Chaucerian Girl presented a meme in which I had to participate because I love the chance to show off. (That's assuming that what I'm attempting to brag about here is truly bragworthy. It might be pathetic.)
Here's a list of books that presumably ought to be read by all who are or fancy themselves intellectuals. Anything bolded is something I've read; anything italicized is something I tried to read. At the bottom of the list I've added some essentials that were left off the list by what must have been unfortunate oversight.
_____________________________________
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights: I'm sorry, Emily Bronte and her characters' pretentious angst wearied me. And, what in the blazes is"wuthering" anyway?
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel: Admittedly a gripping piece of fiction, but by the end the extravagant gruesomeness turned me off.
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote: I think I might have read this as a younger person. All I remember is that he dies in the end. Doesn't he?
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary: This one was heartbreaking and absorbing, and the death scene at the end was viscerally disturbing.
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice: Over and over again, annotated, BBC, A&E, I don't care what version but please, no sequels.
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities: The best of times, the worst of times, a far far better thing; but watch out for that Madame DeFarge because she'll give you the Dickens.
The Brothers Karamazov: No, but I saw them in concert once. They tried to juggle a carton of eggs. It didn't end well.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies: I have enough reasons not to be able to fall asleep at night, thanks.
War and Peace
Vanity Fair: Becky Sharp is everything I could never be.
The Time Traveler’s Wife: Four years later and I'm still trying to figure out the timeline.
The Iliad
Emma: Rereading it right now, as a matter of fact.
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner: Annoying
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations: That dusty, venomous white spider, Miss Havisham
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha: Meh
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West: Okay, okay -- I get it: you've read all the Oz books, you know all the ins and outs of all major and minor characters. Did you have to use up so much paper beating me over the head with your knowledge?
The Canterbury Tales: A looong time ago, probably not long after they were first written.
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein: Much sadder than I'd anticipated it would be.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange: Really, who could slog through this book? It has a glossary, for heaven's sake!
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath: Many times, and always with an abundant supply of snackage at hand.
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise): No, but I did read all of Paradise Lost, aloud.
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Hellooo nightmares
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables: But I liked the play, and in fact the music is right now running through my head.
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything: This. Is an amazing book. It's recently been reissued with photos and graphics, which makes it eminently browsable. This book deserves a place on every nightstand in the country.
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved: I don't care what Oprah said. I made it all the way through this book and was like "huh?"
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita: Gave me the willies.
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit: I made it through the entire series and thought to myself: "why did I waste my time?"
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences: This is an extraordinary book. The first time I read it I had nightmares and couldn't touch it again for a very long time. I reread it last summer and now I absolutely revere the book and its author.
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
________________________________________
And mine:
The Phantom Tollbooth
To Kill a Mockingbird
Alice in Wonderland (annotated, if you can get it)
Candide
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Great Gatsby
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
How about you?