Top 100

[via The Publishing Curve, with alterations]

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has an initiative you may have heard of called the Big Read. According to the Web site, its purpose is to "restore reading to the center of American culture." They estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

For fun, let's see how many of the top 100 books we've actually read. My list is below. How well did you do? Have you read more than 6?

Here's what you do:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you own but haven't yet read.
3) Put a star by those you intend to read someday but don't own.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy*
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller*
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read some!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy*
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini*
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan*
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac*
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville*
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce*
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath*
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

half full

While the last thing that should happen to a book lover is a bout of words escaping her, I have this blank box and not a clue how to fill it. So much is happening so fast, and I'm trying not to simply be pulled along in anticipation of what's yet to come. Three weeks are down, and I have almost three more to go in school, with two to follow. As much as my head is swimming now (mostly because there are not enough hours in the day), I'm hoping to use those two weeks of NY freedom to engage in some hardcore "fully presentness. "

I've known of this concept for quite a while now. It was at church with my brother at least four years ago one day that I witnessed what my brother would tell me was a style of "preaching" not much to his liking. The "sermon" was more like a class lecture, with the congregation following along in a book other than the Bible. I suppose it was supposed to be contemporary. Regardless, what was spoken of that day has stayed with me like a mantra. "Wherever you are, be there." It's being fully present. It's being aware of now, not bemoaning the past or worrying about the future. It's recognizing the significance of every moment in a way you can almost physically feel. When a manuscript proposal for a book on "mindfulness" came my way in the form of an editorial assignment last week, I was, for lack of a more creative phrase at the moment, pleasantly surprised. I read it with much enthusiasm, and I hope it goes to press.

I have many more things to say, but I'm going to have to leave it at this tonight, because I haven't been getting enough sleep this week, and my brain power is low. Save me, morning latte!

wisdom of the pages

So the big question is: "What's new in New York?" Well, I've been hard at work reading nothing but magazines and blogs, listening to awesome lectures and exploring the Big Apple. I've seen Wall Street, Ground Zero and the Statue of Liberty. I've eaten a huge slice of pizza at 1 a.m., and listened to mariachi music on the subway. I have not gotten lost, mugged or honked at. That's all good news.

I've gotten free copies of New York magazine, Bust, Wired, Rolling Stone, SELF, Esquire, People Style Watch, Parents, Women's Health, Conde Nast Portfolio, More, Traditional Home, Vogue, InStyle and Time Out New York. I've decided that once I settle into a job and a pad, I'll be subscribing to Bust, CN Portfolio, Blender and Adbusters. I think it's a good combination that exhibits my personality, but mostly they are just the only magazines I've read cover-to-cover and wanted more. I haven't had a real subscription in a while -- at some point I was getting RedBook, although I don't know why. I used to get Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Spin, Lifetime and Cosmo, and long before all that of course it was YM, Seventeen and American Girl. It's about time I invested in some magazines I really care about. Especially because I feel a lot more emotionally attached to the medium than ever before -- and even more so than I ever was to newspapers.

I've picked some favorites from the speakers, but they've all been pretty fantastic. I've learned so much stuff that I wish had been addressed in college. I can't wait for universities like Auburn to catch up to the publishing future. There's so much more excitement now. When I think Auburn journalism, I think black and white; when I think new media, everything is in color. I'm either brainwashed or just really, really, really doing the right thing for myself. I know newspapers do lots of great things on the Web, but they have definite limits. They can't stretch those limits like magazines can. Even the book business is experimenting with video "book trailers," which I learned today on GalleyCat.

I have so much going on in my head right now that it's hard to keep it all straight. So I think I'm going to spend some time typing up my notes from the past two weeks. But not before I share some more wisdom from magazine pros. This time more on the serious side, if you can decipher it out of context.

Young people are "heat seekers."

New magazines fill a "white space" in the market. (Not unlike how Athena filled her "blank spaces." Hmm ... )

You can hire a "voice doctor" if your writers have the wrong tone.

Editors are sometimes disappointed to realize "it's still just a magazine."

A magazine is a "meal" for readers. What would you rather eat?

