Justin Menard - Yep » reading list http://justinmenard.ca Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:30:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 The Ultimate Mega Greatest Best Book List http://justinmenard.ca/2010/01/24/the-ultimate-mega-book-list/ http://justinmenard.ca/2010/01/24/the-ultimate-mega-book-list/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:38:56 +0000 Justin http://justinmenard.ca/?p=291

How do you select your next book? Do you ask a friend, go to Amazon’s ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…’, look at a top 100 list or simply brows books stores? I, like most people have done all of the above.

In order to better organize my reading, I have just completed my master list using 34 Top 100 or must read lists. I was able to compile all 13307 books and rank them.

How did I rank them? I used two numbers. First, I used the number of lists that a book was on. So if a book was on 8 lists it was automatically hither than a book that was on 7 lists.  Secondly, all the books that are on the same number of lists were ranked by the placements on those lists. If a book was ranked number 1 on a list, I gave it 99 points, if a book was number 100, it got 0 points.

Some numbers:

  • 34 Lists
  • 13 307 total books
  • 10 892 books are unique
  • 184 books are on3 lists
  • 97 books are on 4 lists
  • 60 books are on 5 lists
  • 50 books are on 6 lists
  • 23 books are on 7 lists
  • 16 books are on 8 lists
  • 11 books are on 9 lists
  • 10 books are on 10 lists
  • 3 books are on 11 lists
  • 3 books are on 12 lists
  • 1 book is on 13 lists
  • 3 books are on 14 lists
  • 2 books are on 15 lists
  • 5 books are on 16 lists
  • 2 books are on 17 lists
  • 1 book is on 18 lists

The lists that I used:

  1. 100 books nominated by Canadian readers
  2. Time’ s 100 best English-language nobels from 1923 to the present
  3. The 100 greatest novels of all time by the guardian-observer
  4. Random House 100 Best Novels (Board’s List)
  5. Random House 100 Best Novels (Redears’s List)
  6. NPR’s Audience Picks: 100 Best Beach Books Ever
  7. NYPL Books of the Century
  8. Telegraph’s top 100 Books
  9. Guardian’s 1000 novels everyone must read
  10. Telegraph’s 110 best books: the perfect library
  11. National Geographic’s The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time
  12. The 100 Best Business Books of All Time
  13. CWA’s Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time CWA
  14. The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time The U.S. list
  15. BBC’s Big Read
  16. Top 100 Fantasy Books
  17. Sports Illustrated’s The Top 100 Sports Books of All Time
  18. Library of World Literature
  19. CounterPunch’s Top 100
  20. Goodread’s Best Books Ever
  21. Top 100 fantasy books of all time
  22. Radcliffe list
  23. Oprah’s Book Club
  24. CounterPunch’s Favorite 100 Nonfiction Books in Translation, Published in English Since 1900
  25. Top 100 Best Social Media Books
  26. St. John’s College reading list
  27. Wikipedia List of best-selling books
  28. 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
  29. New York Times bestsellers
  30. IMBA’s 100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century
  31. Larry McCaffery’s “20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English Language Books of Fiction“
  32. Waterstone’s Top 100 Books of the Century
  33. BBC’s Big Read 101-200
  34. Pulitzer Prize

