Thursday, August 13, 2009

Me and Lorelei or, the BBC 100 Books Meme

I spent far too much time trying to rip a clip from the episode of Gilmore Girls that aired today. Lorelei pretends to be a book editor while making small talk with some guests at the world's most heinous bed and breakfast. So here's what they say:

Lorelai: I published Good Night Spoon... and the Horse that wanted to Bark.

Guest: Oh, I've read to my grandson! The horse really wanted to bark, and it finally does, and... (to Lorelai) How does it end?


Lorelai: It dies.


Rory: But... the horse learned to bark and achieved its goal, so it was really a happy ending!


Well, Lorelei Gilmore is merely a pretend person who pretended to be a book editor. I, on the other hand, am a real person who really is a book editor! This week I was offered a position at a tiny little publisher down in Springville, Utah. I'm so excited, and I feel so blessed to be able to work in my chosen profession.

However, since it is Thoughts for Thursday and I feel like I ought to prove to the world that I do more than watch Gilmore Girls, I will now try and prove that I am worth my salt as a reader.

I lifted this from a friend's blog, who in turn lifted it from a friend's blog. Also, my sister also did this on facebook.

"The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?”
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X (So many times. Sooooo many times.)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X (I'm pretty sure I've read it all. I took Bible as Lit and went to seminary.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X (I'm really surprised that you haven't read this, Rachel.)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (My cousin's favorite book. I own it and it's on my list.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 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 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X (Right now, it's tied with P&P for my favorite story.)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
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 - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X (One of my least favorite books that I had to read every year from 8th to 10th grade.)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (I've borrowed it from one of my sisters. It is swimming in the sea of books next to my bed.)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (I remember that one of my sisters used to LOVE this book.)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X (I think I did. I may of fudged my way through it in high school.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - 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’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession
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 - EB White X
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 - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
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 X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
TOTAL: 35. Now, I have a degree in English, but last I heard, 35 was more than 6. I think I'm in possession of at least 5 more, so I'll keep on going.

3 comments:

Allison said...

haha- I'm watching Gilmore Girls as I write this! You HAVE to read Grapes of Wrath...it will change your life. Congrats on the job!

MOM/SUSAN said...

Hmmm. Last I figured, I'm a few years older than you and I've only read thirty five of the books on the list. What does that mean?

Maren said...

I totally just finished reading Lord of the Flies again. I forgot how creepy it was. Those crazy British boys.