Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of the New York Public Library’s Books of the Century

A bit different, and this one is sorted into categories, so I’ll work with it.

Italics represent ones I’ve read, bolded italicized are ones I’ve liked, underlined italicized are ones I’ve read for school, *asterisked* ones are ones I’ve seen the movie of.

Landmarks Of Modern Literature
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Great Gatsby* by  F. Scott Fitzgerald
Native Son by Richard Wright
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Nature’s Realm
…none of them.

Protest and Progress
The Grapes of Wrath* by John Steinbeck

Colonialism and Its Aftermath
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Minda and Spirit
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest* by Ken Kesey

Popular Culture and Mass Entertainment (I take issue with this title, incidentally; it makes it sound less serious and therefore less worthy than the others)
Dracula* by Bram Stoker
Gone With the Wind* by Margaret Mitchell
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Women Rise
…also none, surprisingly.

Economics and Technology
…and none of these.  Half surprising, half not.

Utopias and Dystopias
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz* by L. Frank Baum
Nineteen Eighty-Four* by George Orwell
A Clockwork Orange* by Anthony Burrell
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

War, Holocaust, Totalitarianism
…also none of these.

Optimism, Joy, Gentility
Pygmalion* by George Bernard Shaw
Winnie-the-Pooh* by A. A. Milne
The Hobbit* by J. R. R. Tolkien
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (I mean, I guess I enjoyed it.  I was a child, I don’t remember)
To Kill a Mockingbird* by Harper Lee

Favorites of Childhood and Youth
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe* by C. S. Lewis
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
Where the Wild Things Are* by Maurice Sendak

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of just how functional the romances in 10 of the 100+ books to read before you die are

Interrupting my grand analyze every 100 books to read before you die list series to discuss some of literature’s most famed, idealized romances and just how functional they would be.  People always say that television gives us unrealistic expectations for… something.  I don’t deny this.  But I’m pretty sure that literature could be just as guilty.  It’s just sometimes better-written, older, and not interrupted by commercial breaks, so people don’t always think about it.

I mean.  Books and I, we’re buddies.  We’re close friends.  But TV doesn’t have to suck, right?  And graphic novels and comic books don’t have to suck either.  And neither do films.  And… yeah.

So.

10. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Uhm, hell no.  Scarlett and Rhett are one of the great romances of literature (and cinema) and they… are really, really not functional.  When the most memorable thing that one partner said to the other is “I don’t give a damn,” I don’t see how it could be anything but dysfunctional.

9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Again, hell no.  The great romances of this book are built around creeping, adultery, and the idle rich.  And Gatsby dies.  There is no function in their romance.

8. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Again,, adultery, divorce, sexual liberation that’s really just treating other people like crap.  And the idle rich.  The literary idle rich never have satisfactory romances.

7. Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
Oh look!  I wouldn’t say that every relationship in these books is super-functional.  No.  And I’m skeptical that every single pair of Harry’s Hogwarts classmates who married and popped out kids at the exact same time is still in love howevermany years later and still functional.  But then there’s Molly and Arthur, Tonks and Lupin, Bill and Fleur, things like that.  It’s hit-or-miss, but at least not a total miss, right?

6. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
This… is a strange one.  Meg and John Brooke, yes.  Always forever and then he dies and it’s sad.  Marmee and Father, yes.  Even if it’s one of those “this book was written back when most parents that were decent human beings had stable relationships so there” cases.  Jo and the professor, ye-eesss?  I mean, I six-year-old shipped Jo and Teddy like mad, and I don’t believe for a minute, incidentally, that Teddy and Amy’s marriage is an entirely stable one, but I think in their way Jo and Bhaer had something good.

5. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
HA.

4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The title… kind of sets you up for a whole bunch of not-entirely-stable people living not-entirely-stable lives.  It’s very interesting, but way not romantic.

3. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
I also six-year-old shipped Anne and Gilbert, forever, and the fact that they probably still get into silly fights just means that silly fights won’t ruin their relationship because they love each other.

2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Really, any Shakespeare play is amazingly dysfunctional.  Even the comedies.  Even the romances for crying out loud.  The Winter’s Tale?  Have mercy.  Hamlet is one of the two kings-and-queens of dysfunction plays, though.  I mean.  Gertrude + anyone is a disaster.  Hamlet + Ophelia is a hideous mess.  Even if I have this weird soft spot for Ophelia’s crazyassedness.  (I read this book that was retelling it from her point of view, and she faked her crazy and her death and ran away, and eventually hooked up with Horatio.  That was better.)

1. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Yetagain, HA.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of someone else’s list of 100 books to read before you die

This week, the list comes from Literary Workshop at Blogspot.

Italicized titles are ones I’ve read.  Bolded italicized titles are ones I liked.  Underlined italicized titles are ones I read for school.

The Bible (ish)
The Odyssey by Homer
Oedipus, Antigone by Sophocles
Beowulf by Anonymous
Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear by Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (I read… parts.)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (again, parts.)
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (again, the blasphemous explanation)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
and I’ve read like… two Flannery O’Connor stories.
14 out of 100 read.  4.5 out of 100 sincerely enjoyed.  10 out of 100 read for school. 

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: my success as an English major measured by how many SparkNoted titles I’ve read (O-S)

O:
The Odyssey by Homer
The Oedipus Plays by Sophocles
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Old Testament
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Othello by William Shakespeare
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (well, I enjoyed it in seventh grade?)
8 of 24 titles.  3 of 24 were sincerely enjoyed.

P:
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (does this count?  I read… the first four chapters or something, I’ve seen the miniseries and the 2005 one with Keira Knightley, I’ve read …and Zombies and god knows how many made-up sequels?)
3 of 26 titles.  0 of 26 were sincerely enjoyed.

R:
The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
4 of 25 titles.  2 of 25 were sincerely enjoyed.

S:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (I’m almost positive, anyway?)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (…and Sea Monsters?)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares (I had no idea anyone taught this in school, ever.  I read it when it was a twelve-year-old who ate up teenage girl books.)
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (I feel like I’d like it if I read it again, maybe)
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
8 of 44 titles.  2 of 44 were sincerely enjoyed.

–your fangirl heroine.