My List of Best 100 Books

#

Title

Author

# List

total
1 1984 George Orwell 18 869
2 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 17 892
3 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 17 889
4 The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 16 1049
5 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 16 802
6 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 16 706
7 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 16 584
8 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 16 500
9 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 15 857
10 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 15 560
11 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 14 687
12 Ulysses James Joyce 14 579
13 On the Road Jack Kerouac 14 403
14 Lord of the Flies William Golding 13 500
15 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 12 636
16 Animal Farm George Orwell 12 585
17 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 12 522
18 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 11 568
19 Beloved Toni Morrison 11 314
20 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 11 275
21 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 10 488
22 Dune Frank Herbert 10 418
23 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 10 364
24 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 10 359
25 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 10 357
26 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 10 274
27 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 10 270
28 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 10 264
29 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 10 236
30 The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood 10 197
31 Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie 10 177
32 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 9 487
33 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 9 446
34 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 9 420
35 Watership Down Richard Adams 9 380
36 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 9 346
37 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 9 285
38 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 9 250
39 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 9 238
40 The Color Purple Alice Walker 9 194
41 Dracula Bram Stoker 9 168
42 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 9 115
43 Harry Potter Series J. K. Rowling 8 496
44 Little Women Louisa M. Alcott 8 460
45 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 8 440
46 Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll 8 394
47 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 8 364
48 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving 8 308
49 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 8 304
50 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 8 296
51 The Woman In White Wilkie Collins 8 295
52 Of Mice And Men John Steinbeck 8 284
53 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 8 253
54 Charlotte’s Web E. B. White 8 229
55 Tropic Of Cancer Henry Miller 8 161
56 The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles 8 135
57 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 8 102
58 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 8 67
59 Life of Pi Yann Martel 7 300
60 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 7 283
61 The Stand Stephen King 7 275
62 The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett 7 249
63 Emma Jane Austen 7 246
64 Under The Volcano Malcolm Lowry 7 236
65 The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan 7 214
66 Native Son Richard Wright 7 203
67 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 7 199
68 The World According to Garp John Irving 7 197
69 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 7 193
70 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold John le Carré 7 191
71 The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver 7 188
72 The Godfather Mario Puzo 7 179
73 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John le Carré 7 159
74 Middlemarch George Eliot 7 153
75 Moby Dick Herman Melville 7 128
76 The Magus John Fowles 7 109
77 Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf 7 108
78 Perfume Patrick Süskind 7 101
79 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey 7 82
80 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 7 72
81 The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger 6 331
82 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 6 305
83 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini 6 302
84 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 6 279
85 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 6 267
86 Memoirs Of A Geisha Arthur Golden 6 252
87 Winnie-the-Pooh A. A. Milne 6 231
88 The Diary of a Young Girl,The Diary of Anne Frank Anne Frank 6 224
89 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 6 219
90 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 6 205
91 East of Eden John Steinbeck 6 203
92 Bridget Jones’s Diary Helen Fielding 6 182
93 Gravity’s Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 6 176
94 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold 6 172
95 The Call of the Wild Jack London 6 166
96 U. S. A. John Dos Passos 6 164
97 The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain 6 158
98 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute 6 150
99 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 6 149
100 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 6 146

