My Challenges (timed)


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Completed 8 of 9



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Completed 2 of 3



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Completed 2 of 4



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Completed 71 of 81



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Completed 9 of 10


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Completed 34 of 50



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Completed 1 of 2



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Completed 1 of 2



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Completed 5 of 100

My Challenges (perpetual)

100 SHOTS OF SHORT
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CHECKIN’ OFF THE CHEKHOV
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THE COMPLETE BOOKER
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MARTEL-HARPER CHALLENGE
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MODERN LIBRARY'S 100 BEST NOVELS

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NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS
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THE PULITZER PROJECT
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TAMMY'S BEYOND BOOKS CHALLENGE

New York Times Book Review: 6/40
New Yorker: 0/36
New York Review of Books: 0/20
Vogue: 1/16
Email: 841/1373

Friday, May 9, 2008

How pretentious are you?

I saw this on a couple of other blogs and thought it sounded fun. I've added two criteria of my own as well.

The Top 106 Books Most Often Marked As “Unread” By LibraryThing’s Users.

Strikethrough for books I’ve read before.
Italics for books I’ve read before (or currently reading) but haven’t finished.
Put in parantheses if I have current plans to read -- added by me.
Asterisks if I own but have no current plans to read -- added by me.
Copy and paste on your blog to see how “pretentious” you are. (Although there is no indication of how you’re supposed to calculate your pretentiousness based on the list.)
And, remember, it’s all in good fun.

**1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
(4. Catch-22)
(5. One Hundred Years of Solitude)
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
(8. Life of Pi)
9. The Aeneid
10. The Name of the Rose
**11. Don Quixote
12. Moby Dick
13. Ulysses
14. Madame Bovary
15. The Odyssey
16. Pride and Prejudice
17. Jane Eyre
18. The Tale of Two Cities
**19. The Brothers Karamazov
20. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
21. War and Peace
22. Vanity Fair
(23. The Time Traveler’s Wife)
24. The Iliad
25. Emma
26. The Blind Assassin
27. The Kite Runner
**28. Mrs. Dalloway
29. Great Expectations
30. American Gods
31. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
32. Atlas Shrugged
33. Reading Lolita in Tehran
34. Memoirs of a Geisha
35. Middlesex
36. Quicksilver
37. Wicked
**38. The Canterbury Tales
(39. The Historian)
40. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
41. Love in the Time of Cholera
42. Brave New World
**43. The Fountainhead
44. Foucault’s Pendulum
**45. Middlemarch
**46. Frankenstein
47. The Count of Monte Cristo
48. Dracula
49. A Clockwork Orange
50. Anansi Boys
51. The Once and Future King
(52. The Grapes of Wrath)
53. The Poisonwood Bible
54. 1984
55. Angels & Demons
56. The Inferno
57. The Satanic Verses
**58. Sense and Sensibility
59. The Picture of Dorian Gray
60. Mansfield Park
61. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
**62. To the Lighthouse
63. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
64. Oliver Twist
**65. Gulliver’s Travels
66. Les Misérables
**67. The Corrections
68. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
69. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
70. Dune
71. The Prince
72. The Sound and the Fury
73. Angela’s Ashes
**74. The God of Small Things
75. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present
76. Cryptonomicon
77. Neverwhere
78. A Confederacy of Dunces
(79. A Short History of Nearly Everything)
80. Dubliners
81. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
82. Beloved
83. Slaughterhouse-five
84. The Scarlet Letter
85. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
86. The Mists of Avalon
**87. Oryx and Crake
88. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
89. Cloud Atlas
90. The Confusion
91. Lolita
92. Persuasion
93. Northanger Abbey
94. The Catcher in the Rye
95. On the Road
96. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
97. Freakonomics
**98. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity’s Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood
**103. Treasure Island
**104. David Copperfield
**105. The Three Musketeers

Okay, so let's look at the numbers:

Books read: 33 of 105 (31.4%)
Books read before or currently but not finished: 6 of 105 (5.7%)
Books currently planning to read: 7 of 105 (6.7%)
Books owned but not currently planning to read: 18 of 105 (17.1%)
Total of all categories: 64 of 105 (60.95%)

Conclusion: I am well on my way to being pretentious, although I prefer to look at it as being well-read. After all, just reading certain books isn't an indication of a character flaw:)

2 comments:

Dewey said...

Maybe you're supposed to be pretentious if you claim to have read them because no one REALLY reads them? I mean, since they're the most frequently marked unread? I don't really like the idea of pretentiousness based on what you do or do not read, but I love to cross out and bold lists, so I think I'll grab this one!

Tammy said...

I've always thought a person was pretentious if they had these type of books on shelves where guests could see them, but the person would never think of actually reading them (they probably have Tom Clancy or the like on the nightstand). Of course, I'm a self-described book snob, so I don't know if I can be unbiased on this issue:)

Love the Hobbes picture!