1,001 books; or, for a while there, I thought I was illiterate

Well, people, I'm doing a meme. Again. Because I really am that desperate for something to say.

I mean, sure, I could write a blog post on how I find Sarah Palin eerily unlike myself, even though we're both brunettes who wear sexy librarian glasses and live in a cold climate. But you wouldn't want to read that.

You see, Palin has fans who are planning on voting for her because she's just like them.

And that's one reason I'm not voting for her. It's because--no. I can't say it. It would come across as egotistical, and I don't do egotistical. What I really do best is a kind of sprightly self-denigration.

But I can't talk about Sarah Palin without coming up with adjectives like provincial, tacky, uneducated, inarticulate, and bumptious. And this leads me to the inescapable conclusion that I think of myself as sophisticated, classy, educated, articulate, and socially aware.

And I simply can't go there.

So I'm going to talk about books.

***

OK, here is this 1,001 Books meme thing I grabbed from Jasmine. Except I did it my way. Instead of copying and pasting the entire list and then bolding and italic-ing and whatever, I just deleted all the books I hadn't read. So these are all books I've read, I just couldn't get rid of the bolding and italics and indenting and auto-numbering and such. (You simply would not believe what the html looks like beneath this smooth, dare I say it? Sophisticated facade.)

2000s

I have read exactly no books on the list of 69 titles from the 2000s.

1990s

I have read exactly no books from the 114 titles from the 1990s.

(Wait a minute. Maybe I'm less sophisticated than I thought.)

1900 - 1980s

1. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
2. Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
3. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
4. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
   
5. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
6. The World According to Garp – John Irving
7. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
8. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
9. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
10. Rabbit Redux – John Updike
    
11. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
12. Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
13. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
14. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
15. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
16. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
17. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
18. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
19. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
20. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
    
21. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
22. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
23. The Story of O – Pauline Réage
24. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
25. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
26. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
27. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
28. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene 1940s
    
29. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
30. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
31. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
32. The Plague – Albert Camus
33. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
34. Animal Farm – George Orwell
35. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
36. Native Son – Richard Wright
37. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys 1930s
    
38. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
39. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
40. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
41. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
42. The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
43. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
44. Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
45. Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
46. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
47. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
48. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
49. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
50. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
    
51. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
52. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
53. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
54. Quartet – Jean Rhys
55. Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
56. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
57. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
58. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
59. Ulysses – James Joyce
60. The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
61. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
62. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce 1910s
    
63. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
64. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
65. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
66. Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
67. Howards End – E.M. Forster 1900s
    
68. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
69. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
70. Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
71. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
72. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
73. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann

1800s

1. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
2. Dracula – Bram Stoker
3. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
4. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
5. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. New Grub Street – George Gissing
7. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
8. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
9. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
10. She – H. Rider Haggard
11. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
13. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
14. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
15. Nana – Émile Zola
16. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
17. Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
18. Drunkard – Émile Zola
19. Middlemarch – George Eliot
20. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
21. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
22. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
23. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
24. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
25. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
26. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
27. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
28. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
29. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
30. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
31. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
32. Adam Bede – George Eliot
33. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
34. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
35. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
36. Walden – Henry David Thoreau
37. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
38. Villette – Charlotte Brontë
39. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
40. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
41. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
42. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
43. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
44. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
45. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
46. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
47. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
48. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
49. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
50. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
51. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
52. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
53. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
54. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
55. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
56. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
57. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
58. Persuasion – Jane Austen
59. Emma – Jane Austen
60. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
61. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
62. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

1700s

1. Evelina – Fanny Burney
2. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
3. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
4. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
5. Fanny Hill – John Cleland
6. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
7. Pamela – Samuel Richardson
8. A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
9. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
10. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
11. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
12. A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift

Pre-1700

1. The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
2. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous;
   
3. Metamorphoses – Ovid
4. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

***

Still with me?

Perhaps later, gentle reader, I'll let you know what I actually thought of these books. But not now.

No, I'll save those ruminations for those long, cold winter evenings by the fire. Because nothing beats the warm glow you get as book after book is being lobbed onto the flames by a former beauty queen from Alaska.

Hee!