And the others are…

101 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 6 140
102 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 6 140
103 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 6 123
104 Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett 6 106
105 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 6 104
106 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 6 104
107 The Odyssey Homer 6 103
108 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 6 102
109 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 6 100
110 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 6 100
111 Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift 6 96
112 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 6 96
113 Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides 6 94
114 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 6 93
115 The Talented Mr Ripley Patricia Highsmith 6 84
116 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 6 83
117 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 6 68
118 The Secret History Donna Tartt 6 68
119 Atonement Ian McEwan 6 53
120 Portnoy’s Complaint Philip Roth 6 48
121 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 6 46
122 The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 6 44
123 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 6 42
124 The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing 6 41
125 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 6 30
126 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles 6 28
127 KIM Rudyard Kipling 6 27
128 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 6 25
129 Possession A. S. Byatt 6 20
130 Cry, the Beloved Country Alan Paton 6 6
131 Anne of Green Gables Lucy Maud Montgomery 5 361
132 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown 5 281
133 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman 5 279
134 The Alchemist Paulo Coelho 5 259
135 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 5 227
136 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks 5 223
137 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl 5 220
138 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 5 218
139 The Thorn Birds Colleen McCollough 5 192
140 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie 5 183
141 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 5 169
142 Tess of the D’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 5 163
143 The Day of the Jackal Frederick Forsyth 5 163
144 Howard’s End E. M. Forster 5 162
145 Presumed Innocent Scott Turow 5 156
146 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence 5 152
147 The Once and Future King T. H. White 5 142
148 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth 5 140
149 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 5 135
150 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 5 131
151 The Trial Franz Kafka 5 129
152 All the King’s Men Robert Penn Warren 5 126
153 Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin 5 125
154 The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence 5 125
155 Brighton Rock Graham Greene 5 124
156 Murder Must Advertise Dorothy L. Sayers 5 122
157 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 5 115
158 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 5 114
159 A Room with a View E. M. Forster 5 113
160 I, Claudius Robert Graves 5 113
161 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 5 103
162 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 5 100
163 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 5 98
164 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy 5 97
165 Jonathan Livingston Seagull Richard Bach 5 83
166 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 5 80
167 At Swim-Two-Birds Flann O’Brien 5 77
168 Day Of The Locust Nathanael West 5 76
169 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks 5 75
170 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 5 74
171 Lonesome Dove Larry McMurty 5 73
172 Lady Chatterley’s Lover D. H. Lawrence 5 71
173 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 5 70
174 Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis 5 65
175 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 5 65
176 Neuromancer William Gibson 5 64
177 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 5 60
178 A Dance to the Music of Time Anthony Powell 5 57
179 The Plague Albert Camus 5 54
180 The Road Cormac McCarthy 5 53
181 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 5 52
182 American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis 5 47
183 Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs 5 47
184 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 5 46
185 Night Elie Wiesel 5 36
186 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 5 29
187 Herzog Saul Bellow 5 25
188 The Adventures Of Augie March Saul Bellow 5 19
189 Maus Art Spiegelman 5 0
190 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 5 0
191 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 4 258
192 Twilight Stephenie Meyer 4 235
193 Ender’s Game Orson Scott Card 4 228
194 The Collected Sherlock Holmes Short Stories Arthur Conan Doyle 4 189
195 The Moonstone Wilkie Collins 4 185
196 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis de Bernieres 4 177
197 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 4 174
198 Outlander Diana Gabaldon 4 173
199 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 4 172
200 Interview with the Vampire Anne Rice 4 164
201 The Ambassadors Henry James 4 150
202 Wise Blood Flannery O’Connor 4 144
203 Persuasion Jane Austen 4 127
204 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 4 127
205 Sophie’s World Jostein Gaarder 4 119
206 The Five People You Meet in Heaven Mitch Albom 4 115
207 I Know This Much Is True Wally Lamb 4 113
208 The Recognitions William Gaddis 4 112
209 Tender is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald 4 110
210 Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy 4 105
211 The Wings of the Dove Henry James 4 105
212 Bleak House Charles Dickens 4 98
213 Eye of the Needle Ken Follett 4 98
214 Ball Four Jim Bouton 4 97
215 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 4 97
216 She’s Come Undone Wally Lamb 4 97
217 Fifth Business Robertson Davies 4 95
