Monday, September 7, 2009

Books I've Read on This Trip

I first started this account sometime in August/September 2009 with the hope of having read the "Best 100 Books of All Time" before finishing my trip. The idea was that I'd finally read all those novels I was supposed to have studied in undergrad- now that I had time. It didn't happen. Below is a record of the books I DID manage to complete. Most of them are on the list, but many of them are not. One thing that unites them is that they ALL affected the outcome of my trip in some way, and they ALL enriched my experiences (yeah, even the "Twilight" books. Don't judge me) in one manner or another. I also attempted to finish Vanity Fair, but it wasn't working out and I decided to stop and spend the rest of my leisure time musing instead. I'm ambitious- not impervious to boredom.

1. Hemingway's Short Stories - Hemingway
2. 1984 - Orwell
3. The World According to Garp - Irving
4. Emma - Austen
5. Around the World in 80 Days - Verne
6. Middlesex - Eugenides
7. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Hosseini
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Kesey
9. A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Beah
10. The Stranger - Camus
11. Gulliver's Travels - Swift
12. There is no Me Without You - Greene
13. Hamlet - Shakespeare
14. Tender is the Night - Fitzgerald
15. I'm OK, You're OK - Harris
16. Robinson Crusoe - DeFoe
17. The Kite Runner - Hosseini
18. Flowers for Algernon - Keyes
19. The Color Purple - Walker
20. Shantaram - Roberts
21. The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Doyle
22. Garden of Eden - Hemingway
23. Oliver Twist - Dickens
24. Frankenstein - Shelley
25. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Murakami
26. Life of Pi - Martel
27. Marching Powder - Young
28. The Hobbit - Tolkien
29. Matilda - Dahl
30. Burmese Days - Orwell
31. Eclipse - Meyers
32. Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
33. Motorcycle Diaries - Guevara
34. Breaking Dawn - Meyers
35. Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
36. Dune - Herbert
37. Jazz - Morrison
38. Love in the Time of Cholera - Marquez
39. A Widow for One Year - Irving
40. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde
41. The Bell Jar - Plath
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 8, 2009 at 9:51 AM

    If you liked "Garp", you should really read "A Prayer for Owen Meaney". It's even better and it's one of the most moving books I've ever read.

    BTW, I thought you liked Steinbeck? I'm pretty sure everyone I know who likes reading also likes Steinbeck...except for me. I always get the weirdest looks for not liking that bag of wind.

    When are you going to get to some Vonnegut? I've pretty much only read one Vonnegut book that wasn't full on awesome ("Breakfast of Champions") and even that was still good.

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  2. SamonellaSeptember 13, 2009 at 6:53 AM

    Yeah... Grapes of Wrath made me want to strangle children. It's not just that it was awful, but that it was so celebrated, and no one would hear about how awful it really was. Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, and Cannery Row were... OK. I at least didn't want to vomit while reading those.

    I've read Slaughterhouse Five and a bit of Hocus Pocus. I reckon I'll get around to reading some more in the future.

    By the way, I WAS in DC. I think you should be impressed by my frantic sightseeing skillz... the Washington Monument, White House, and Lincoln Memorial in 2 hours, fool!

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