Gouda Buddha Books

Devouring books since 2009.

My Guardian List.

with one comment

So after bitching with Sonika a lot about the Guardian list, I thought I’d write my own up.  I totally agree with her: the interface is complete crap, and it’s kind of irritating to have paragraphs on the books they chose, but not really justification for their choices.  Although, I have my questions about the previous list we looked at as well, but overall I like the first list better.

WAR/TRAVEL (Who came up with these categories? WTF?):

Pat Barker- Regeneration.

Daniel Defoe- Robinson Crusoe.

Charles Frazier- Cold Mountain.

Ernest Hemingway- For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Khaled Hosseini- The Kite Runner.

Jack London- The Call of the Wild.

Cormac McCarthy- All the Pretty Horses.

Herman Melville- Moby Dick.

Robert Louis Stevenson- Treasure Island.

Mark Twain- Adventures of Huck Finn.

Voltaire- Candide.

Kurt Vonnegut- Slaughterhouse-Five.

On the List to Read: Heart of Darkness (okay, maybe I won’t actually get to this one, but I feel like I’m one of the few who hasn’t had to read it), One Hundred Years of Solitude (definitely on the list, love Gabriel Garcia Marquez), Maus (I gave it to my husband as a present; does this count?), Cryptonomicon


SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY (Okay, this category is fine)

Margaret Atwood- The Blind Assassin.

Anthony Burgess- A Clockwork Orange– Okay, so I didn’t actually finish this book.  But that was because I was on a book/movie streak and after reading part of the book, I really didn’t want to have to see the movie.  I think I read enough to check it off on any list.

Lewis Carroll- Alice in Wonderland.

Lewis Carroll- Through the Looking Glass.

Neil Gaiman- American Gods.

William Golding- Lord of the Flies.

Robert Heinlein- Stranger in a Strange Land.

David Mitchell- Cloud Atlas. Currently reading.

Haruki Murakami- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.

Audrey Niffenegger- The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Chuck Palahniuk- Fight Club.

Ann Radcliffe- The Mysteries of Udolpho.

JK Rowling- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Antoine de Sainte-Exupery- The Little Prince.

Mary Shelley- Frankenstein.

Bram Stoker- Dracula.

TH White- The Sword in the Stone.

On the List to Read: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Chabon’s a genius, I just got bored partway through and I’m sure picked up something that was not nearly as good but got to the point), House of Leaves (perhaps, Matt thinks it would mess with my head too much for my meds), anything by Umberto Eco, Beloved, Salman Rushdie.

Other Notes: How is it I have read more in this category than in War/Travel?

STATE OF THE NATION

Harriet Beecher Stowe- Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Albert Camus- The Plague.

M. Coeztee- Disgrace.

Don Delillo- White Noise.

Ralph Ellison- Invisible Man.

Philip Roth- American Pastoral.

Philip Roth- The Human Stain.

Upton Sinclair- The Jungle. My dad taught this and I heard enough about it, and I eventually became a vegetarian.  Does this count? Probably not.

Mark Twain- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

On the List to Read: Underworld, Charles Dickens, The Grapes of Wrath, The House of Mirth, possibly White Teeth.

FAMILY & SELF

Louisa May Alcott- Little Women.

Kate Chopin- The Awakening.

Anne Enright- The Gathering.

William Faulkner- As I Lay Dying.

James Joyce- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Naguib Mahfouz- Palace Walk.

Toni Morrison- The Bluest Eye.

V.S. Naipaul- A House for Mr. Biswas.

Annie Proulx- The Shipping News.

Arundhati Roy- The God of Small Things.

Jane Smiley- A Thousand Acres.

Zadie Smith- On Beauty.

Oscar Wilde- The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Jeanette Winterson- Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

On the List to Read: Willa Cather, Great Expectations, The Brothers Karamazov, Middlesex (possibly, have a personal grudge associated with the book), Graham Greene, A Prayer for Owen Meany, DH Lawrence, East of Eden, The Color Purple.

Man, this is getting annoying.  I hate that they don’t just have one list.  I mean, is that too much to ask for when you’re writing “1000 Books Everyone Must Read”?  Do they know how much I could have gotten read while I was messing around trying to navigate their website? Sonika, how did you ever manage to write about each one you read?

COMEDY

Miguel de Cervantes- Don Quixote.

Helen Fielding- Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Henry Fielding- Tom Jones.

Kenneth Grahame- The Wind in the Willows.

Nick Hornby- High Fidelity.

Notes: Hmm.  I’m a giant FAIL in Comedy.  Interesting.  And very few of these are on my list to read, and none that are notable.

CRIME

Michael Crichton- The Andromeda Strain.

Michael Crichton- Jurassic Park.

John Grisham- A Time to Kill.

Harper Lee- To Kill A Mockingbird.

Mario Puzo- The Godfather.

On the List to Read: Raymond Chandler, The Name of the Rose, Ian Fleming, The Bourne books, Of Mice and Men, Perfume.

LOVE

A.S. Byatt- Possession.

Jeffrey Eugenides- The Virgin Suicides.

F. Scott Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby.

Nathaniel Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter.

Ernest Hemingway- A Farewell to Arms.

Milan Kundera- The Book of Laughter & Forgetting.

Milan Kundera- The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez- Love in the Time of Cholera.

Ian McEwan- Atonement.  I think we all know how I felt about that.

Margaret Mitchell- Gone With the Wind.

Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita.

Anais Nin- Delta of Venus.

Michael Ondaatje- The English Patient.

Samuel Richardson- Clarissa.

Marilynne Robinson- Gilead.

Jeanette Winterson- The Passion.

On the List to Read: Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, My Antonia, Tender is the Night, The End of the Affair, maybe Thomas Hardy,Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Remains of the Day, Henry James, The Piano Teacher, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, DH Lawrence, maybe Tropic of Cancer, Norweigan Wood, The Map of Love, Anna Karenina, The Age of Innocence.

I’ve got way too much time on my hands.

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Written by questionsandanchors

January 25, 2009 at 5:42 am

Posted in Kat's books, Lists

Tagged with , ,

One Response

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  1. Sonika, how did you ever manage to write about each one you read?

    Um. I dunno man. It’s probably the same way that I just never stop talking. Blah blah blah.

    Also: What’s your grudge against Middlesex? I am curious.

    Sonja

    January 25, 2009 at 4:00 pm


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