Ever Sorted the List?/Share Your Top Ten!

[Sissy]

Linda wrote: "Here's a question for you all: I RARELY quit a book before finishing it, even if it means "slogging through" it over the course of months. But, if I attempt a book that's on the list, and give it a fair shot, but just can't get through it and decide to abandon it, say halfway through, do I still get to check it off?? "

I check them off. If only to avoid attempting to read them again in the future. =) There have only been 3 so far that I've done that with - Austerlitz (I skipped the last 20 pages, so I figure I was pretty much done) - The Book About Blanche & Marie (I figure it will be dropped in the next list anyways) and Naked Lunch (I knew within 20 pages I would hate myself for continuing). I did stop half way through Middlemarch as well - but I am planning to return to that one to finish it, so I still have it TBR on my actual list.

[Tej]

Sissy wrote: "Linda wrote: "Here's a question for you all: I RARELY quit a book before finishing it, even if it means "slogging through" it over the course of months. But, if I attempt a book that's on the list..."

Re: Middlemarch. I've been keeping track of all the books I read since I was 15. I also marked which ones I especially liked. I read Middlemarch awhile ago and marked it as one I really enjoyed, but now I couldn't tell you the first thing about it. It makes me wonder just how good it really was. :) Think it's one that I definitely must re-read one of these days.

[Ellen]

I've actually read Middlemarch 3 times so I remember it pretty well! :)
I enjoyed all 3 reading-at 18, 28, and 35-but I remember the last time thinking, this may be it. At least for a l o n g time.

[R3ronald]

This is a great and helpful thread. I, too, am struggling to decide on the next book. Based on the above, I'll be grabbing Wild Swans, Curried Sausage, Soldiers of Salamis, and a few others. I'm reading Life: A User's Manual now and really liking its oddity.

Here's a list of some of my favorites (not in any order, except #1).

1) Bros. Karamazov
2) The Life of Insects - Pelevin (unlike anything else I've read)
3) 2066 - Bolano
4) Go Tell It On the Mountain (amazing book)
5) Blood Meridian
6) Time's Arrow - Amis
7) The Hour of the Star - Lispector
8) In Watermelon Sugar - Brautigan (though Willard and His Bowling Trophies is only a 2/5 in my opinion)
9) The Third Policeman - O'Brien
10) Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
11) Solaris (Tarkovsky's film is great, the book is better)
12) The Sound and the Fury
13) The Waterbabies - Kinglsey

And books I found I just did not like for one reason or another and wished I'd relegated to what HR Orangeness called the WOBWIILtaBA list:

1) American Psycho (you can tell from my inclusion of Blood Meridian above that graphic violence on its own wouldn't knock this out - I just found it a terrible book).
2) Never Let Me Go
3) The Gathering
4) Choke
5) Wittgenstein's Mistress (though I love Markson's other books)
6) The Collector
7) The Castle of Otranto

(Finally, in my opinion, "read" is a term like "dated." If you made a concerted effort to read and like a book, but just couldn't make it work, you can considered it read.)

[Her Royal Orangeness]

R3Ronald - You've got many books on your list that I never even considered. I'll have to give them second thoughts.

R3ronald wrote: "HR Orangeness called the WOBWIILtaBA list..."

Who knew it could have an acronym? lol

[Asa]

One of the things I enjoy about this project is the books you read that you've never heard about or that you thought you were going to hate based on the summaries, and that you ended up loving. (Of course, that also means that sometimes you read books you hate.) My idea is that I plan (hopefully) to read 1001 books in total, which means I can rule out some that I never plan to read, like de Sade, or that are hard to find. My favorite ten right now, in no particular order, are:

1. Austen - probably Persuasion, but Pride and Prejudice works as well.

2. Laclos - Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The only letter novel that couldn't be told any other way.

3. Charlotte Brontë - Villette. Weird and strange, but hypnotic.

4. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings. The original fantasy novel.

