Hello all! Well this seemed like a game too fun to pass up- thank you so much to the awesome Samantha@Modern Witch’s Bookshelf and the lovely Amy @Curiouser and Curiouser for tagging me!
How to Play:
- Include a link back to Amazon’s official 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime
- Tag Perfectly Tolerable, the creator of this meme
- Tag the person who nominated you
- Copy the list of books and indicate which titles you have read.
- Tally up your total.
- Comment on the post you were tagged in and share your total count.
- Tag five new people and comment on one of their posts to let them know.
Title | Author | Read? |
1984 | George Orwell | Yes |
A Brief History of Time | Stephen Hawking | |
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius | Dave Eggers | |
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier | Ishmael Beah | |
The Bad Beginning | Lemony Snicket | Yes |
A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L’Engle | Yes |
Selected Stories, 1968-1994 | Alice Munro | |
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | Yes |
All the President’s Men | Bob Woodward | |
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir | Frank McCourt | |
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. | Judy Blume | Yes |
Bel Canto | Ann Patchett | |
Beloved | Toni Morrison | |
Born to Run | Christopher McDougall | |
Breath, Eyes, Memory | Edwidge Danticat | |
Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | Yes |
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | Roald Dahl | Yes |
Charlotte’s Web | E. B White | Yes |
Cutting for Stone | Abraham Verghese | |
Daring Greatly | Brené Brown | |
Diary of a Wimpy Kid | Jeff Kinney | |
Dune | Frank Herbert | Yes |
Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | Yes |
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | Hunter S. Thompson | |
Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | Yes |
Goodnight Moon | Margaret Wise Brow | Yes |
Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | Yes |
Guns, Germs, and Steel | Jared Diamond Ph.D. | |
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone | J.K. Rowling | Yes |
In Cold Blood | Truman Capote | |
Interpreter of Maladies | Jhumpa Lahiri | |
Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison | Yes |
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth | Chris Ware | |
Kitchen Confidential | Anthony Bourdain | |
Life After Life | Kate Atkinson | |
Little House on the Prairie | Laura Ingalls Wilder | |
Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | Yes |
Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Yes |
Love Medicine | Louise Erdrich | |
Man’s Search for Meaning | Viktor E. Frankl | Yes |
Me Talk Pretty One Day | David Sedaris | |
Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | |
Midnight’s Children | Salman Rushdie | Yes |
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game | Michael Lewis | |
Of Human Bondage | W. Somerset Maugham | |
On the Road | Jack Kerouac | Yes |
Out of Africa | Isak Dinesen | |
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood | Marjane Satrapi | |
Portnoy’s Complaint | Philip Roth | |
Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | Yes |
Silent Spring | Rachel Carson | |
Slaughterhouse-Five | Kurt Vonnegut | |
Team of Rivals | Doris Kearns Goodwin | |
The Age of Innocence | Edith Wharton | |
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon | |
The Autobiography of Malcolm X | Malcolm X | |
The Book Thief | Markus Zusak | Yes |
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Junot Díaz | |
The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger | Yes |
The Color of Water | James McBride | |
The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen | |
The Devil in the White City | Erik Larson | |
The Diary of a Young Girl | Anne Frank | Yes |
The Fault in Our Stars | John Green | Yes |
The Giver | Lois Lowry | Yes |
The Golden Compass | Philip Pullman | Yes |
The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Yes |
The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood | Yes |
The House at Pooh Corner | A. Milne | Yes |
The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins | Yes |
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Rebecca Skloot | |
The Liars’ Club | Mary Karr | |
The Lightning Thief | Rick Riordan | Yes |
The Little Prince | Houghton Mifflin | Yes |
The Long Goodbye | Raymond Chandler | |
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | Lawrence Wright | |
The Lord of the Rings | J.R.R. Tolkien | Yes |
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat | Oliver Sacks | |
The Omnivore’s Dilemma | Michael Pollan | |
The Phantom Tollbooth | Norton Juster | Yes |
The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver | |
The Power Broker | Robert A. Caro | |
The Right Stuff | Tom Wolfe | |
The Road | Cormac McCarthy | Yes |
The Secret History | Donna Tartt | |
The Shining | Stephen King | |
The Stranger | Albert Camus | |
The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway | Yes |
The Things They Carried | Tim O’Brien | |
The Very Hungry Caterpillar | Eric Carle | Yes |
The Wind in the Willows | Kenneth Grahame | Yes |
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | Haruki Murakami | |
The World According to Garp | John Irving | |
The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion | |
Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | Yes |
To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | Yes |
Unbroken | Laura Hillenbrand | |
Valley of the Dolls | Jacqueline Susann | |
Where the Sidewalk Ends | Shel Silverstein | |
Where the Wild Things Are | Maurice Sendak |
I’ve read 41 books, which is alright. I’ll be blunt though- I don’t really trust Amazon’s version of “100 books” for the simple reason that they want you to *buy* books. That may explain why I don’t many of the usual classics, which are out of copyright, on here… Maybe (or maybe this is just me putting on my tinfoil hat yelling “argh the moon landing’s not real!” 😉 ) Perhaps I should just blindly trust the big corporation…
Either way, I usually like these lists as tips on what to read, but here there were only a handful of I actually want/plan to read. As fun as this was, I recommend giving some other 100 books to read before you die lists a go… like this one 😉
A lot of people have done this already so I’m just tagging Bookstooge, Lucinda, Briana & Krysta @Pages Unbound and anyone else who wants to do it for this one.
