Traditions Must Be Honored

The traditional-back-from-an-unexpected-leave-time-to-steal-a-meme-from-Byzantium's Shores-post:

Instructions: Review the following list of books. Boldface the books you've read, italicize those you might read, put in blue the ones you won?t, put an asterisk * beside the ones on your bookshelves, and place [brackets] around the ones you?ve never even heard of.

The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)--Will probably have to read at some point; I think it might be a law.

The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)*--Several times.

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)--Didn't quite get the hype.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)--High on my list of must-read-agains

The Time Traveler?s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman)--Very good, but I found it hard to see how it qualifies as children's literature. Stuff is dense.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J. K. Rowling)*--Will re-read right before the final book comes out.

The Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (George Orwell)

Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)

The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon)*--Excellent. First-person narrative in which autistic child tries to solve the murder of a dog. Brilliant use of voice.

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)--Another must-read-again

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

1984 (George Orwell)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J. K. Rowling)*

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)--Marquex is an author I keep meaning to read.

Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)--It's nice when the literary is commercial as well.

Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)

[The Secret History (Donna Tartt)]

Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)--Not since sixth grade, though.

Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)

[Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)]

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

Atonement (Ian McEwan)--One of the best new books I've read in the last five years.

[The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)]

The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)--Did not care for it.

The Handmaid?s Tale (Margaret Atwood)*--On deck after the interminable Quicksilver.

The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)

Dune (Frank Herbert)--But none of the sequels.

Sula (Toni Morrison)--I've never read any Morrison either; I mean to.

Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier)

The Alchemist (Paulo Coehlo)

White Teeth (Zadie Smith)--Good, but On Beauty was even better.

The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)

Until Whenever