduction)
90. Holes- Louis Sachar
91. Tales of the City- Armistead Maupin
92. The Once and Future King- T.H. White
93. X-men/The Uncanny X-men/Excalibur- Marvel Comics (used to collect them for years, still have them, and there's no denying their effect on my freaky brain)
94. Journey to the Center of the Earth- Jules Verne (utterly ridiculous, but then you think...he wrote this *when*? Hard to deny that level of imagination).
95. The Martian Chronicles- Ray Bradbury
96. To Kill A Mockingbird- Harper Lee
97. The Trial- Kafka (still frightening as fuck)
98. Eight Cousins/Rose in Bloom- Louisa May Alcott
99. The Hot Country- Gemma Files (fanfiction for Gangs of New York, but one of those stories that makes you realize what fanfiction is capable of, aside from just porn, though that's lovely too).
100. Fer-De-Lance- Rex Stout (actually any Nero Wolfe mystery. All about the food and the beer and the ties and the sexism. Awesome).



All making me realize that I need to read Proust, Conrad, Heller, and Joyce. Really. But Ayn Rand can suck my ass. I just need to read more in general. I feel very much like the Marquis in "Quills". You write more than you read? The mark of a true amateur. :)

Comments

[senor-coconut-1.livejournal.com]

Oh, then, you have to check it out. One chapter from one of the books (won't say which) was the first to make me a little teary (Yeah, I'll just come out and say that HP7 made me bawl like a baby, but that stays right here, OK?).

There are some great characters (the supporting cast is absolutely daffy and a little mad, but just wonderful) and you won't get the jokes unless you are a reader.