Have you read any of these? Do you recommend any I haven’t read? Let me know in the comments!
I knew you’d have read a ton! Double my count! I definitely prefer your second list that you shared on that link. There are so many more entertaining books on that one. I will join you in donning the tinfoil hat, hahahaha.
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hehe thanks. I’m glad you like the second list- I’ve used that as a guide for finding good books for years and really like it 🙂 hahahahaha yes- step into the dark side 😉
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41 is legit SO impressive! I bet mine would be 25 TOPS! Just scrolling down made me nervous… HAHA! But I loved this and I hope you have an amazing February, love! 💖xx
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OH! And I don’t want to say I recommend The Secret History… but you know I ended up loving it this month… so… take that with a grain of salt! Hahaha! ❤ xx
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heheh that’s one of the ones I definitely want to read!! 😀 ❤ xx
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Aww thank you! Lol- I think it’s a really tough list tbh 😉 Thank you!! You too!! 💖 xx
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Oh man, I am way behind.
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hehe well I’m sure that means loads of great books to read in the future 😉
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Whoa! That’s almost half the list! 😊😊 Good for you.
Well…I noticed one book that you haven’t read: The Shining. That’s one of King’s best novels. Highly recommend it 😀
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hehe thank you! hehe thanks- I think that’s one I’m unlikely to read though (really not into horror I’m afraid) But thank you- it’s certainly on my radar if I ever change my mind! (which I’ve been known to do 😉 )
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Hmmm…well….it is horror..;but then again it’s not. The shining really is also quite a good thriller novel 😊
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heheh well maybe I’ll give it a go… one day 😉
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WOW! 41! I think I might have read around 10 or 12 only. Never heard about half of the names in this list. HeHe.. 🙂
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heheh I hadn’t heard of a lot of them before I did it too 😉
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41 is so good! I just did it and only got 8 haha.
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hehe no worries- lots on here worth reading in the future! 🙂
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39! I was just looking up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay yesterday!
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Brilliant!! Oh cool! 😀
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I really like these kinds of lists, or rather I really like going through them and seeing how many (or how few) of them I have read. 😀 You have read quiet a lot of them, that’s really great! If I counted correctly I have read 15 in total. Great post!!
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Me too! I always find them addictive!! hehee yes! Thank you!! That’s cool 🙂 Thank you!!
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That’s pretty impressive! Mine would have probably been in the single digits, haha. I like your second list though! I’ve read a few from that one.
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Thank you! haha no worries!! That’s great! (and I really like the second list- I’ve been using it as a guide of what to read for years! 🙂 )
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I love this kind of list! I only have 25 from this one…41 is impressive! I agree that this list seems a bit tilted toward more faddish books that they can make money on (no Shakespeare, Twain, or Stevenson?!).
I once collated 11 “top 100 (or top 50) books you should read” lists, retaining anything that appeared on two or more and then arranging it by frequency in a master list. I ended up with 210 different books (of which I’ve read 68).
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Me too!! Love these cos they help me find new, good books. I know- the point when I noticed there was no Shakespeare I just got very sceptical. And Twain and Stevenson are nearly always on these lists- and rightly so!
Oh that’s a brilliant way to do it!! I went through a number of these lists too, though not nearly so methodically and have been adding books from them to my tbr for years- I think it’s really helpful!
