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I recently resolved to read (or re-read) the following books. While reading
these books is, in itself, quite a goal, the main task at hand is consistently
writing reviews and posting them on this site.
The next couple of months should be busy ones: I intend to take my Illinois
real estate salesperson's licensing exam before December (which means I have
to re-visit terms like appurtenance and encumbrances); I'd like to learn Flash,
XML, and Javascript; UIC's fall semester starts
on August15th; and I still happen to be on the steep interval of the learning
curve at my job.
Hence, I have resolved to banish television from my repertoire of experiences.
The blasted thing takes too much of one's time and offers marginal gains at
best.
Anyway, here are the titles (If you know of any "classic" that is
not included in the list, and that you think ought to be on it, please let
me know):
- Aesop. Fables
- Agee, James. A Death in the
Family
- Alcott, Louisa. May Little
Women
- Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg,
Ohio
- Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice
- Baldwin, James. Go Tell It
on the Mountain
- Brontë, Charlotte. Jane
Eyre
- Brontë, Emily. Wuthering
Heights
- Browning, Elizabeth. Barrett
Poetry
- Browning, Robert. Poetry
- Bunyan, John. Pilgrim's Progress
- Camus, Albert. The Fall
- Camus, Albert. The Stranger
- Carroll, Lewis. Alice in
Wonderland
- Cather, Willa. Death Comes
for the Archbishop
- Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury
Tales
- Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim
- Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge
of Courage
- Defoe, Daniel. The Life and
Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner
- Dickens, Charles. A Tale
of Two Cities
- Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield
- Dickens, Charles. Oliver
Twist
- Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations
- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. Adventures
of Shelock Holmes
- Dreiser, Theodore. An American
Tragedy
- Faulkner, William. As I Lay
Dying
- Faulkner, William. Light
in August
- Fielding, Henry. Shamela
- Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The
Great Gatsby
- Forster, E. M. A Passage
to India
- Frank, Anne. Diary of a Young
Girl
- Frost, Robert. Poetry
- Greene, Graham. The Power
and the Glory
- Hamilton, Edith. Mythology
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel. House
of the Seven Gables
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The
Scarlet Letter
- Heller, Joseph. Catch-22
- Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom
the Bell Tolls
- Homer. The Iliad
- Homer. The Odyssey
- Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback
of Notre Dame
- Ibsen, Henrik. A Dolls House
- James, Henry. The American
- James, Henry. The Turn of
the Screw
- Kafka, Franz. The Trial
- Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle
Books
- Lawrence, D. H. Sons and
Lovers
- Lawrence, D. H. Women in
Love
- Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird
- Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street
- London, Jack. The Call of
the Wild
- Mailer, Norman. The Naked
and the Dead
- Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain
- Melville, Herman. Moby Dick
- Mitchell, Margaret. Gone
with the Wind
- O'Neill, Eugene. The Emperor
Jones
- Orwell, George. 1984
- Orwell, George. Animal Farm
- Ovid. Metamorphosis
- Pasternak, Boris. Doctor
Zhivago
- Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales and
Poetry
- Porter, William. Sydney (O.
Henry) Tales
- Remarque, Erich. All Quiet
on the Western Front
- Salinger, J. D. The Catcher
in the Rye
- Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln
- Sandburg, Carl. Poetry
- Scott, Sir Walter. Ivanhoe
- Shakespeare, William. Hamlet
- Shakespeare, William. Henry
IV
- Shakespeare, William. Julius
Caesar
- Shakespeare, William. Macbeth
- Shakespeare, William. Romeo
and Juliet
- Shaw, George Benard. Pygmalion
- Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein
- Sophocles. Oedipus Rex
- Steinbeck, John. Of Mice
and Men
- Steinbeck, John. The Grapes
of Wrath
- Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure
Island
- Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle
Tom's Cabin
- Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's
Travels
- Thackeray, William. Makepeace
Vanity Fair
- Tolkein, J. R. R. Lord of
the Rings
- Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace
- Twain, Mark. The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn
- Twain, Mark. The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer
- Twain, Mark. Life on the
Mississippi
- Verne, Jules. Around the
World in 80 Days
- Wells, H.G. The Time Machine
- Wharton, Edith. The Age of
Innocence
- Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome
- Wilder, Thornton. Our Town
- Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar
Names Desire
- Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse
- Wyss, Jonathan David. The
Swiss Family Robinson
Books I have Read
This list is neither complete nor chronological. Perhaps I'll infuse some order
into it someday, but for now, it's merely a random collection of the books I've
read -- one to which I intend to add titles as I remember them.
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott
Fitzgerald
- To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper
Lee
- I Know Why Caged Birds Sing, Maya
Angelou
- The Old Man & The Sea, Ernest
Hemingway
- Things Fall Apart, Chinua
Achebe
- Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan
Swift
- The Trials of Brother Jero, Wole
Soyinka
- Jero's Metamorphosis, Wole
Soyinka
- The Lion & The Jewel, Wole
Soyinka
- The Chronicles of Narnia, C.
S. Lewis
- The Open Sore of A Continent, Wole
Soyinka
- Time Changes Yesterday, ???
- Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
- Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
(also author of Treasure Island)
- Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
- Alice in Wonderland, Lewis
Carroll
- Please Don't Say No, Chuks
Onyiuke
- Jagua Nana's Daughter, Cyprain
Ekwensi
- The Boy Slave, ???
- The Return of Shettima, ???
- An African Night's Entertainment, Cyprian
Ekwensi
- The Passport of Mallam Illia, Cyprian
Ekwensi
- The Sands of Time, Sidney
Sheldon
- Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone, J.
K. Rowlings
- Dark Is A Color, Faith Richardson,
Fay Lapka Richardson
- The Decline of the American Empire, Gore
Vidal
- Christine, Stephen King
- God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt
Vonnegut
- To Walk in My Shoes: Saving Grace on a Less Traveled
Road, Rudolph E. Willis
- The Taking, Dean Koonz
-
Legend
The Taking, Dean Koonz
Borrowed Book
August 07, 2004
Extraterrestrials, “with technologies so advance that to us they would
seem like pure magic,” invade the earth with such brute force: radically
changing the earth’s biosphere in a matter of hours, commandeering and
animating dead bodies and inanimate objects alike, fraying the last shreds of
human hope with dark gloom… The stuff that the best of science fiction
is made of.
Then, about three or five pages to the end of the novel, Dean Koonz resolves
the cataclysmic catastrophe he’d built throughout the novel with quick
and easy references to the Bible!
The feeling one gets is that one was conned into reading a quasi-Christian
diatribe against the vices of the human race cloaked in the shroud of a mystery-sci-fi.
I, personally, was quite miffed with Doonz’s lack of forthrightness.
The book, in my estimation, ends as a mere shadow of how it could have.
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