Favorite American Novels

Yesterday, I gave you the top 100 favorite novels in the U.K. It's not so easy to find a list of favorites (as opposed to bests) for the U.S., as I found out. I could find lists by the editors and by the readers of the Modern Library (Modern Library books only) by two Time Magazine critics, by librarians (which I like because I've read a ton--64--of them), but a general list of favorites by actual American readers took some searching.

This list comes from Best 100 Novels of All Time, but it's not really clear who compiled the list and who voted. If you can find a better list, please let me know. I've read 52 of these, at one time or another.

How is your reading coming along?

1984 by George Orwell

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

Ulysses by James Joyce

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Stand by Stephen King

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Dune by Frank Herbert

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Trial by Franz Kafka

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Persuasion by Jane Austen

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Emma by Jane Austen

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Siddharta by Hermann Hesse

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Light in August by William Faulkner

Favorite Novels in the UK

On its Big Read website, the BBC asked people in the United Kingdom to name their favorite novels. Here is the list in order, with the winning favorite, Lord of the Rings, at the top. Although this is not a list of the best books, only the favorites (and it includes quite a few children's books), I find it to be a much more friendly list than the English Major's Reading List that was given to me when I was 17, and which has been making me feel unsuccessful ever since. I've actually read 60 of these.

How about you?

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling

6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis

10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks

14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres

20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling

23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling

24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling

25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

27. Middlemarch, George Eliot

28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck

30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson

32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett

34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

38. Persuasion, Jane Austen

39. Dune, Frank Herbert

40. Emma, Jane Austen

41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery

42. Watership Down, Richard Adams

43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

46. Animal Farm, George Orwell

47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian

50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck

53. The Stand, Stephen King

54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

56. The BFG, Roald Dahl

57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome

58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman

62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden

63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough

65. Mort, Terry Pratchett

66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

67. The Magus, John Fowles

68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett

70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding

71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind

72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell

73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

74. Matilda, Roald Dahl

75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding

76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins

78. Ulysses, James Joyce

79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson

81. The Twits, Roald Dahl

82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

83. Holes, Louis Sachar

84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson

87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

89. Magician, Raymond E Feist

90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac

91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel

93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

95. Katherine, Anya Seton

96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer

97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot

100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Love Over Scotland; A Logophile's Delight

It's very easy... [to] increase the sum total of human happiness. By these little acts. Small things. A word of encouragement. A gesture of love. So easy. ~Alexander McCall Smith, in Love Over Scotland.

I've just finished reading this title, the third novel in the 44 Scotland Street series, and what a lovely experience it has been. But here's the thing: I've been reading novels since I was 8 years old--reading and reading and reading. The books I have read must number in the thousands by now, wouldn't you think? And I have never come across a book with so many words that are totally unfamiliar to me. Perhaps I have seen one or two of them before--palimpsest and autodidact, in fact, come to mind--but I still had no idea of the meaning of these words and phrases.

But here's a warning--I am in love with words (logophile = lover of words); with their spelling and pronunciation and their origins. I believe it started when I was a child, an insatiable early reader, and the passion only grew when I was first introduced to Middle English in a course on Chaucer. That class, taught by a nun dressed in a habit, was held in a very cold morning room with a marble fireplace, a room where the five students sat around a wicker table, and was conducted almost entirely in Middle English. Once I heard these words from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, I was a goner (although very worried about being able to pass the course):

Whan that Aprile with his shoures soote

The droughte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne en swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour...

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

Just take a look at these words and phrases from Love Over Scotland. Some are obviously in the Scots language and some are what I like to think of as more obscure English words. All are lovely and ha! totally unfamiliar to SpellCheck, which gives me some relief about my ignorance.

fantoosh (flashy, showy)

making siccar (making sure or certain)

...[the eyes of the moudie] would break ilka heart, but no the moudie man's... (ilka means each or every, and I believe the moudie man is the mouse or mole catcher)

palimpsest (a manuscript, usually of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased)

orra jumper (odd pullover sweater)

bogles (supernatural beings)

anglice (in the English form. For example, in Italy, the city is called Firenze; anglice, Florence)

godowns by the river (in India or East Asia, a warehouse, especially by a river)

yonks and yonks (ages, a long time)