218 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 4 93
219 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Laurence Sterne 4 93
220 American Gods Neil Gaiman 4 92
221 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 4 91
222 Trainspotting Irvine Welsh 4 90
223 Light in August William Faulkner 4 89
224 Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt 4 87
225 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 4 84
226 Gorky Park Martin Cruz Smith 4 83
227 The Glass Key Dashiell Hammett 4 81
228 Underworld Don DeLillo 4 81
229 The Third Man Graham Greene 4 80
230 A Thief of Time Tony Hillerman 4 78
231 Kane And Abel Jeffrey Archer 4 76
232 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens 4 75
233 Red Dragon Thomas Harris 4 73
234 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen 4 71
235 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 4 71
236 The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers 4 71
237 Shogun James Clavell 4 68
238 The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad 4 68
239 A Handful Of Dust Evelyn Waugh 4 66
240 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 4 66
241 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Robert Tressell 4 66
242 The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith 4 65
243 The Hunt for Red October Tom Clancy 4 63
244 The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene 4 60
245 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons 4 59
246 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 4 59
247 Deliverance James Dickey 4 58
248 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 4 55
249 Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner 4 54
250 Franny and Zooey J. D. Salinger 4 54
251 Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 4 49
252 IT Stephen King 4 45
253 Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee 4 44
254 The New York Trilogy Paul Auster 4 44
255 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon 4 41
256 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 4 34
257 Main Street Sinclair Lewis 4 33
258 Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut 4 32
259 Hamlet William Shakespeare 4 29
260 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 4 29
261 The Power and the Glory Graham Greene 4 28
262 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 4 24
263 The Horse Whisperer Nicholas Evans 4 23
264 The Iliad Homer 4 20
265 White Noise Don DeLillo 4 18
266 All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy 4 17
267 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 4 15
268 The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells 4 15
269 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow 4 14
270 Loving Henry Green 4 11
271 Money Martin Amis 4 10
272 Under the Net Iris Murdoch 4 5
273 The Shining Stephen King 4 4
274 Rabbit, Run John Updike 4 3
275 American Pastoral Philip Roth 4 1
276 Gargantua and Pantagruel François Rabelais 4 0
277 Get Shorty Elmore Leonard 4 0
278 Humboldt’s Gift Saul Bellow 4 0
279 Play It As It Lays Joan Didion 4 0
280 The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison 4 0
281 The Day of the Triffids John Wyndham 4 0
282 The Lover Marguerite Duras 4 0
283 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 4 0
284 The Shipping News E. Annie Proulx 4 0
285 The Time Machine H. G. Wells 4 0
286 White Teeth Zadie Smith 4 0
287 The Bible Various 3 248
288 The Princess Bride William Goldman 3 216
289 The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey 3 195
290 Magician Raymond E. Feist 3 187
291 Farewell My Lovely Raymond Chandler 3 172
292 Wizard’s First Rule Terry Goodkind 3 164
293 The Nine Tailors Dorothy L. Sayers 3 154
294 The IPCRESS File Len Deighton 3 148
295 Mort Terry Pratchett 3 138
296 The Red Tent Anita Diamant 3 138
297 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke 3 137
298 The Mists Of Avalon Marion Zimmer Bradley 3 133
299 Trent’s Last Case E. C. Bentley 3 133
300 Rogue Male Geoffrey Household 3 131
301 Water for Elephants Sara Gruen 3 124
302 Black Beauty Anna Sewell 3 117
303 Murder on the Orient Express Agatha Christie 3 109
304 The Moving Toyshop Edmund Crispin 3 103
305 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett 3 101
306 The Public Burning Robert Coover 3 96
307 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 3 95
308 Clarissa Samuel Richardson 3 94
309 Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos 3 92
310 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 3 92
311 Tuesdays with Morrie Mitch Albom 3 90
312 A River Runs Through It Norman Maclean 3 89
313 The Silmarillion J. R. R. Tolkien 3 89
314 Wild Swans Jung Chang 3 89
315 The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler 3 88
316 The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 3 87
317 The Colour of Magic Terry Pratchett 3 86
318 She: A History of Adventure H. Rider Haggard 3 84
319 The Silence of the Lambs Thomas Harris 3 84
320 Fall on Your Knees Ann-Marie MacDonald 3 83
321 The Spirit of St. Louis Charles A. Lindbergh 3 81
322 Seven Years in Tibet Heinrich Harrer 3 80
323 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 3 80
324 Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow 3 79
325 Titus Groan Mervyn Peake 3 78
326 Jaws Peter Benchley 3 77
327 Like Water for Chocolate Laura Esquivel 3 73
328 Daniel Deronda George Eliot 3 72
329 Judgement in Stone Ruth Rendell 3 72
330 The Shell Seekers Rosamunde Pilcher 3 72
331 SCOOP Evelyn Waugh 3 71
332 The Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler 3 71
333 The Thin Man Dashiell Hammett 3 69
334 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson 3 68
335 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 3 67
336 The Clan of the Cave Bear Jean M. Auel 3 67
337 Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome 3 67
338 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome 3 66
339 Cat’s Cradle Kurt Vonnegut 3 65
340 The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder 3 63
341 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 3 62
342 Gormenghast Mervyn Peake 3 61
343 Crash J. G. Ballard 3 60
344 The Hollow Man John Dickson Carr 3 60
345 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 3 59
