Memes

[sabotabby]

In case you're curious. This would be a filler post, incidentally. I have homework. Please feel free to talk about why so many people think that they need to read Ayn Rand, or who the hell starts The Prince and doesn't finish it, given that it's maybe 120 pages long.



These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby-Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbevilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes : A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers




Bold the ones you've seen.

1. Metropolis (1927)
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
3. Brazil (1985)
4. Wings of Desire (1987)
5. Blade Runner (1982)
6. Children of Men (2006)
7. The Matrix (1999)
8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
9. Minority Report (2002)
10. Delicatessen (1991)
11. Sleeper (1973)
12. The Trial (1962)
13. Alphaville (1965)
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
15. Serenity (2005)
16. Pleasantville (1998)
17. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
18. Battle Royale (2000) (we have this & are about to watch it)
19. RoboCop (1987)
20. Akira (1988)
21. The City of Lost Children (1995)
22. Planet of the Apes (1968)
23. V for Vendetta (2005)
24. Metropolis (2001)
25. Gattaca (1997)
26. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
27. On The Beach (1959)
28. Mad Max (1979)
29. Total Recall (1990)
30. Dark City (1998)
31. War Of the Worlds (1953)
32. District 13 (2004)
33. They Live (1988)
34. THX 1138 (1971)
35. Escape from New York (1981)
36. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
37. Silent Running (1972)
38. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
39. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
40. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
41. Soylent Green (1973)
42. I Robot (2004)
43. Logan's Run (1976)
44. Strange Days (1995)
45. Idiocracy (2006)
46. Death Race 2000 (1975)
47. Rollerball (1975)
48. Starship Troopers (1997)
49. One Point O (2004)
50. Equilibrium (2002)

This says something about me.

Comments

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of intelligent younguns (or at least those who have been told they're intelligent) go through an Ayn Rand phase, to make themselves feel better about being so out of place or step. This is entirely typical of adolescence - they do this where others would become vegetarian, or sniff glue, or knife someone random for the sneakers they think they so desperately need. Most of them get better, and move on. I know I did.

I read The Prince for a poli sci class. I probably would have gotten around to it eventually.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

i've seen every one of those movies.

[human-loser.livejournal.com]

ltmurnau pretty much nailed what was up in my head with the Ayn Rand phase.

Battle Royale=so fucking awesome.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Oh hey Metropolis is really enjoyable if you're in the mood for a silent movie. (The score is wonderful, too.)

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

I can't believe you haven't seen the original Metropolis (1927) or THX 1138 (1971)! When you see Metropolis, make sure it is the Kino Video version. That is the most authentic and restored. There is a tinted, 1980s music version that most people hate, but I enjoy it on a different level.

[jhfurnish.livejournal.com]

I think 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley is eminently readable, and it goes fast, so I don't understand at all how anyone couldn't get through it easily. That bewilders me.

I tried twice to get through Wuthering Heights, but it's... painful and full of... tedious idiocy. Also, the characters are generally impossible to care about. They're unlikable. Everyone is so fucking nasty. The most recent movie forms are better. Best yet is Kate Bush's song, which at least energizes the romance of the story better than the book does.

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

i never finished the prince! does i gets a prize?

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

No. You can, however, jump over all the chapters and only read the conclusion, where you understand that the book is not really aimed at the Medici as everyone tells you, but that it's really aimed at the various Italian city-peoples, asking them to unite as a NATION-STATE, this new form of government at the time, which is the only way to resist being conquered by such N-S, namely France and Spain, which had recently been kicking municipal Italian ass. It's a republican book, in the classical sense of the term.

[begundan.livejournal.com]

Wow, your Inferno is not italic. Delicatessen is fun.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

I read Rand because several people recommended the books to me. I remember being seriously disturbed by the Fountainhead on all sorts of levels. I know I read Atlas Shrugged, but I've obliterated all traces of it from my memory. I once considered writing a computer science paper on the advantages of a good forgettory. This would an excellent argument for such a thing.

[papacanfly.livejournal.com]

a respected friend suggested I read Rand's Fountainhead and that quickly sent me down the path to reading the rest of her books as well. Although you wonder why everyone feels compelled to read her books, i also wonder why everyone feels so compelled to rip them apart without reservation. I've always discovered an interesting duality in her writings. On one hand you've got her unbelievably arrogant and short-sighted bourgeious political perspectives that make you want to throw the book across the room, dig up her dead body, and kick it in the face repeatedly. but on the other hand you have, what i think is, a depiction of human character that is strong, confident, self-reliant, and admirable. She openly stepped on cowards and manipulative fucks and glorified the utopian human character. then again, she could only write sex scenes as rape. anyways. although, despicable in ways, her books are also important..if only to develop a vivid picture of the world we DON'T ever want.

[automaticdoor]

I totally agree with you! I think that's the first time I've ever heard someone else say it. Her characters were grossly flawed in quite a few ways, but they and the books are strong and memorable, even if they are hated.

[burning-string.livejournal.com]

I have actually read through both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. This was partly so that I could swing some literary weight around when arguing with Christian existentialists. Oddly, I think earlier today was the first time this has ever come in handy.

[esizzle.livejournal.com]

my turn! Does this accurately convey how disproportionate my TV knowledge is to my literary knowledge?

Life of Pi : a novel
Great Expectations
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dune

2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
6. Children of Men (2006)
7. The Matrix (1999)
9. Minority Report (2002)
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
18. Battle Royale (2000)
19. RoboCop (1987)
20. Akira (1988)
25. Gattaca (1997)
29. Total Recall (1990)
34. THX 1138 (1971)
38. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
42. I Robot (2004)
45. Idiocracy (2006)
48. Starship Troopers (1997)
50. Equilibrium (2002)

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

The Prince does rambling quite rapidly, though.

[flintultrasparc.livejournal.com]

If you think it rambles, you should try Discourses. It does show Old Nic as much more of a republican than a monarchist.

[flintultrasparc.livejournal.com]

Your meme is obsolete. Get with the program.

[sabotabby]

I'm old school.