Where does the BBC get the info for this statistic anyway?
The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds...
Edit: After thinking about it, I've added an "O" for ones that I own and haven't gotten to reading yet. And a "~" for ones I intend to pick up when I see them and have the means.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - X
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -
6. The Bible – X
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - ~
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - ~
Total: 2
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - X
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - ~
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot-
Total so far: 4
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - ~
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - X
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -
Total so far: 6
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - X
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis – X
34. Emma - Jane Austen -
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ~
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - X
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - ~
Total so far: 10
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell -
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - O
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving -
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan -
Total so far: 11
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
52. Dune - Frank Herbert - O
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
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 - O
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez-
Total so far: 11
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - ~
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - O
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 - X
Total so far: 12
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - O
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker - [will never read, but I tried]
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75. Ulysses - James Joyce -
76. The Inferno - Dante - ~
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78. Germinal - Emile Zola -
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80. Possession - AS Byatt -
Total so far: 13
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 - X
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
Total so far: 14
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - X
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 - X
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo-
Total: 18
. . . more than six? I've read other books by a lot of the authors on here as well, though not necessarily the ones listed.
Apathy and Other Small Victories -- Paul Neilan
Apathy and Other Small Victories
ISBN-10: 0312352190
ISBN-13: 978-0312352196
Rating:
This book was recommended to me a bit hesitantly by a friend. Hesitantly because my taste is known to be at times almost random and she wasn't sure the type of humor in the book would quite fit to me. I have since decided the best way to describe the humor is something along the lines of calling it "a book narrated by the village idiot."
I liked it, though.
It's really sort of difficult to describe the plot, because it's a book where things aren't always as they seem. I think instead it's more fruitful to describe the main character and let you traverse the plot line on your own. And so I shall attempt to try.
Shane. A man who is as brilliant as he is dumb, perhaps a clear illustration of just how close genius and stupidity can really come. Cynical, witty, and good at running from both the truth and responsibility. His main defining trait is his apathy, or so he might say, personally I think his tendency to run from things is. And the entire book is spent running, though Shane never seems to know what he is running from exactly at any point. The force of paranoia is strong in this one, maybe some other cocktail of delusions besides.
The cast is fleshed out by a pair of asshole police detectives, an abusive "girlfriend," his dentist's deaf and smartass assistant, a landlord and fellow renters that seem handpicked from a bad Hollywood movie, and a myraid of other small characters whom Shane always picks the most colorful points to embellish on.
Shane is really good at embellishment. And being witty about it. Dramatic too.
The sort of humor the book is written in is that sharp wit, can cut like a knife if you take it too seriously. The characters are bizarrely ridiculous, and the writing style is like the rambling of a babbler. Not quite stream-of-consciousness, more like a person who says everything and nothing at all. Mixed with a bit of the nature of a compulsive liar. It's interesting, really ties the cast of unlikely characters and the book itself together. Shane's narrative makes it larger than life, dramatic, colorful--and then the reality behind things peaks through every once in awhile, just enough to keep you grounded and from flying to far off into his paranoid delusions.
I personally found the contrast intriguing. But I like that sort of thing. The humor can be a bit stupid at times, but even a reader who prefers things on the serious side (me) was able to enjoy it. So you might consider giving it a try :3.