Faking it on the Reading List

[featherynscale]

First, a meme:
Below the cut are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users at the time the first person to post this meme posted it (I have no idea when that was.). 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 -- after several tries, I finally got through this one. Somehow, having Yoruba mythology helped.
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote -- Someday, though...
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... and indeed, it was a sleeper for me.
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 -- This may well be the worst vampire novel I have ever read. And I read Laurell K Hamilton. I'm saying.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead -- I hear it's comedy gold, though. So sayeth triadruid.
Foucault's Pendulum**** This is actually probably in my top five favorite books ever.
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'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels -- and... I don't get it.
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune* -- Also a favorite!
The Prince -- in history, no less.
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 -- Possibly the worst book of any description I have ever read. I'm a finisher of books. Hell, I'm a finisher of series. I died halfway through this one, and have yet to recover all of my soul.
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed -- I had to give it back to the library, alas.
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion -- and I'll read it again, too.
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 -- I've owned two copies of this book, but never got around to reading it. That's sort of sad.
The Hobbit
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers


And, speaking of unread books: have you ever claimed to have read a book that you really hadn't? What book? Why?

Comments

[duriyah.livejournal.com]

I generally claim to have read Dracula, even though I didn't make it all the way through. I think I read 3/4 of it (maybe even more). I stopped when they started chasing Dracula around Europe. The chase was boring, and since the mystery had been solved by that point I figured I had gotten the gist of the book anyway, so I put it down. But if asked I will usually say I have read the book.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Wow what classic work of literature have I not fronted on having read to get a woman in bed?
"Do you really think that just buying me a drink and exuding this poor mans pantomime of self confidence means i'm going to sleep with you?"

"No... but did I mention how much I loved reading Watership Down..."

"Take me i'm yours Prince of a 1000 enemies..."

Okay that never happened.

However i've often enjoyed making up books or giving incredibly inaccurate descriptions to peopole I know who don't read much. Such classics as "Catch 22 in the Rye" or the time I convinced some poor schmuck that "Jonathan Livingston Seagall" was a detective novel come to mind.

[zylch.livejournal.com]

I've claimed to read many books that I haven't, generally because I was busy working on a play and didn't have time to read them in time for class. A decent amount of BritLit I, for instance, consisted of me carefully listening to the class discussion for clues about the plot and characters of whatever we were supposed to have read, and then figuring out something intelligent to say so that it would look like I'd read it.

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

There are some famous works that I've lost track of whether I actually read (part of) them or have just been exposed to them in other ways. And others I think I read long ago but have no actual memory of them, and no cultural triggers to jog my memory. So in those cases I might randomly pick "read it" or "didn't read it" sometimes.

[rougewench.livejournal.com]

When I was in a class where we had to read a great novel a week, I didn't actually read a Passage to India. I only snarfed down the Cliff's Notes.

Got a B on the quiz over it though.


D.

[project-becky.livejournal.com]

I've never claimed to read a book I haven't, but I have quickly bought and read books to impress people. I just didn't comment on the book, bought it, read it quickly, then gave the impression I had read it much earlier and didn't just run out to buy it so we talk about it. I don't do that anymore, however, impressing people other than Jim not being at the top of my "to do" list nowadays.

[dramaticaddict.livejournal.com]

ah, beloved cliffs/spars/pink monkey.... thee hath gained me an A- or B+ in sooo many classes...

[lilia-blackbear.livejournal.com]

I don't recall ever saying I've read something without having read it in everyday conversation. However, in class, back in high school, I didn't read a bit of Lord of the Flies for a class once (have since read it), and I wrote a magnificent essay on the dynamics of power relations of the conch by making shit up from parts of a conversation I overheard from classmates before the class started... got an A+ and a compliment on the critical insight of it.

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

I've never claimed to have read a book that I really hadn't, but I *have* claimed to see a movie that I really hadn't. I wonder what that says about me???

[jtigermoon.livejournal.com]

In high school, I claimed to have read "Little Women." I had to write a report on it and couldn't stand the book. So I watched the movie. I did alright on the paper but the teacher did mention a lack of citations to the book.