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41 is awesome! It is the second highest count I have seen (I saw a comment by a teacher who had read 47)
I definitely would not use this as the be all end all list of books to read either. The amazon list was just the one that gave me the idea to create the tag 🙂 In general I love lists haha. I like the BBC one you included! I have read 34 of the books, with 2 more I started but didn’t finish (as opposed to the 21 I read from the Amazon list)
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hehe thanks! ah yes, Stephanie got that 🙂
hehe yes for sure- it’s still fun to do and it’s cool that you came up with the idea 🙂 That’s awesome!
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Thanks 🙂
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You’re welcome 🙂
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41 is still quite a bit for this list. You are quite right though in their motives for their list since it seems to be a huge variety like they are trying to fit in something for every type of reader.
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Thank you! hehe yes that’s a good point.
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You’re welcome!
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I’ve only read 15 from this list… god for you!
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Thank you!
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I’m not surprised you have pretty much the highest count I’ve seen on this list so far. lol.
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hehe thanks 😉
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I just had this feeling that you would have read as many or as close to as many from this list as me!! 😉 You are the only other person that I’ve seen with this high a number though, lol. Not sure what that says about us hahaha! 🙂 I haven’t done the actual tag though…I just keep adding my reads up when I look at people’s post, and it has jogged my memories of books that I’d forgotten that I’d read (more’s the pity for some)! Agreed though that the Amazon list is not the be all end all list of books to read, but it is rather diverse in genre, etc. However, I do love the BBC one that you linked since I’ve read 71 of those LOL (another thing with being an English Lit professor with a concentration in British Lit and gothic lit is over half of those on the BBC list are degree specific)!
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hehehe thanks 😉 hahahaha that we’re awesome bookworms 😉 hehehe I get that 😉 That’s cool. Yes that’s true and a good point. hehe awesome- and snap by the way 😉 (at last count- I’ve been using that list as a guide for a long time 😉 ) hehehe it helped that I’ve studied quite a bit of gothic literature too 😉
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Haha, yes, we are awesome bookworms! You should make a 100 BBC book list tag 😉 With all the classics on it, I wonder how many people have read compared to the Amazon one. Yes, I was doing my 300 page dissertation for my PhD on gothic lit from the 1700s to modern day, so I’m loaded with those haha 🙂
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hehehe yes lol 😉 Ooh wow that’s seriously impressive!! And such an interesting topic choice!!
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I think I’ve read 49 lol. Idk how this is possible. And quite a few of these are books on my TBR that are part of my reading challenge for this year lol.
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That’s brilliant!! Highest I’ve seen!! 😀 Well done!!
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I got 58 on the one you provided. Obviously there is much reading to be done lol
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hehehe I totally get that 😉
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Omg, you read pretty close to half of them! Amazing!! I’ve read only 9 or…15? (I already forgot lol) Either way, I’ll take it slow and try to read as many as possible 😉
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hehe thank you 🙂 That’s good- lots to look forward to 🙂
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No one’s tagged me but I so want to do this. What do I do?
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No worries- consider yourself tagged 😉
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I’m impressed you have read so many of them. To be honest I don’t fancy reading quite a large proportion of them anyway.
I have read only 7 from the Amazon list but 28 from the BBC one. I think you are right to suspect their motives (Amazon). No Dracula? really???
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Thank you- I agree with you. There’s lots I did want to read.
hehe I know right- it’s surprising that books like that weren’t on here!
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I’ve only read 11 out of those, but I do own a couple more than that, just never read it. However, I don’t think you can do this the same way for every country? There are some stories, especially for kids and teens that are more famous in the English language than in any other. Whereas Charlotte’s Web is a big thing in one place, people of another country may never even have heard of it. I don’t know hahaha that’s just what I thought while I was browsing the list.
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Yeah I think that’s true for sure- and I think you raise a fantastic point- as someone English I found this very much slanted towards American books (but maybe that’s just my opinion)
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No, no! Definitely not just you! I have a hard time distinguishing between what’s English and what’s American without doing a little research, but I can totally see that!
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Yes, there’s also a difference between the British Isles- so I can see that Scottish literature has been woefully neglected too.
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THIS LIST HAS BEEN EXPOSED! It’s totally not accurate 😅
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hahhahahaha 😂😂
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I was actually a little bit surprised by how many of these books I’d read! I can’t say I’ve gotten though 41 like you but there were definitely more than I thought that I’d be able to tick off a well, and there are even a few that are currently on my to-read list as well!