346 The BFG Roald Dahl 3 59
347 Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann 3 57
348 Cold Mountain Charles Frazier 3 56
349 Smallbone Deceased Michael Gilbert 3 56
350 Empire Falls Richard Russo 3 55
351 My Antonia Willa Cather 3 55
352 The Laughing Policeman Maj Sjöwall 3 54
353 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather 3 50
354 The Awakening Kate Chopin 3 50
355 Nightwood Djuna Barnes 3 48
356 A Taste for Death P. D. James 3 47
357 Sophie’s Choice William Styron 3 47
358 The Celestine Prophecy James Redfield 3 46
359 Libra Don DeLillo 3 45
360 Jazz Toni Morrison 3 44
361 Parades End Ford Madox Ford 3 43
362 Smiley’s People John le Carré 3 42
363 Malone Dies Samuel Beckett 3 40
364 Our Man in Havana Graham Greene 3 39
365 From Here to Eternity James Jones 3 38
366 The Wapshot Chronicle John Cheever 3 37
367 The Quiet American Graham Greene 3 33
368 Watchmen Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons 3 33
369 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 3 29
370 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens 3 29
371 A House for Mr. Biswas V. S. Naipaul 3 28
372 Ironweed William Kennedy 3 28
373 The English Patient Michael Ondaatje 3 26
374 How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie 3 25
375 The Friends of Eddie Coyle George V. Higgins 3 24
376 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 3 23
377 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 3 22
378 Germinal Emile Zola 3 22
379 The Manchurian Candidate Richard Condon 3 21
380 Cannery Row John Steinbeck 3 19
381 The Hobbit Nicholas Blake 3 19
382 The Executioner’s Song Norman Mailer 3 19
383 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 3 18
384 I Capture The Castle Dodie Smith 3 18
385 The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen 3 16
386 V Thomas Pynchon 3 15
387 Lanark Alasdair Gray 3 14
388 Peyton Place Grace Metalious 3 14
389 The Collector John Fowles 3 14
390 The Old Wives Tale Arnold Bennett 3 13
391 The Stone Diaries Carol Shields 3 12
392 Blindness José Saramago 3 11
393 The Guns of Navarone Alistair MacLean 3 11
394 Devil in a Blue Dress Walter Mosley 3 8
395 Jurassic Park Michael Crichton 3 8
396 Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey 3 8
397 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera 3 7
398 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck 3 7
399 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 3 6
400 High Fidelity Nick Hornby 3 5
401 The Bourne Identity Robert Ludlum 3 5
402 The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss 3 5
403 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas 3 3
404 White Oleander Janet Fitch 3 3
405 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 3 1
406 The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington 3 1
407 The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie 3 1
408 A Death in the Family James Agee 3 0
409 A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley 3 0
410 Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Vladimir Nabokov 3 0
411 Andersonville MacKinlay Kantor 3 0
412 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin 3 0
413 Bonjour Tristesse Françoise Sagan 3 0
414 Breakfast at Tiffany’s Truman Capote 3 0
415 Call it Sleep Henry Roth 3 0
416 Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 3 0
417 Cat’s Eye Margaret Atwood 3 0
418 Christ Stopped at Eboli Carlo Levi 3 0
419 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 3 0
420 Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson 3 0
421 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 3 0
422 Delta of Venus Anaïs Nin 3 0
423 Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 3 0
424 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 3 0
425 Everything is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer 3 0
426 Foundation Isaac Asimov 3 0
427 Gilead Marilynne Robinson 3 0
428 House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski 3 0
429 Hunger Knut Hamsun 3 0
430 Independent People Halldór Laxness 3 0
431 London Fields Martin Amis 3 0
432 Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford 3 0
433 Master and Commander Patrick O’Brian 3 0
434 On Beauty Zadie Smith 3 0
435 Personal History Katharine Graham 3 0
436 Rabbit is Rich John Updike 3 0
437 Remembrance of Things Past Marcel Proust 3 0
438 Rickshaw Boy Lao She 3 0
439 Season of Migration to the North Tayeb Salih 3 0
440 Silas Marner George Eliot 3 0
441 Smilla’s Sense of Snow Peter Høeg 3 0
442 The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood 3 0
443 The Caine Mutiny Herman Wouk 3 0
444 The Castle Franz Kafka 3 0
445 The Confessions of Nat Turner William Styron 3 0
446 The Cruel Sea Nicholas Monsarrat 3 0
447 The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon 3 0
448 The End of the Affair Graham Greene 3 0
449 The Go-Between L. P. Hartley 3 0
450 The Good Soldier Schweik Jaroslav Hasek 3 0
451 The Heat of the Day Elizabeth Bowen 3 0
452 The Hours Michael Cunningham 3 0
453 The Human Stain Philip Roth 3 0
454 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 3 0
455 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 3 0
456 The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead 3 0
457 The Man with the Golden Arm Nelson Algren 3 0
458 The Man without Qualities Robert Musil 3 0
459 The Mandarins Simone de Beauvoir 3 0
460 The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy 3 0
461 The Optimist’s Daughter Eudora Welty 3 0
462 The Reader Bernhard Schlink 3 0
463 The Red and the Black Stendhal 3 0
464 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. DuBois 3 0
465 The Stranger Albert Camus 3 0
466 The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell 3 0
467 The Tree of Man Patrick White 3 0
468 The Turn of the Screw Henry James 3 0
469 Vineland Thomas Pynchon 3 0
]]> http://justinmenard.ca/2010/01/24/the-ultimate-mega-book-list/feed/ 18 My summer reading list http://justinmenard.ca/2009/06/14/my-summer-reading-list/ http://justinmenard.ca/2009/06/14/my-summer-reading-list/#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:19:00 +0000 Justin http://justinmenard.ca/2009/06/14/my-summer-reading-list/ I’m posting my summer reading list. Why? Well to me, part of the fun of reading is choosing what you will read next.