You can enjoy a story without even reading it if it's designed well.

"Ads are like children. They're all beautiful."

"Anything can be done. You cannot be held back by what you don't have."

The well is a sacred space.

"People want to know more than what's on the surface. The deserve more because they are smarter."

Don't live in the past.

Search-engine optimization is a "cult science."

"The classic image of the blog is the 22-year-old sitting at home in pajamas saying bitchy things."

Comments are much more interesting than letters.

Flash looks cool, but it doesn't drive traffic.

"It's a very sober environment."

Consumers have been empowered to advocate brands.

"Choice is not the enemy."

"Don't assume tried-and-true will continue to perform."

"TV is icky."

You have to compete with yourself so no one else does.

People don't want supermodels anymore. They want celebrities they like.

People don't read web content at home in their precious leisure time, they read it during stolen moments at work.

There is a difference between telling someone, "Stop eating before you're full," and telling them, "Leave three bites on your plate."

"Tri-quarterly" = we "tried" to be quarterly, but it didn't always happen.

"Knitting is a lot more lucrative than feminism."

publishing immersion

So although I don't have time to go into much of what's going on in NYC right now, I did want to note a few choice words from today's sessions led by magazine-industry professionals.

"People with money have limited imaginations."

"Jesus sells."

"Print it all out. We'll recycle it later."

they're all going to laugh at you

It's about 6 a.m., and I shouldn't be awake yet. But I am, so I thought I would make the best of it. I couldn't concentrate enough to read, but after a little coffee jolt I thought I could at least transcribe my initial thoughts on "Solipsist." I actually read this book several years ago -- possibly as far back as high school. It's an intriguing book, supposedly fiction but so deep inside the character's head you wonder if Rollins isn't writing about himself. It reminds me of the feeling I got reading "Notes from Underground" -- a sort of diary of a madman who may or may not actually be mad. This character is a true solipsist, which the back of the book so generously defines for us as one who believes the only verifiable reality is the self. 

We find out the character's name is Robert Fulton. He's basically a recluse inside his own mind. He does venture out but interacts with strangers only to his chagrin. His anxiety about potential conversations causes him to practice smiles and casual phrases in a mirror to prepare for the outside world. Apparently he's spent a good amount of time there -- everywhere he goes people he doesn't know call him by name. So he may have Rollins-like fame, or maybe he was a boxer. The only clue so far is that he spent "too many nights knocking my guts out for the approval of strangers" (34). Either way, he has developed a "me versus them" attitude that seems to represent fear cloaked in hatred. Yet he participates in a small percentage of the niceties he detests. When he's unable to simply look at the ground and avoid eye contact, human interaction makes him feel like he's drowning. We can all relate to some extent, at least to the feeling of not being able to escape an awkward situation. When it's finally over, he says the feeling of relief was "like being let up for air after having your head held underwater" (32).

Basically, the whole book is one long awesome quotation, but I've managed to pick out a few that really stuck out to me in the first 34 pages.

"If I was a woman these days, I'd be killing motherfuckers. My handgun would never be cool and my hands would be covered in testicular blood. I would have a horrible reputation with a lot of men because I would be calling them on their weak bullshit left and right." (9)

"I tried to love and failed. I tried to hate and got bored." (9)

"I know you think about sex all the time. I know you have killed people in your mind. I know that you say a lot of things to yourself that you would never say out loud. I know you say a lot of things you don't mean for fear of what the other chicken shit lying motherfuckers will say about you." (10)

"Maybe it's time to rebel! Rebellion? You mean that neurotic posturing you do before apathy sets in and The Simpsons comes on?" (10)

"When you allow yourself to trust someone, you never really do all the way, so why lie?" (20)

"I turn around and he comes up and tells me that I kicked him in the head when he was nineteen. I struggle for something to say but the only word that comes out is, 'Good.'"

Pause for feeling of satisfaction.

"He says he has a son now and he is also a fan of mine. I recover in time to attempt to use humor. 'Well, bring him over sometime and I'll kick him too.' I laugh, he laughs. I do the smile that I practiced in the mirror and the wave that I saw in a movie and keep walking. That's a wrap. Good scene" (33).

