Beginnings

Welcome friends! I have started this entry in the global technosphere because I have been in love with books since the age of 2. Among the busy business of being a new teacher, this is my outlet for sharing thoughts on a love of reading a wide variety of books. My inspiration can be summed up with a yearbook quote from a teacher written when I was 8: "To the only girl at recess I see reading a book. Good for you!"
My blog title is quoted from a classmate who asked me this once. Believe it or not, I've also heard it as a teacher :D

Monday, February 21, 2011

TBR Authors List

Adam @ Roof Beam Reader has done it again (bravo!), this time making a fabulous list of authors as part of his TBR list (alphabetical by first name) with an overwhelming, ambitious & inspiring goal to read the complete works of each author!

I've posted a similar version (some of Adam's choices being omitted) with my own comments and some additions from my own TBR list.  Though I don't aspire to read the complete works of every author on the list, I am interested in many of their books and hope to at least dabble in most of them ;)

Here is my complete list (to date) of authors whose books I have read & reviewed.
Here is my complete TBR list (to date), which goes with my wish list.

Authors I've Read At Least 1 Book By= 26 (books read follow with links to reviews, if applicable)
Authors on my TBR List= 118 (books to read follow)
Authors I've Read & Still Have More to Read= 18 (books read, books TBR)
Authors I Probably Won't Read More Of= 8

