Top 100 Books

I've stolen this list from my friend Suzanne's blog. It's a list of the Top 100 books of all time, as voted by regular folks. I've highlighted it in two ways - the books I read before I graduated from college, versus the books I've read since then.

The pre-college graduation books are highlighted in blue. The post-college ones, in red.

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I finally read this last year, and thought it was amazing. Thanks to Sister Nancy Hopkins for the push.)
6. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
9. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
10. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
11. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
13. Ulysses by James Joyce
14. Animal Farm by George Orwell
15. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
16. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
17. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
18. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
19. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
20. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
21. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
22. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
23. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
24. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
25. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
26. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
27. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
28. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
29. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
30. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
31. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
32. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
34. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
35. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
36. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
37. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
38. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
39. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
40. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
41. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
42. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
43. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
44. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
45. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
46. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
47. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
48. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
49. The Stand by Stephen King
50. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
51. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
52. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
53. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
54. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
55. Watership Down by Richard Adams
56. Dracula by Bram Stoker
57. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
58. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
59. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
60. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
61. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
62. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
63. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
64. Dune by Frank Herbert
65. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (This is, officially, my favorite book of all time. I'm thrilled that it made the list.)
66. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
67. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
68. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
69. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
70. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
71. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
72. The Trial by Franz Kafka
73. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
74. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
75. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
76. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
78. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
79. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
80. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
81. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
82. The Stranger by Albert Camus
83. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
84. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
85. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston LeRoux
86. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
87. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
88. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
89. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. Persuasion by Jane Austen
91. Light in August by William Faulkner
92. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
93. Call of the Wild by Jack London
94. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
95. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
96. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
97. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
98. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
99. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
100. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner


So, I've read 35 of them. About 1/3 of the list. And of that 35, only 12 of them, in the last 20 years. Suzanne rather jokingly suggested an online Top 100 book group. We could all read one each month, and then check in with one another about what we think. I'm half-convinced that it's a great idea. Anybody out there game for the idea?

book pushing

I've been doing a great deal of reading, what else do you do in the winter in the UP.  And actually, some of what I've "read" I've listened to in the car.  For months after Jim died, I didn't have the concentration for audio books; all I could manage was some nice, soothing folk music.  Or loud, pounding rock.  But not a plot of any kind.  

But, thankfully, that's changed.  So, let me make three very different recommendations for your reading pleasure.

(1) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  Set in Afghanistan, this novel spans several generations, and begins sometime in the late 1960s, and ends in the present day.  The writing is clear and concise, the story is gripping, and the characters will grab your heart and break it a few times.  I've not read The Kite Runner, which is Hosseini's first novel (or, perhaps his first one released here?), but it's not on my list.  I listened to this one with a sense of real foreboding.  Tragedy is around every corner in this book, but Hosseini creates such empathy that I really fell in love with the women in his novel.  Additionally, the novel taught me much about Afghanistan.  I know there is a danger about learning about contemporary politics from a novel, but if the novel reflects the contemporary situation in any way, then it's no wonder that the situation there is such a mess.  And, it's no wonder that they have such hatred for Americans.  Read this novel, friends.

(2) Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.  This novel's been around a while, having been written nearly 20 years ago, though it's getting big press, since Mr. Follett finally released the sequel folks have apparently been begging him to write for years.  I picked it up about a month ago at the airport, when I finished all my work, unexpectedly, and it looked like the least grim in a series of bad airport newsstand choices.  I was so wrong.  It's wonderful.  Follett has written a novel about 12th century England, and the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge.  It's by turns funny, gripping, and suspenseful.  It's a real commitment, weighing in at nearly 1000 pages, but if you like historical fiction, this one is good, and well written.  And while I am no British historian, it rings true.  It's a real treat.  I don't get to sit and read for pleasure much, and I resent the time I'm away from this one.

(3) Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. This book is some odd combination of travelogue memoir confessional spiritual guide, written by a woman who's about my age.  Liz sets out to spend a year in pursuit of pleasure, God and balance, having survived a brutal divorce followed immediately by another broken heart.  She realizes that she must get her life in order.  So she goes first to Italy to learn Italian (something she has always wanted to do, simply because she finds the language beautiful).  Next she heads to the ashram of her guru in India.  Finally, she goes to Indonesia, where several years previously, she encountered an Indonesian medicine man who tells her to come back sometime and visit him.  

Liz Gilbert reads the audio version herself, which is great, because she's got an ear for accents, and her ability to relay conversations with Richard from Texas or any number of the folks she encounters is worth the price of admission on the audio book.  But the book is worth a read, or a listen, for more than this.  The questions that she raises about life and love, and the energy that she devotes to her spiritual practice put me to shame.  This woman meditates for hours every day.  And she's funny.  Gut splittingly funny.   And poignant.  There were times when I was crying so hard that I might have been dangerous, as I was driving down the road.  There were also times when she was a bit self-absorbed.  But hell, it was her book, so I think she gets the right.  I actually ordered the book tonight.  Because I liked it so much, after listening to it, that I want to read it.  I want to hold it in my hands, and underline things.  I want to write quotes down.

