S. inspires me again...

After a very productive 1/2 day (8 am-2 pm), I am taking it easy at the school library. Needing a bit of a break (since I have another class tonight, from 5:45 to at least 8:45), I decided to catch up on my blog reading. S. referred to Time Magazine's top 100 book list, which I apparently missed due to academic absorption or simply not having Time at the register at my local grocery store. (In Berkeley, we are much more likely to have Natural Health, Yoga Journal, San Francisco--or another locally based mag--, and Cooking Light next to our glossy gossip mags, Martha Stewart, Details, and Cosmo. I don't even remember the last time I saw a National Enquirer.)

So, I am once again a copy cat. I will now nod to S. and announce to the world my cleverness or lack thereof.

I have read:
Animal Farm
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.
Beloved
Catch 22
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
The Great Gatsby
A Handful of Dust
The Invisible Man
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Lolita
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Rings
Naked Lunch
1984
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
(I started Pale Fire, but didn't finish it)
A Passage to India
(I think I read The Sheltering Sky... but I might just be remembering the movie)
The Sun also Rises
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Things Fall Apart
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tropic of Cancer
(I was supposed to read Wide Sargasso Sea my freshman year in college. Oh, well.)

TOTAL 22/100 (Not including The Sheltering Sky)

I must admit disappointment, both with myself (I haven't read enough of these books, ignoring entirely many authors appearing multiple times on the list) and with the list. Many of my favorite books are not on the list--Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, anything by Barbara Kingsolver (my favorite, Prodigal Summer was published in 2000...), Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club (one of the few books I've read more than twice, and it makes me cry every time I read it), or Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (which you can't really appreciate unless you've read King Lear). Several other favorite books of mine were not originally written in English, so they don't count. Other of my 20th century faves precede 1923 (the year from which Time reviewers started their list).

I am going to peruse some other Top Novel lists and will report back.

Here's some to start with:
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100rivallist.html
http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/1T2DF8O7BM65S/104-8442152-6663154?%5Fencoding=UTF8
http://www.feminista.com/archives/v2n3/100.html http://www.friendswood.lib.tx.us/bookinfo/frpubtop150.htm