Do things you read over 20 years ago still count? Or books you know you've read, but don't remember anything about? Let's say yes, for the sake of convenience. And as an extra sprinkle of Suburban Spice, the ones I've never heard of will be graced, without a blush, by an asterisk.
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
*His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman*
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (see above)
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien (... I only finished it because I was wondering what all the fuss was about. I'm still wondering.)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini*
*The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold*
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Neuromancer - William Gibson
*Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson*
*The Secret History - Donna Tartt*
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
*American Gods - Neil Gaiman*
*Ender's Game (The Ender Saga) - Orson Scott Card*
*Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson*
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
*Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell*
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
*Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman*
*Atonement - Ian McEwan*
*The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon*
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Actually the first four I bolded were set texts at high school, as were 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies.
Australian titles I'd include might be, off the top of my head:
Dirt Music - Tim Winton
Johnno (or maybe Fly Away Peter) - David Malouf
Bliss – Peter Carey
For The Term Of His Natural Life – Marcus Clark
Harp in the South – Ruth Park
My Brother Jack – George Johnston
The Hand That Signed The Paper – Helen “Demidenko” (for pop culture reasons)
The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith – Thomas Keneally
My Place – Sally Morgan
The Year of Living Dangerously – Christopher Koch
Drylands – Thea Astley
Maybe this is list is a dud. Comments and amendments welcome.
8 comments:
Like I posted at Cheryl's blog, this is a weird, arbitrary list. And I hate to admit it, but I haven't heard of even one of the Aussie books you listed. :/
It is a weird list, isn't it? I'm guessing that my list is too, actually. :)
You would have at least heard of a couple of the authors in the list, no? Peter Carey also wrote Oscar and Lucinda, which was made into a film a few years ago. It's an excellent book, as is the one of his I listed, Bliss.
Thomas Keneally is probably best known as the author of Shindler's Ark, Spielberg-ised into Shindler's List.
The Year of Living Dangerously.... doesn't ring a bell? Another one made into a film, this one done in the Eighties, with Mel Gibson, back when he was still pretending to be Australian. It's set during the Communist shenanigans in Indonesian in the mid-Sixties. I read it while in Indonesia, which didn't do a great deal for my enjoyment of the country, but a great deal for my enjoyment of the book.
See if you can find a couple of these in your library, whydoncha?
Only Aussie author I recognized was David Malouf -- I read "An Imaginary Life" for an English course. I also recognized the title "Year of Living Dangerously," though wouldn't have been able to tell you the author if I were hanging by a single toe from a tall tree.
As for the list, it is haphazard because it is compiled from the lists of those who have signed up at "whatshouldireadnext.com" -- it's not lit, or popular fiction either, and it's definitely not global (yet). I expect thanks to this meme that the list will change drastically in the next week.
Whoo hoo! Go David Malouf! He's a Brisbane lad, and often writes about our town. I'm a huge fan.
I've been lucky enough to see him speak on a number of occasions, and he's a very nice, very eloquent man. Just like his books, I guess.
Well, we have Schindler's List on the shelf at work. I have seen that movie, and also The Year of Living Dangerously, although that was long ago and all I remember is poor Linda Hunt being defenestrated by Indonesian thugs.
I guess maybe it might be a good idea to sign up at that website, hey? Milan Kundera *has* to be on that list at least once for Chrissakes.
Heh... I read Shindler whilst hallucinating in hospital with a fever of 40C. It was like reading it with 3D glasses. :D
Hmmm... now there's a fine question. Now we were friends before I'd read most of those books, so perhaps it's the inclination to read the same books that keeps us friends, yes?
Incidentally, whenever I hear/say/write/read the name Demidenko you come to mind. Why I hear you shriek? Something you said at a dinner party at the time. You have the inestimable distinction of being the one who first told me of the outrage. Have you read it, by the way?
Oh, Pauline, I forgot to ask: what would you add to the Australian reading list?
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