And, I certainly want to encourage some of the people I love to read the book.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Run, do not walk to your nearest bookstore to pick this one up. 

Joan Didion has been a legend to me, for about 16 years.  At the bookstore, when we hired new staff, we always gave a book quiz.  It separated the run of the mill readers from the literati.  And there were always a few titles on the list that I never expected anyone to know.  Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion was one of them.  

Her new book (relatively - and certainly new to me) tells the story of the year that begin in late December 2003, and ends one year later.  It starts the night her husband, John Gregory Dunne dies of a heart attack, while having dinner.  Simultaneously, their only daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, just a month younger than I, is struggling for her life.  One health crisis after another consumes her.

And Didion lays it all bare.  She shares the grief.  The magical thinking (like not giving away John's shoes, as he'll need them when he comes back).  The heartache of having to tell her daughter three different times that her father is dead.  (She was in a coma when he died, then she relapsed and forgot, then she had a brain hemorrhage, and lost the information again).

As I continue to struggle with my own grief over Jim's death, and I as I watch the diocese struggle with it's grief, this book spoke to me.  

What are you reading?

This post was totally inspired by Suzanne and I thought it might give you a glimpse of what I'm up to these days. Most of my reading is professional, but I read some fic on the internet, so I am getting some relaxing reading in somewhere.

1. God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by John Dominic Crossan. A gift from Sare, this one has been on my shelf for months, but I finally picked it up as preparation for a retreat I'm co-leading at the end of the month. Crossan provided a history of the intersection between the Roman empire, the homeland Jews of Jesus' time, and the early church. He undertakes this examination (as I understand it) in order to explore how the contemporary US Govt. acts like an empire (and has for 150 years) and what the implications are for Christian Americans. I think I'm going to love it - the centrality of justice and the need for Christians to work to bring about God's justice and God's kingdom are passions for me.

2. Opening the Prayerbook by Jeffry Lee. Lee, writing this volume as part of the New Church's Teaching Series, examines the history and context of the prayerbook and the theologies that contributed to the 1979 (most recent) Book of Common Prayer. He places many of the prayerbook services in context. I'm reading this one with the Ministry Support Team at the Church of the Holy Innocents in Little Lake.

3. Preaching What We Practice: Proclamation and Moral Discernment by David Schlafer and Timothy F. Sedgwick. I began this book on vacation, before I headed out to spend a week with Tim (the author) and his wife Martha. He'd given it to me last spring (BJD - Before Jim Died) and I didn't read much in those first few months. I wanted to be able to talk about it with him. The book is well-written and makes a strong case for preachers to preach moral discernment, in order to help those in the pews make sense of (and take action regarding) much of what is happening in the US today.

4. The Message: Daily Reading Bible and The Message//Remix by Eugene Peterson. Having not completed absolutely every reading assignment in seminary (I know, you're shocked) I thought it might be time to read the bible again. I got a cool audio version for my iPod, which breaks the bible up into manageable daily reading chunks (though I tend to listen to several at a time). The Message is a contemporary translation by a guy named Eugene Peterson. I'm really enjoying it so far - though I'm only in Genesis....

5. LifeCycles by the LifeCycles Team (of which I am a member, now!). LifeCycles is the adult formation program in the Diocese of Northern Michigan. Two groups I work with are presently working with it. The Ironwood Ministry Support Team began Cycle I, Unit 1 last week, and the Iron River Ministry Support Team returned to LifeCycles after a multi-year hiatus. They are working on Cycle I, Unit 3.

6. Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer by J. Philip Newell. I'm not so much reading this one as using it for morning prayer (at least I am when I actually find time for morning prayer - true confessions, here!).

7. Blogs. Back BJD, I read blogs really regularly. Not random ones, though that can be fun. But mostly, with a couple of exceptions, the blogs of people I know and love, who live someplace other than here. It's been a way to keep up. To know what they're thinking about and what they're up to. It's one of the routines that simply vanished in the weeks after Jim died. But I'm sort of regaining my equillibrium, and I'm back to blogs. I don't read them every day, but I do try to check in a few times per week. For a list of the blogs I read, see the right sidebar of this blog. I don't know Fr. Jake and I don't know the WTFWJD woman (though I sure wish I did, she's fun) but all the other folks are people I love and miss.

I LOVE this book

My dear friend Suzanne can always be counted on to find the coolest internet quizzes. I love this quiz, as it speaks to my book-selling and book-loving soul. And how cool is the result? I LOVED Watership Down when I was a tween. I read it several times, and found it captivating. I'm a little nervous about the talking to rabbits part, but I guess I'll go with it.

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd
be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.