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Because I can't resist these things
Gacked from quite a few people: Frequently Unread Books meme
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you've read, italicize what you started, strike through what you couldn't stand. As ever, I think I'd rather annotate, but visually it's a clue.
Ahh, LT users, you reveal yourselves to be a sad bunch of trendoids. Bought the best-seller and couldn't get through it, saw the movie and found the book too dry. How else explain all the Jane Austen here? And I'll admit it helps to have done one's bread-and-butter reading before the net existed, when television wasn't especially attractive either.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)
Life of Pi: a novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
- yanno, DQ is in the realms of myth these days, like Greek mythology. One reads retellings, not Hesiod.
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and Prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A Tale of Two Cities (80)
-There are three Dickens I haven't read, Pickwick aside, and they're all on this list
The Brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and Peace (78)
-All but the theorizing at the end. Fine while I was flat on my back in hospital, but with mobility its charm weakened
Vanity Fair (74)
The Time Traveler's Wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
-In translation. Never did take Homeric Greek, sigh
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
-I can believe, she says snottily, that people couldn't finish it. Atwood is a punishment.
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas Shrugged (67)
-See remarks on Atwood.
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
-you'd have to break my fingers first
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury Tales (64)
-Not exactly started and didn't finish, just-- who reads all the Canterbury Tales, ph.d candidates aside?
The Historian : a novel (63)
A portrait of the artist as a young man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
-I might even have finished this because I remember the end, but I don't remember reading the rest of it. I think I skipped.
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's Pendulum (61)
-Dropped after 6 pages, yet
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
-an abridged version but still 500 pages
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of wrath (57)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
-Again, remember the end but think I skipped large chunks to get there. Mind, this is some people's notion of what's meant by 'reading'
Angels & Demons (56)
The Inferno (56)
-Yes, all. It's the Paradiso that's the bogdown.
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's Travels (53) See remarks on Quixote.
Les Misérables (53)
-abridged but still 700 pages
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (52)
Dune (51)
-All of it. And two sequels. For my sins.
The Prince (51)
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela's Ashes : a memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A short history of nearly everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud Atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46)
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the Road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (45)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values (45)
The Aeneid (45)
-all in translation, some in the original
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's Rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences (44)
White Teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44)
-it's a sad person who can't get through The Three Musketeers. What more do you want in a book?
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you've read, italicize what you started, strike through what you couldn't stand. As ever, I think I'd rather annotate, but visually it's a clue.
Ahh, LT users, you reveal yourselves to be a sad bunch of trendoids. Bought the best-seller and couldn't get through it, saw the movie and found the book too dry. How else explain all the Jane Austen here? And I'll admit it helps to have done one's bread-and-butter reading before the net existed, when television wasn't especially attractive either.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)
Life of Pi: a novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
- yanno, DQ is in the realms of myth these days, like Greek mythology. One reads retellings, not Hesiod.
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and Prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A Tale of Two Cities (80)
-There are three Dickens I haven't read, Pickwick aside, and they're all on this list
The Brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and Peace (78)
-All but the theorizing at the end. Fine while I was flat on my back in hospital, but with mobility its charm weakened
Vanity Fair (74)
The Time Traveler's Wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
-In translation. Never did take Homeric Greek, sigh
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
-I can believe, she says snottily, that people couldn't finish it. Atwood is a punishment.
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas Shrugged (67)
-See remarks on Atwood.
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
-you'd have to break my fingers first
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury Tales (64)
-Not exactly started and didn't finish, just-- who reads all the Canterbury Tales, ph.d candidates aside?
The Historian : a novel (63)
A portrait of the artist as a young man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
-I might even have finished this because I remember the end, but I don't remember reading the rest of it. I think I skipped.
The Fountainhead (61)
-Dropped after 6 pages, yet
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
-an abridged version but still 500 pages
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of wrath (57)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
-Again, remember the end but think I skipped large chunks to get there. Mind, this is some people's notion of what's meant by 'reading'
Angels & Demons (56)
The Inferno (56)
-Yes, all. It's the Paradiso that's the bogdown.
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's Travels (53) See remarks on Quixote.
Les Misérables (53)
-abridged but still 700 pages
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (52)
-All of it. And two sequels. For my sins.
The Prince (51)
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela's Ashes : a memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A short history of nearly everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud Atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46)
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the Road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (45)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values (45)
The Aeneid (45)
-all in translation, some in the original
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's Rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences (44)
White Teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44)
-it's a sad person who can't get through The Three Musketeers. What more do you want in a book?
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What are numbers, incidentally?
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oi, oi, oi... :clutches her copy of Oryx and Crake and nyahs:
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-Not exactly started and didn't finish, just-- who reads all the Canterbury Tales, ph.d candidates aside?
I did, once (once!) for an undergrad class. Part of the problem is there are so many unfinished tales and they trail off and don't go anywhere. There's also a sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins that's sort of interesting but not something I'd reread on a whim.