literature

literature
Ganked from mike
01.27.09 | Permalink | Comment?

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they’ve printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. The Complete Works of Shakespeare (not everything but a bunch? does that count?)
16. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. A Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. The Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney– John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LMMontgomery
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
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
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
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – A.S. Byatt
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 – E.B. White
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
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince (Le Petit 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
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So 22 books? I guess I’m not the average person…
games, literature
Masters of Doom/Rules of Play
04.22.08 | Permalink | Comment?

I just downloaded Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture on my Kindle…I know buddies of mine at JAMDAT Mobile were reading it back in the day and I never got a chance to check it out. It’s a biography on the two Johns…Romero and Carmack.

Honestly, based on the info I’ve heard from people who know him, I really think Romero got a raw deal. I just started reading the book, but so far, i feel kinda sorry for the guy. He seems like a really decent guy, to tell the truth, and I think he has MORE than paid his dues. Anyway, i’ll let ya know what I think.

I’ve got another “real” book waiting on my shelf, called Rules of Play, that I want to check out, also based on my buddy Scott’s recommendation. But that’ll have to wait.
literature, tv
Kindle’s here
04.20.08 | Permalink | Comment?

I’ve been reading the kindle off an on the last couple days. I already got through the first book of “Tale of Two Cities” before I realized how amazingly boring it was, and switched to Call of Cthulu, which is MUCH more interesting.
literature
Top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books to read before you die
03.23.08 | Permalink | Comment?

I found this list online many years ago. I’m sure it’s far from exhaustive, outdated, and my buddy reddy will have some choice criticisms on it, but it does cover a great range of the “classics” in sci-fi/fantasy and really is a good guide to get started if you’re so inclined.

I’ve bolded the ones I’ve finished already.

100 Books Thou Shalt Read Before You Die
By the Inquest Staff

1. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny (First 5 books, although all ten are now available in an Omnibus)
- read the first book

3. The Ender Quartet by Orson Scott Card (Personal note: I loved the First book, hated the last three)
– read the first 3…will never read another Orson Scott Card book again tho, he’s on my ban list due to his homophobic attitude.

4. Neuromancer by William Gibson

5. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson (6 Books total)

6. Foundation by Isaac Asimov (6 Books total)

7. Dune by Frank Herbert (Just the first book)

8. Elric by Michael Moorcock (available in omnibus editions)

9. The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick

10. 1984 by George Orwell

(more…)