What do you read?

I'm a reader.

Bet my book blog already gave that away, huh?

But it's been a defining descriptor in my life.

When other kids played video games, I read.

When the rest of my family was hunkered down in front of the TV, I read.

When I was grounded, when I was bored, when I was sick, when I was lonely, when I was hyper, when I was sad, when I simply woke up in the morning...I read.

It's always amazed me when other people profess to have no time to read. Bullshit. Pure, unadulterated bullshit. They're simply not making time to read.

In any case, I found this little survey over at Our Box of Rain, a blog maintained by one of my bloggy friends at How to Have a Baby. It's fun - steal and take yourself!

Over at Read and Release, we'll be spending the 4th of July weekend catching up on book reviews - I have about 15 to add - and then launching into this summer's theme: The Pulitzer Project. I'll be (attempting) to read through, in order, every book that has ever won the Pulitzer Prize. That's a lot! I'm counting on my neighborhood library to fill in the gaps when I don't already own the book.

Hope you have a great summer of reading, too!

(start survey)

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

Well, let's see.

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE.
4. Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)"

The List:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
   I am NOT a Jane Austen fan. I never will be. She annoys me. You can stone me now.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
   I think I'm the only person in the world who hates Tolkien. I just cannot get into his absurd world of fantasy. For whatever reason, my mind just tries to self destruct when I try.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
   I'd actually rather not read this series, but I'm going to force myself to just to see what all the hoopla is about. I suspect I will be disappointed. Hubby got the first 3 or 4 as a gift but hasn't cracked them open, so we'll be tag-team reading them, like we did with The Dark Tower series a couple years ago.
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
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
    I just read another du Maurier work and was disappointed...I'm counting on Rebecca to reverse my opinion of this author.
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
    Hated the movie. Going to skip the book. I know. Sin.
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
    Eventually, I'll work up the courage to tackle this one.
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
    I've been chidded for missing this...I'll get to it, promise!
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    Another one that I have to work up the courage to get to.
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
    And another...good old 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
    Same as 33...but I've read the entire Chronicles.
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
    I've heard fabulous things about this book...it's on the list.
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
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
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
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
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
    Only so I can see what all the hype is about...
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
    The movie is hilarious...hopefully I'll like the book. I hate to go in reverse from movie to book, but we'll give it a try.
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
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
    Um, the entire works of Shakespeare is #14...
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Ok, of the 100, I've read 46. Of the 46, I've identified 9 as must reads. In addition, there are 12 that I intend to read. So that leaves 42...some I've never heard of. Others inspire no interest in me. I'm not remorseful of this - everyone has differing tastes in reading materials.

Incidentally, I'm wondering who originally compiled this list of 100 - I'm curious as to the make up and how these 100 books came to be lumped together. Is this based on lifetime sales? Perceived value of the writing? Someone's random opinion? What? In any case, I wouldn't take this as the ultimate "have you read it" list, but a great start to fuel your reading lists!