I don’t tend to trust lists like these either, mainly because they seem to lean towards classics and I don’t really buy those either. If there was a list of 100 YA books to read in a lifetime, or 100 Fantasy books to read in a lifetime I’d be able to tick off so many more of those for sure! 😀
Great post. 🙂 ❤
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Well that’s really great 😀
hehehe I can understand that for sure- I’d actually like to see lists like that.
Thank you 🙂 ❤
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Thank you for tagging me! I’ve read 28 books (I think – I’ll have to double check a couple of titles). I still haven’t read the Handmaids Tale (I’m a guilty feminist) and some of the kids books like the very hungry caterpillar….maybe I’ve read them but I would have been about four so I’m not sure! I definitely didn’t own it…I’ll have to ask my mum. I noticed you hadn’t read Persepolis, which is amazing – if you’re ok with a cartoon strip style I think you’d really enjoy it. 😊
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You’re welcome! hehe yes that’s a popular one among feminists 😉 It’s highly probable! Oh I definitely want to read Persepolis- that’s one of the ones that I already wanted to check out (and want to check out even more now)
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Oh wow, you have read a whole lot of these already, I’ll never beat you at this game hahahaha 🙂 Great post! 😀
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hehee I’m sure you could, cos I don’t plan on reading most of these, and definitely not any time soon 😉
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I don’t like being told what to do. LOL. If I had followed this list I wouldn’t have my favorite books.
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hahaha I so relate to that!
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“I’ll be blunt though- I don’t really trust Amazon’s version of “100 books” for the simple reason that they want you to *buy* books.” Hahaha so true…. XD
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hehehe I know right?! I’m glad I’m not the only one that thinks so 😉
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41 is good! I’ve only read 24, although there are definitely more on this list I would like to read. The one I would recommend you pick up is The Secret History, it’s a fantastic book!
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Well that’s good at least 🙂 And I do definitely want to pick that one up- it’s very high up on my tbr! 🙂
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Yay, looking forward to seeing what you think! I’m tempted to re-read that one soon. I read it before I even started this blog I think. I really want to make re-reading stuff more of a priority this year. Which was your favourite of the books on this list that you have read?
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Awesome- I’m glad it’s so good! Gosh hard question! I’ve quite a few I wouldn’t choose between I’m afraid: 1984, great expectations, man’s search for meaning, book thief, gatsby, northern lights, phantom tollbooth and to kill a mockingbird (sorry the list isn’t shorter!)
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Haha, don’t worry, a list of great books can never be too long! I have read quite a few of these and definitely agree with your selections 😀 I need to finish Great Expectations (I read about half of it a few years ago), and I haven’t read Man’s Search for Meaning, or Phantom Tollbooth so I might have to check those out. 🙂
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41 is clearly insane. I didn’t even bother trying. On that note, I’m in love with that BBC list. My score was loooowww. I might make that my reading list for the year, so thanks a bunch for posting it!
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heheh fair enough- it’s such a tough list! I’m so glad you like that list though- I’ve been using it as a guide for what to read for years and definitely recommend a lot of the books on it 😀
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I saved it and it’s official, I’m going to be diving in.
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Awesome!!
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This is awesome! But after reading the list, I feel like I have read nothing. Haha
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hehehe I totally get that feeling a lot 😉
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I’ve only read 22… which is kind of depressing when you think about it lol Should my bookworm card be revoked?
I just read The Sun Also Rises back in November and I must admit I found it rather boring and oddly narrated… It felt a little like The Great Gatsby, which I enjoyed much more.
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hehehe I think it’s fine- it seems like a pretty mixed jumble of books tbh.
Yes, I’m not actually a fan of the Sun Also Rises and love Gatsby. Funnily enough, I was actually having a discussion today about Hemmingway vs Fitzgerald- they’re both well written books, but the one you like says a lot about the type of styles that you prefer (I have a preference for lyrical writing- though there’s plenty to be said positively about clarity, it just appeals to me less)
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You have done much better than me on that list, but many are ones that I want to read… does that count haha
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hehe to me it does 😉 I don’t think I’ll get much further with this cos there’s only a handful of other books I want to read.
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These lists usually puts me to shame by telling me how behind I am on reading some of the most popular books ever hahahah I still love them a lot for pointing at all those books that could potentially interest me. But wow, 41 is still amazing! I’m not surprised that you’ve read that many though. You have the reading speed of The Flash or something yo. 😀 😀
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hehhee don’t worry- I think everyone feels like that lol 😉 But yeah they’re so great at growing a tbr lol! hahahaha thanks!
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