5. A.S. Byatt - Possession. This book has almost everything I love to read about.

6. Henry James - The Golden Bowl. Hard reading, but worth it.

7. Rebecca West - The Return of the Soldier. She has a wonderful way with words and characters.

8. Virginia Woolf - The Waves. I love Woolf, and this is my favorite of her books.

9. Baldwin - Go Tell It on the Mountain. Intense story of religion and family.

10. Marguerite Yourcenar - Memoirs of Hadrian. She makes you believe that this *is* Hadrian telling you about his life.

[Ellen]

Asa wrote: "One of the things I enjoy about this project is the books you read that you've never heard about or that you thought you were going to hate based on the summaries, and that you ended up loving. (Of..."

I love your list- Marguerite Yourcenar is one of my favorite writers & I also love The Waves. And Les Liaisons is one of my favorite books ever. I'd add Emma to my Jane Austen but love Persuasion & P&P. Guess I have to read the Rebecca West-I've somehow missed her on my journeys!

Oh & it's so good to find someone else who rates Villette so highly. I do to. I love the acidic heroine.

I wish there was an easier way (that's free) to access the 1001 books. I can never remember what's on it & what's not. :(

[Tej]

Ellie wrote: "I wish there was an easier way (that's free) to access the 1001 books. I can never remember what's on it & what's not. :("

I have a spreadsheet that I created based on something I found on the web. I could send it to you if you'd like. There's also someone who has posted a spreadsheet to this group for all versions of the list. I used that to get a spreadsheet of the latest edition. (His is much more complicated than mine with macros and such. You can find him in the thread v4 of the spreadsheet available. He has a lite version that's free and a version with bells and whistles that you pay for.)

[Ellen]

I just need a list: if you could send me your spreadsheet I'd be very grateful. :D

[Her Royal Orangeness]

I don't think I'd call this an "easy" solution but what I did was: downloaded the free spreadsheet (the link is posted in this group), looked up summaries of ALL the books and divided them into two groups - probably will read and probably will not read, put each of those lists into new spreadsheets, and marked all the probably-will-reads here on goodreads.

It took quite awhile, but now I have very accessible list of which 1001 books I want to read.

[Ellen]

Okay-I think I try something like that.
Except, of course, I only have the vaguest idea of what a spreadsheet is. Like EXCEL, right?

[Her Royal Orangeness]

A spreadsheet is basically like a table in Microsoft Word...but with more bells & whistles. And, yes, Excel is a program for creating a spreadsheet.

[Asa]

Ellie wrote: "Asa wrote: "One of the things I enjoy about this project is the books you read that you've never heard about or that you thought you were going to hate based on the summaries, and that you ended up..."

I've read three of West's book from the list and liked all of them, but The Return of the Soldier is the best. She has also written a very interesting travel journal, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, about her journey through Serbia, Croatia and the other Balkan countries that later became Yugoslavia and then fell apart again.

[Ellen]

I don't know Return of the Soldier but I'll put it on my list. I have heard of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon & I'm very curious-good to know you found it interesting. I didn't realize where the travel took place: also of great interest to me.
Have you heard anything about The Birds Fall Down? That's the other one I've heard of. Love the title (but I've learned the hard way that doesn't always mean much!).

[Asa]

Ellie wrote: "I don't know Return of the Soldier but I'll put it on my list. I have heard of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon & I'm very curious-good to know you found it interesting. I did..."

I haven't read The Birds Fall Down, but the other two books by her I've read are Harriet Hume and The Thinking Reed. Harriet Hume was interesting and fantastical, and I loved the images of London in it, but I didn't care for the characters which were a bit stereotypical. The thinking reed was better, about a young, rich American widow who comes to Paris and tries to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

[Joselito Honestly]

Survey was made among several known authors where their "top ten" were asked. Find out the top ten winners here, 8 of which I think are 1001 books:

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article...

[Danna]

I suppose my favorite book ever I have not read yet! But those are some I love. It is not ten, because I don't even have ten favs.