Alexandre Dumas- The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo
Amy Tan- The Joy Luck Club
Anais Nin- Henry & June
Anne Frank- Diary of a Young Girl (I read this in high school; it's one of the most important books to read)
Anne Rice- Interview With the Vampire
Arthur Conan Doyle- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Miller- Death of a Salesman (I read this in high school; excellent play!)
A.S. Byatt- Possession, The Children's Book
Ayn Rand- The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged
Bram Stoker- Dracula
Bret Easton Ellis- American Psycho
C.S. Lewis- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (I may read the entire Narnia series if I like this one)
Charles Dickens- Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Pickwick Papers, A Tale of Two Cities
Charlotte Bronte- Jane Eyre
Daniel Defoe- Robinson Crusoe
Dante- The Divine Comedy
Daphne du Maurier- Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel
D.H. Lawrence- Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons & Lovers, Women in Love
E.L. Doctorow- Billy Bathgate, Book of Daniel
Edgar Allen Poe- Complete Tales & Poems, The Fall of the House of Usher
Edith Wharton- The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, House of Mirth
Elie Wiesel- Night
Elizabeth Gaskell- North and South
E.M. Forster- A Room With a View (whimsical, romantic, lovely!), Howard's End, A Passage to India
Emily Bronte- Wuthering Heights
Ernest Hemingway- A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man & the Sea, The Sun Also Rises
Evelyn Waugh- Brideshead Revisited
F. Scott Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby (read in high school; just okay for me)
Ford Maddox Ford- The Good Soldier
Frances Hodgson Burnett- The Secret Garden
Franz Kafka- Metamorphosis, The Trial
Fyodor Dostoevsky- The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 100 Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera
George Eliot- Scenes From a Clerical Life, Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch
George Orwell- Animal Farm (read in high school; didn't like it then but may re-read it), 1984
Gore Vidal- Myra Breckinridge
Graham Greene- Brighton Rock (deep, dark mystery with an incredibly evil character), The Power and the Glory, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American
Gunter Grass- The Tin Drum
Gustave Flaubert- Madame Bovary
Haruki Murakami- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
H.G. Wells- The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau
Henry David Thoreau- Walden
Henry Fielding- Tom Jones
Henry James- The Bostonians, The Turn of the Screw, The Art of the Novel, The Portrait of a Lady, Wings of the Dove
Herman Melville- Moby Dick
Homer- The Odyssey, The Iliad
Honore de Balzac- Le Pere Goriot
Iain Banks- The Wasp Factory
Ian McEwan- Atonement (absolutely amazing!)
Jack Kerouac- On the Road
Jack London- The Call of the Wild
James Fenimore Cooper- The Last of the Mohicans
James Joyce- Finnegans Wake, Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Jane AustenPride and Prejudice (sweet, satirical & enjoyable classic), Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Persuasion
J.D. Salinger- The Catcher in the Rye (liked the prose more than the protagonist but still very much worth a read), Franny & Zooey
J.G. Ballard- Empire of the Sun
Jean-Jacques Rousseau- The Social Contract
Jeffrey Eugenides- Middlesex (currently reading)
J.K. Rowling- Harry Potter series (#1-3, #4-7)--really enjoyed the first two books and liked the third--I'll be rereading the 1st book for a challenge & will finish off the series hopefully by next year.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe- Tragedy of Faust
John Fowles- The French Lieutenant's Woman (I saw the movie recently & it was slow starting but turned out to be quite wonderful)
John Irving- The World According to Garp (incredibly unique & amazing story), A Prayer For Owen Meany (fascinating story, somewhat intolerable protagonist), The Cider House Rules, The Hotel New Hampshire, Last Night at Twisted River
John Le Carre- The Constant Gardener, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The Tailor of Panama
John Milton- Paradise Lost
John Steinbeck- The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men
John Updike- Rabbit, Run (not all that impressed, am not too enthusiastic about continuing the series), The Witches of Eastwick, A Month of Sundays
John Paul Sartre- Being & Nothingness
Jonathan Swift- Gulliver's Travels
Jose Saramago: Blindness
Joseph Conrad- Heart of Darkness (very disturbing & bleak, not my cup of tea), Nostromo
J.R.R. Tolkien- Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit
Jules Verne- Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea
Karl Marx- Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital
Kate Chopin: The Awakening
Kazuo Ishiguro- Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.- Slaughterhouse-Five (DNF), may try Cat's Cradle but I'm not prioritizing it
Leo Tolstoy- Anna Karenina, War and Peace
Lewis Carroll- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
Louisa May Alcott- Little Women (really want to reread sometime; loved the characters & the story was heartwarming), Little Men
Marcel Proust- Remembrance of Things Past
Margaret Atwood- The Handmaid's Tale (breathtaking dystopian story with a heroic protagonist), Alias Grace, Cat's Eye, The Edible Woman, The Robber Bride, Surfacing, Oryx & Crake, The Year of the Flood
Margaret Mitchell- Gone With the Wind
Mark Twain- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (wonderfully nostalgic), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mary Shelley- Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft- Vindication of the Rights of Women (I read this, probably in my 19th century lit class; the cornerstone of feminist theory)
Miguel de Cervantes- Don Quixote
Milan Kundera- The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Molière- The Misanthrope
Nathaniel Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables
Norman Mailer- The Executioner's Song, The Naked and the Dead, Marilyn
Oscar WildeThe Importance of Being Earnest (read this in a 19th century lit class; loved the wordplay and timeless humour!), The Picture of Dorian Gray
Percy Bysshe Shelley- Complete Poetry, A Defence of Poetry
Philip Roth- The Human Stain
Plato- The Republic
Ralph Ellison- Invisible Man
Ralph Waldo Emerson- On Nature & Selected Essays
Rudyard Kipling- Kim, The Jungle Man
Salman Rushdie- Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses
Simone de Beauvoir- Second Sex, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Sinclair Lewis- Elmer Gantry
Sir Walter Scott- Ivanhoe, Lady of the Lake, Rob Roy
Sophocles- Oedipus Rex
Stephen King- Carrie, Cell, The Dead Zone, Different Seasons, Full Dark No Stars, The Green Mile, The Mist, On Writing, The Shining, Under the Dome, Bag of Bones, Christine, Cujo, Dolores Claiborne, Duma Key, Firestarter, From a Buick 8, Gerald’s Game, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Hearts in Atlantis, Insomnia, It, Lisey’s Story, Misery, Needful Things, Night Shift, Pet Sematary, Salem’s Lot, Skeleton Crew, The Talisman--absolutely one of my favourite writers!
Sylvia Plath- The Bell Jar
Tennessee Williams- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Thomas Hardy- The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Mann- Death in Venice
Thomas Pynchon- The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow
Thornton Wilder- Our Town, Bridge of San Luis Rey
Tom Wolfe- The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Electric Kool-Aid Test
Toni Morrison- Song of Solomon (a bit too bizarre for my taste), Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Sula
Truman Capote- In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany's
Umberto Eco- Foucault's Pendulum, On Literature
Victor Hugo- Les Miserables, Hunchback of Notre Dame
Virginia Woolf- A Room of One's Own (reflective yet critical of the state of women writers), Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando
Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita
Voltaire- Candide
Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass
Wilkie Collins- Woman in White
Willa Cather- My Antonia
William S. Burroughs- Naked Lunch
William Faulkner- As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury
William GoldingThe Lord of the Flies (read in high school; very powerful & extraordinary book)
William Makepeace Thackeray- Vanity Fair
William Shakespeare- Antony & Cleopatra, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Henry V, King Lear, Macbeth (D), Midsummer Night's Dream, A, Othello, Richard III, Romeo & Juliet, Titus Andronicus, Tempest, The, Twelfth Night, All’s Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, Troilus & Cressida-- read many plays in high school & my university Shakespeare course
W. Somerset Maugham- Of Human Bondage, The Razor's Edge

2 comments:

  1. SO many good books here! Some of my favorites,in fact.

    I just found out recently that my husband had never even heard of Anne Frank. How does that get missed in school? So important.

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  2. There are so many authors I've never read. Every time I see a list like this one, I am reminded of that fact so I try to hit at least two of them a year. Sounds easy, right? Doable? Then why can't I make it happen? LOL.

    ReplyDelete