Books People Don’t Read

Taken from noelfi­gart:

These are the 106 books most often marked as “unread” by Library­Thing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-round­ed. Bold the ones you’ve read, under­line the ones you read for school, ital­i­cize the ones you start­ed but did­n’t finish.

Here’s the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or rec­om­mend. Even if you read them for school in the first place.

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
Madame Bovary
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
A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius
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 His­to­ri­anl
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 Divine Com­e­dy (The Infer­no, The Pur­ga­to­rio, and The Paradiso)
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’Urbervilles
Oliv­er Twist
Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els*
Les Mis­érables
The Cor­rec­tions
The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay
The Curi­ous Inci­dent of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune* (and the rest of the series, except the most recent one by his son, I think)
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 Zero Tol­er­ance Approach to Punc­tu­a­tion*
The Mists of Aval­on*
Oryx and Crake
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 Hob­bitt*
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Trea­sure Island
David Cop­per­field
The Three Mus­ke­teers*

For what it’s worth, I haven’t even heard of a few of these. Oth­ers, I’ve pur­pose­ly avoid­ed (like Moby Dick–I was very hap­py that the advanced Eng­lish class­es in my high school did­n’t have to do that one!). The ones I liked, we prob­a­bly own. We have A Peo­ple’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States and used it a bit for home­school­ing, but I haven’t read it front to back. I keep mean­ing to.