[Logophile]

What fun! (And I don't find literary lists "obscene" at all, Lev Grossman notwithstanding.) Here are my top dozen (I couldn't find two I had the heart to cut), in alphabetical order:

Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Foundation - Isaac Asimov
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The History of the Siege of Lisbon - José Saramago
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter
Possession - A.S. Byatt

And since Joselito was kind enough to point us to the top 10 list compiled from great authors' favorites, I herewith present the 1001 group's top 15 favorites. (There have been 151 unique titles listed so far. If I leave off the titles that have only 1 or 2 votes, we have 15 titles with 3 or more votes):

Jane Eyre (8 votes)
To Kill a Mockingbird (8)
Pride and Prejudice (7)
The Lord of the Rings (5)
1984 (4)
Lolita (4)
The Hobbit (4)
Great Expectations (3)
Les Miserables (3)
Persuasion (3)
Rebecca (3)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (3)
The Great Gatsby (3)
The Handmaid's Tale (3)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (3)

[Her Royal Orangeness]

Logophile wrote: "And since Joselito was kind enough to point us to the top 10 list compiled from great authors' favorites, I herewith present the 1001 group's top 15 favorites. (There have been 151 unique titles listed so far. If I leave off the titles that have only 1 or 2 votes, we have 15 titles with 3 or more votes)."

THAT is mathematically awesome, Logophile!

And thanks to Joselito for resurrecting this thread. :)

[Bea]

To whittle this down to ten, I've left off books written before and after the 20th Century.

Most of what I've read by Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky got a resounding five. I love and have revisited the following multiple times: Jane Eyre, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Madame Bovary. I also left off some 5-star 20th century mysteries.

The Good Soldier
Ulysses
A Passage to India
The Plague
The Catcher in the Rye
Invisible Man (Ellison)
Lolita
Pale Fire
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Everything That Rises Must Converge

[Lisa]

Her Royal Orangeness wrote: "Whenever I'd look at the list of 1001 books, I felt overwhelmed and not certain where to even start. So, I decided to look up summaries for ALL the books from ALL the lists. Yeah, it took me a few ..."

LOL!!! I LOVE your sorting system!!!! My favorite is the Biblical Age one :) I'm impressed!

[Yrinsyde]

Interesting selections! I started the 1001 challenge because I felt like I was in a rut with my reading choices. And I'm so glad that I did - I've found some that I love!! Mine are below - no no particular order:
1) A Bend in the River
2) Buddenbrooks
3) Things Fall Apart
4) Foucault's Pendulum
5) Pride and Prejudice
6) Smilas Sense of Snow
7) Cranford
8) The Lord of the Rings
9) Thank You Jeeves
10) Phineas Finn

[Joselito Honestly]

Mine:

1. Huckleberry Finn
2. Dom Casmurro
3. Thank you Jeeves
4. Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon
5. Celestial Harmonies
6. Birdsong
7. Fugitive Pieces
8. Auto-da-fe
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude
10. Veronika Decides to Die (just kidding!)
10. The Tin Flute (the real no.10)

[Regine]

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2.Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
3.The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
4. Jane Eyreby Charlotte Bronte\
5. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
6.One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7.Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
8.The House of the Spiritsby Isabel Allende
9. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
10. Madame Bovaryby Gustave Flaubert

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I have only 3 of the 62 I've read rated 5 stars, but I think this is how I would get to a top ten:

1. The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose
2. The Elegance of the Hedgehog
3. Middlemarch
4. Moll Flanders
5. Howards End
6. Cloudsplitter
7. Middlesex
8. Rabbit, Run
9. The Picture of Dorian Gray
10. A Town Like Alice

[Anne]

Okay, I'm a cheater. I couldn't bring myself to erase any of the books below. I'm slapping myself on the wrist.