...run into a group of neds (a derogatory term for certain young people in Scotland, hooligans)

glens and straths of Scotland (a glen is a deep valley--I've heard the word a million times and have never had a mental picture of its meaning; a strath is a river valley, wide and shallow)

on the machair of a Hebridean island (a stretch of low lying land adjacent to the sand of the seashore)

his hodden skirts (coarse homespun, undyed woolen cloth of grayish color)

quinquennium (well, I figured that one out--happening every five years)

a study being rendered completely otiose (serving no useful purpose)

haud yer wheesht (shut your mouth, be quiet)

walked with a hirple (a limp)

smelling of school jotters (small notebooks)

ockers (used both as a noun and an adjective for Australians who talk and act in an uncultured manner)

lawyers in their stripit breeks (striped trousers)

[she was] a resourceful autodidact (a person who has taught herself)

I ken he's no a guid man (sure, you can work this one out. Doesn't it sound lovely, though? I know he's not a good man)

it wisnae meant to be funny (was not)

... reminiscent of the shades with which the Victorians liked to paint the anaglypta (thick embossed wallpapers, designed to be painted)

For My Sister

Two quotes, both from An Island Garden Daybook, by Celia Thaxter:

October: The Norwegians have a pretty and significant word, "Opelske," which they use in speaking of the care of flowers. It means literally "loving up," or cherishing them into health and vigor.

April: The very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe. I watch my garden beds after they are sown, and think how one of God's exquisite miracles is going on beneath the dark earth out of sight. 

I never forget my planted seeds. Often I wake in the night and think how the rains and the dews have reached to the dry shell and softened it; how the spirit of life begins to stir within, and the individuality of the plant to assert itself; how it is thrusting two hands forth from the imprisoning husk, one, the root, to grasp the earth, to hold itself firm and absorb its food, the other stretching above to find the light, that it may drink in the breeze and sunshine and so climb to its full perfection of beauty. 

Adopting from Animal Shelters: The Starfish Story

I thought about President Obama's starfish story (below, part of his recent speech on community service) the other day when visiting our local oxymoronically-named "kill shelter" with my sister. There were so many lost souls there hoping for rescue. I knew that it was kill day and that we already had enough dogs and cats at home. Even so, we brought home Gracie, who was still lactating from a recent litter, and was extremely thin and scrawny. 

Gracie has been eating and resting and grooming herself. In just over a week she is looking much better and is starting to play with the other cats. 

It was all I could do. We left so many behind, but we were able to make a difference for this one. 

To find an animal shelter in your area, go to http://www.animalshelter.org/shelters/states.asp.

The Starfish Story

An old man walking along the beach at dawn sees a young man picking up the star fish and throwing them out to sea. "Why are you doing that?" The old man inquired. The young man explained that the starfish had been stranded on the beach by a receding tide and would soon die in the daytime sun. "But the beach goes on for miles," the old man said. "And there's so many! How can your effort make any difference?" The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and without hesitating threw it to safety in the sea. He looked up at the old man, smiled and said, "It will make a difference to that one."

Did You Know?

Karl Fisch, a high school administrator at Arapahoe High School in Littleton, Colorado, pulled together a powerpoint with “some interesting ideas” for teachers at his school. Later, Jeff Bronman and Scott Mcleod, a professor at the University of Minnesota, generalized the presentation. 

More Bucksnort Art Around the House

I thought I'd share a couple more pieces of art done by our own Auntie Bucksnort, since she isn't likely to show you any (challenge, Auntie!) over on her blog. The first is a circular black embroidered piece that she designed and made several decades ago. When I mentioned how much I'd always admired it, I received it on loan as part of a traveling Bucksnort exhibit. It is hung on a green wall, which is why you see that halo of green around it in the photo.

The second photo is of a Bucksnort plate made of glass that has been fused and slumped. I think that is what I mean--separate pieces of glass are fused together, then shaped in a mold in a kiln (slumped). The process is described here. I am lucky enough to have quite a few of these pieces. Perhaps I'll photograph the rest of the collection for you. 

There is a fair bit of Bucksnort artwork scattered through this blog. You can find some more on these pages:

Pintada Kid, Part 5 

Los Dias de los Muertos

Handmade