Comments | dlayiga: Gankeded from V.

dlayiga

Gankeded from V.

Oct 02, 2007 19:30

These are the top 200 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you have read, Italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and Strikethrough what you couldn't stand. The Numbers after each title represents the LT users who tagged that book.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime ( Read more... )

Comments 5

leopardfur October 3 2007, 05:53:02 UTC

I *knew* there was a Major Classic Author whose oeuvre I keep meaning to complete. Hardy. Thank you for the reminder.

I've read about half of those. Most I liked (if not loved), except for Joyce (tolerated), Dickens and Steinbeck (bleh), Atwood (puke) and that christforsaken Mists of Bloody Goddamned Avalon, which I would've burnt it if I'd had a fireplace, but threw away instead. That's the closest I've come in years to actually purposely abandoning a book unfinished.

Standout favorites that I can't believe everybody on the planet hasn't read: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Island of the Day Before, Tropic of Cancer, Pride and Predjudice, The Once and Future King, Gravity's Rainbow. Throw in The Moor's Last Sigh instead of Satanic Verses and something by Sir Walter Scott and that's pretty much my desert-island list.

errforce1 October 3 2007, 07:18:00 UTC

Hell's bells! I guess if you're looking forward to reading the godawful Thomas Hardy [one of his was among the succession of tiresome books that made 11th grade English such a chore], it stands to reason you'd have disliked Steinbeck and Atwood, who I, by contrast, liked quite well.

Different strokes, etc.

leopardfur October 3 2007, 18:26:55 UTC

I've only read Jude the Obscure thus far, and liked it at least enough to be interested in reading his others. Steinbeck always felt ponderous and excessively depressing, and Atwood's feminist dystopia schtick just bugs the crap out of me. Granted, I've only read Cat's Eye and Handmaid's Tale (for a class, not by choice), but if that's a representative sample, then ick.

errforce1 October 3 2007, 19:17:18 UTC

I had a girlfriend in college who was highly into Margaret Atwood. At the time, I read The Robber Bride, which I liked. In the past two years, I wound up reading The Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye just for the hell of it. I really liked Cat's Eye, though I found it a little terrifying given that a) we're oddball parents; b) our older daughter does not seem likely to be just one of the crowd, and I wonder how things will go for her. Hard to say about her little sister at this point.

ajax October 3 2007, 13:20:36 UTC

If you're at all a fan of fantasy, A Game of Thrones is the first in a remarkably well-written series by George R. R. Martin called "A Song of Ice and Fire".

It's still sword and sorcery, but the magic treads very lightly, and the characters are much more developed and human than your usual "dumb barbarian" and "sneaky thief" archetypes.

--- Ajax.