These are not in order of favorites:

1.Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
2..The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
3..The Riddle of the Sands by, :Erskine Childers
4. Regeneration,Pat Barker
5.Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernières
6.The Garden of the Finzi-Continis:Giorgio Bassani
7. The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman, Andrzej Szczypiorski
8.The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
9.The Invention of Curried Sausage, Uwe Timm
10. The Forsyte Saga - Complete, John Galsworthy
11. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Suskind

Also:
The Book of Evidence, John Banville
Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy Sayer
Crime and Punishment
Poisonwood Bible
Buddenbrooks

[Genia]

In no particular order

The Master and Margarita
The Poisonwood Bible
The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War
The Name of the Rose
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
If This Is a Man / The Truce
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The First Circle
Solaris
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

And because I can't resist, also:

The War of the Worlds
The Woman in White
The Three Musketeers
A Hero of Our Time
Eugene Onegin
Gulliver's Travels
Robinson Crusoe
Treasure Island
Frankenstein
The Secret History

..Okay, more like the top twenty, but i just couldn't do with ten.

[Chel]

There are so many great books on this list. I'm going to list the first ten great books that come to mind in no particular order.
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
A Confederacy of Dunces
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Lord of the Rings
The Old Man and the Sea
Walden's Pond
The Outlaws of the Marsh
Northanger Abbey
Cryptonomicon
Silas Marner. This is from the top of my head and if I wrote the top ten tomorrow it would change. There are dozens of great books on this list.

[Candiss]

Here's my (loose and changeable) Top 10 as of today, ordered by author's surname:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Embers - Sándor Márai
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Süskind
The Island of Dr. Moreau - H. G. Wells
Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson

[Hajarath Prasad]

Okay...here are my favourite books that storm my mind when i am asked this question...
1. The fountainhead
2. Atlas shrugged
3. Siddhartha
4. The da vinci code
5. The monk who sold his ferrari
6. A picture of dorian gray
7. Great expectations
8. Wings of fire
9. Mother
10. An autobiography of a yogi
These favourites change each time i answer in their order

[Ian]

Quick - before I change my mind. I can't do a top ten: I've whittled it down to a top fifteen, but to ditch any one of these would be more than I could bear.
So, selecting from the 221 I have read on the combined lists, and in no particular order, these are a few of my favourite things.
1. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
2. The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
3. A Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
4. Rings Of Saturn - W.G. Sebald
5. Emma - Jane Austen
6. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
7. Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos
8. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
9. Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence
10. Atonement- Ian McEwan
11. Waterland - Graham Swift
12. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
13. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
14. Thank You, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
15. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

Now I'm going to post this before I start to wonder what my selections say about me!

[Lisa]

I'm interested to see what everyone chose :) I LOVE the way the originator of this discussion sorted hers out, I was tickled by the ones I'll only read if I reach a Biblical age, LOL, LOVE that!

I haven't read all of them by a LONG stretch. I have 149 on my 1001 list, but I can't figure out how to split them further into a 1001 Read & 1001 TBR read list.

So far, here are the ones I've liked the best of what I've read, in no particular order except number one :)

1. Gone With the Wind
2. The Picture of Dorian Gray
3. The Old Man and the Sea
4. Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice
5. Dracula
6. The Color Purple
7. The Island of Dr. Moreau
8. The Lord of the Rings
9. Lady Chatterley's Lover
10. Of Mice and Men or The Great Gatsby
11. This one is my alternate: :) SUCH a cute book!
Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Ok, I'm starting a list of books I didn't like. Top of that list goes to:

1. Naked Lunch-UGH.....
2. The Satanic Verses-just didn't GET it...
3. Slaughterhouse-Five-not completely awful, just not my thing, the space scenes were just too weird & didn't "fit" in the rest of the story...
4. Walden, or Life in the Woods-too clumsily verbose & quite honestly, boring
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls & A Farewell to Arms-I don't know what it was with these 2, just flat didn't LIKE either one of them...

[Annina]

I have read only 37 books from the list.. and most of the "great" classics is still in my TBR-list.. but my top 10 so far is

1. Captain Correli's Mandolin
2. Fingersmith
3. David Copperfield
4. The World According to Garp
5. The Hours
6. Veronica Decides to Die
7. Around the world in 80 days
8. Three Musketeers
9. The Secret History
10. The Virgin Suicides