Contents of blog copyright Book Dragon's Lair 2009-2023
I've been gone a while. I started reading fanfiction to escape and I got sucked in an abyss.

I have no idea if someone else is hosting similar challenges. I just grabbed some of what I have hosted before.

Here's to a happy year of great reading
Jan2023: Not much has changed. Writing a fanfiction now O_o as well as reading but I bought 7 new books in December and hope to get those read soon. Crossing fingers about adding challenges (late!)

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Are you a well-read reader?

A bucket list from the amazon book editors, with a list at GoodReads. How many have you read?


From a story first published in 1947 to a literary page turner, unseating a President to launching a catch phrase, children, young adult, non-fiction, there is something for everyone on this list. It is suppose to help create a well-read life. You don't have that need, do you?

I do wonder how they decided that these were the books that made up a well-read life. Did they decide on so many children's books, so many non-fiction? Did they accept nominations then vote? No matter how they did it, it is an interesting list. I own more than I've read. Some I saw the movie and decided against the book. Some I read the first in the series and said no to the rest. I √'d the ones I remember reading.

  • √ 1984 by George Orwell
  • The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  • Alice Munro: Selected Stories by Alice Munro
  • Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll ~ own
  • All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
  • Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
  • √ Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret by Judy Blume
  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
  • Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
  • Beloved by Toni Morrison
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (DNF)
  • √ Born To Run - A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
  • Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
  • A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking ~ own
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 
  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (own)
  • The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  • √ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
  • √ Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
  • The Color of Water by James McBride ~ own
  • The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  • Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
  • Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
  • The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 by Jeff Kinney (saw the movie)
  • The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank 
  • √ Dune by Frank Herbert
  • √ Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
  • The Giver by Lois Lowry ~ own
  • √ The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
  • Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
  • √ Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ~ own
  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens ~ own
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond
  • √ The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • √ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
  • The House At Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne ~ own
  • √ The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  • Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison ~ own
  • Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
  • Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
  • The Liars' Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr
  • Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
  • √ The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan
  • √ Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  • √ The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry
  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov ~ own
  • The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
  • The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
  • A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
  • √ The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
  • The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
  • Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
  • Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
  • Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
  • Moneyball by Michael Lewis (saw the movie)
  • Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham ~ own
  • The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  • Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
  • Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  • √ The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
  • The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth 
  • The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
  • Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen ~ own
  • The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
  • The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  • The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  • √ A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning: The Short-Lived Edition by Lemony Snicket 
  • The Shining by Stephen King ~ own
  • Silent Spring by Rachel Carson ~ own
  • Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut ~ own
  • The Stranger by Albert Camus
  • The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway ~ own
  • Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
  • Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee ~ own
  • Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand ~ own
  • Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
  • √ The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
  • √ Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
  • √ Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
  • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame ~ own
  • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
  • The World According to Garp by John Irving
  • √ A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion





copyright Book Dragon's Lair 2009-2014

6 comments:

Anna (herding cats-burning soup) said...

LOL according to them I'm so not well read at all. The ones I have read I was forced to read in school and really didn't enjoy and honestly hardly any of the others are on my I'd like to read them list. *shrugs* I'm okay with it though :)

Unknown said...

I saw this list on Amazon when they started advertising it. I am in the same boat. I own SO MANY of those. A few I saw the movie & decided no to the book. I have read a lot listed. A few I disagree with, like Gone Girl... I got like 100 pages in and just couldn't get into it, and I think other's should be there instead... what about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban or Wuthering Heights or Little Women or Huck Finn? I might've missed Huck Finn or Little Women... I hope I did. Then there's some other classics that in my opinion should be read because they really form our literary world. I was forced I to reading Beowolf in H.S. and yes I hated it BUT I'm also glad I read it. Our language is derived from the language was translated from. What about Shakespeare? There are just too many books to me to do just 100 that should be read in a lifetime.

jmisgro said...

I see this list is a bit different than the ones I have seen floating around the internet in the past few years!
I think by doing challenges especially genre type - a person becomes well read!!

Toni said...

I always like to look through these lists, but I'm with everyone else--too many classics missing, and I am shocked at some of the things on the list. I'd say "Devil in the White City" is one of the poorest examples of nonfiction writing I've encountered, and the author oversteps the bounds of fiction/nonfiction by including things that he couldn't possibly know that I'd call it fiction. I've read "Liar's Club," and it was fine, but a must read? Hardly. I thought "Unbroken" was a terrific book, but I don't quite see the argument for a "must read" list. But even when I don't agree with lists like this, I LOVE to look through them. I always find one or two books to add to my own "to-read" list. :)

Book Dragon said...

GREAT comments!

I like this one much better

Bev Hankins said...

I've read 36 of these. I have to say that I think it's a better list than one that posted on Book Riot at some point this past year. Their list had so many on it that if I had to read them to be well-read, then I will never be well-read.

Your linked list is better yet!

Disclaimer

In accordance to the FTC guidelines, I must state that I make no monetary gains from my reviews or endorsements here on Book Dragon's Lair. All books I review are either borrowed, purchased by me, given as a gift, won in some kind of contest, or received in exchange for an honest review.