How did I choose my books? I looked [...]]]>

I’m posting my summer reading list. Why? Well to me, part of the fun of reading is choosing what you will read next.

How did I choose my books? I looked at recommendation, reviews and of course other people’s lists Including the site www.concierge.com. My list includes older books that I’ve wanted to read for a few years. Others are newer books that have grabbed my attention. All the stories happen outside of Canada and are based on real events.

Now, I’m only posting 7 titles since my timeline is Jun to August. I have 3 months to read and post a review. Why 7 books? That answer comes down to simple math. I’m giving myself 2 weeks per book.

This list is not in the order that I will read them.

  1. The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder by Alan S. Cowell (London – Moscow)
    Based on the story of former KGB agent Litvinenko’s poisoning via a rare radioactive element.
  2. The Innocent Man by John Grisham (Ada, Oklahoma)
    John Grisham tackles nonfiction for the first time with The Innocent Man, a true tale about murder and injustice in a small town.
  3. Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres
    From Google and Amazon that use filters to keep track of your tastes and your purchasing history, to insurance companies and government agencies that every day make decisions affecting your life, the brave new world of the super crunchers is happening right now.
  4. Endurance : Shackleton’s incredible voyage by Alfred Lansing (Weddell Sea, Elephant Island, South Georgia)
    It’s the day-by-day story of Shackleton’s legendary perseverance: losing his ship in the ice, drifting helplessly across the Weddell Sea, and finally reaching Elephant Island, from where he sailed 800 miles to South Georgia to get help for his stranded men.
  5. In a sunburned country by Bill Bryson (Australia)
    A travelogue of Australia’s eccentric characters, dangerous flora and fauna, and other oddities.
  6. In Siberia by Colin Thubron (Trans-Siberian Railway, Yenisei River, Arctic, Mongolia)
    Thubron captures in dazzling prose the contradictions, beauty, personality and hardship of this huge land. Thubron journeyed 15,000 miles along the Trans-Siberian Railway, up the Yenisei River to the Arctic, into the mountains abutting Mongolia, to Lake Baikal and east to Magadan and the Pacific.
  7. The sun also rises by Ernest Hemingway (Paris, Pamplona)
    Hemingway’s great novel, is the story of unmoored American and British expatriates travelling from Paris to Pamplona.

Since I started my reading list the first week of June I will be posting my first review shortly…

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