• acrimony = harsh or bitter disposition
• misanthropy = hatred, dislike or distrust of humankind

feed your head

Surprise, surprise. I've already finished another book. It's a short book, but it was heart-wrenching nonetheless. "Go Ask Alice" is a young-adult title containing the diary of an anonymous teenage girl who finds herself swallowed up into the world of drugs and sex, causing her to run away from home, and eventually leading to her death.

See the title's inspiration here.

A girl I work with said she read this book in "like seventh grade." I'm not sure I would've been ready to hear about acid trips and rape when I was that young, but the diarist is just about 15 when she begins using. She starts out as your average teen, talking about a crush on a boy and trying to please her parents. Her first experience with drugs is at a party where the kids decide to play the button game with tainted drinks, and it's all downhill from there.  

It's pretty interesting how quickly the events unfold when seen through a diary. You don't get the normal interaction of a novel, just pure introspection. I admit I read through it pretty quickly though -- it just moved so fast and was so easy to read. I didn't mark a lot of quotes, but a few.

On parents:

Page 25: "Oh, I do hope I won't have to be a nagging mother, but I guess I'll have to be, else I don't see how anything will ever be accomplished."

Page 29: "Parents really are a poor judge of character. Sometimes I wonder how they made it to the age they are."

Various memorable moments:

Page 34-35: She describes her first acid trip. It starts with colorful patterns on the ceiling, quickly moves to her words tasting like colors, and ends up with her seeing in 100 dimensions and possessing the "wisdom of the ages."

Page 46: "I must repent and forgive myself and start over; after all I just turned 15 and I can't stop life and get off."

Page 47: "Valley of the Dolls" flashback: "Finally he broke down and gave me the pills. Actually I don't need the sleep as much as I need the escape. It's a wonderful way to escape. I think I can't stand it and then I just take a pill and wait for sweet nothingness to take over."

Page 109: After returning home from running away: "But I wonder if I will ever feel completely new again. Or will I spend the rest of my life feeling like a walking disease????"

Page 111-12: "Then (the kitten) tried to nurse my ear and the feeling in me was so big I thought I was going to break wide open. It was better than a drug trip,  a thousand times better, a million times, a trillion times. These things are real!"

I'm not sure I know exactly how to feel about this book. It is definitely a testament to the torment a teenage girl can experience. You're listening to what's happening in her head, but she constantly contradicts herself, promising to never do drugs again then giving in to peer pressure the next day. It's two years of on-again, off-again tragedy. Drugs change people, control them, sweep them off their feet. They kill people. 

This book would make a really interesting study, and I'll have to read it more slowly one day. But I am feeling its effects days later, even just with the constant reminder of "White Rabbit" running endlessly through my head. "Go ask Alice, I think she'll know ... "

I leave for NYU SPI in a week. I am taking five books with me, four if I finish "Solipsist" by Henry Rollins this week, which I intend to, since it belongs to my brother and he wants to lend it to my other brother too. The other chosen few are "Anais Nin Reader," "Sex and the City," "The Singer" and "Searching for God Knows What."

book to not crack

What a stark contrast "Rebecca" is to a book I happened to read the first 30 pages of the other day: Nicholas Sparks' "At First Sight." I had forgotten to bring "Rebecca" with me to work, but my Harry Potter-loving coworker had left this behind. Now, I used to work in a bookstore, and I remember seeing this author's works, with their inviting covers and immense popularity. Intrigued, I opened it up and began to read. The horror, the horror! It was the most awful nonsense I ever saw. Every other sentence a cliche, so predictable I probably read those 30 pages in under 10 minutes. It was as easy to read as it is to watch a sitcom, only not nearly as entertaining. Mindless drivel. Like watching an endless string of commercials. No literary value at all, just something he can easily knock out in a few weeks because he's trained himself to write with a formula, just as I trained myself to write a news story. But you can't do that with books and expect to be remembered. Sure, his name will be on bestseller-list records, and they'll continue to make decent movies out of the relatively relatable stories, but no one should ever consider this madness seriously as good writing. It's laughable, and I felt contaminated for even touching the thing.