This is my bit of a blog. Rambling words about rambling days. No focus and nothing ambitious. I seem to write most about local color, nature, and animals, and there is an incomplete chunk about my road trips of 2011.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

100 American Books (and Other Texts)

Compiled by mightypossibility

I've read: 11 of 100. How 'bout you?
Mark the ones you've read, tag your friends (including me), and post!

    1.    ( - ) Roger Williams - The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience (1644)
    2.    ( - ) "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741)
    3.    ( - ) Benjamin Franklin - "The Way to Wealth" (1758)
    4.    ( - ) Patrick Henry - "Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!" (1775)
    5.    ( - ) Thomas Paine - Common Sense (1776)
    6.    ( - ) Thomas Jefferson - United States Declaration of Independence (1776)
    7.    ( - ) James Madison and others - Constitution of the United States of America (1787)AND The Bill of Rights (1789)
    8.    ( - ) Alexander Hamilton and others - The Federalist Papers (1788)
    9.    (x) Benjamin Franklin - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791)
    10.    (x) Washington Irving - The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819)
    11.    ( - ) James Fenimore Cooper - The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
    12.    ( - ) Davy Crockett - A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett. Written by Himself (1833)
    13.    ( - ) Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Nature" (1836)AND Essays (1842)
    14.    ( - ) Edgar Allen Poe - "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839)AND "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842)
AND "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843)
AND "The Raven" (1845)
AND "Annabel Lee" (1849)
    15.    ( - ) Frederick Douglass - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
    16.    ( - ) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Evangeline (1847)
    17.    ( - ) Henry David Thoreau - "Civil Disobedience" (1849)
    18.    ( - ) Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlett Letter (1850)
    19.    ( - ) Herman Melville - Moby-Dick (1851)
    20.    (x) Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
    21.    ( - ) Henry David Thoreau - Walden (1854)
    22.    ( - ) Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass (1855)
    23.    ( - ) Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
    24.    ( - ) Emily Dickinson - The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1886)
    25.    ( - ) William James - Principles of Psychology (1890)
    26.    ( - ) O. Henry - Cabbages and Kings (1896)
    27.    ( - ) Henry James - The Turn of the Screw (1898)
    28.    ( - ) Booker T. Washington - Up From Slavery (1901)
    29.    ( - ) W. E. B. Du Bois - The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
    30.    ( - ) Upton Sinclair - The Jungle (1906)
    31.    ( - ) Henry Adams - The Education of Henry Adams (1918)
    32.    ( - ) Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence (1920)
    33.    ( - ) Sinclair Lewis - Babbitt (1922)
    34.    ( - ) Robert Frost - New Hampshire (1923)
    35.    ( - ) F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (1925)
    36.    ( - ) William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury (1929)
    37.    ( - ) Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer (1934)
    38.    ( - ) Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
    39.    ( - ) Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind (1937)
    40.    ( - ) John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men (1937)
    41.    ( - ) Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich! (1937)
    42.    ( - ) Richard Wright - Native Son (1940)
    43.    ( - ) T. S. Eliot - Four Quartets (1943)
    44.    (x) Tennessee Williams - A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
    45.    ( - ) Carl Sandburg - The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (1950)
    46.    ( - ) Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea (1951)
    47.    (x) J. D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
    48.    ( - ) Isaac Asimov - Foundation (1951)
    49.    ( - ) James Baldwin - Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
    50.    ( - ) Ray Bradbury - Farenheit 451 (1953)
    51.    ( - ) Arthur Miller - The Crucible (1953)
    52.    (x) Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita (1955)
    53.    ( - ) Allen Ginsberg - "Howl" (1956)
    54.    ( - ) E. E. Cummings - Poems, 1923-1954 (1957)
    55.    ( - ) Jack Kerouac - On the Road (1957)
    56.    (x) Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
    57.    ( - ) Joseph Heller - Catch-22 (1961)
    58.    ( - ) Ezra Pound - The Cantos (1962)
    59.    ( - ) Martin Luther King, Jr. - "I Have a Dream" (1963)AND "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963)
    60.    ( - ) Frank Herbert - Dune (1965)
    61.    ( - ) Truman Capote - In Cold Blood (1966)
    62.    ( - ) Gabriel García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
    63.    ( - ) Norman Mailer - Armies of the Night (1968)
    64.    ( - ) Mario Puzo - The Godfather (1969)
    65.    ( - ) Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
    66.    ( - ) Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
    67.    ( - ) Joyce Carol Oates - Them (1969)
    68.    ( - ) Stephen King - Carrie (1974)
    69.    ( - ) Terry Brooks - any of the Shannara series (1977-2008)
    70.    ( - ) Carl Sagan - Cosmos (1980)
    71.    ( - ) Sylvia Plath - The Collected Poems (1981)
    72.    ( - ) Alice Walker - The Color Purple (1982)
    73.    ( - ) Raymond Carver - Cathedral (1984)
    74.    ( - ) Paul Auster - The New York Trilogy (1985-6)
    75.    (x) Toni Morrison - Beloved (1987)
    76.    ( - ) Lee Smith - Fair and Tender Ladies (1988)
    77.    ( - ) Stephen Jay Gould - Wonderful Life (1989)
    78.    ( - ) Anne Rice - The Queen of the Damned (1988)
    79.    ( - ) Robert Jordan - any of the Wheel of Time series (1990-2009)
    80.    ( - ) John Updike - Rabbit at Rest (1991)
    81.    ( - ) John Grisham - The Firm (1991)
    82.    ( - ) John Gray - Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992)
    83.    ( - ) Jack Canfield - Chicken Soup for the Soul (1993)
    84.    ( - ) Deepak Chopra - The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (1994)
    85.    ( - ) Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club (1996)
    86.    ( - ) Philip Roth - American Pastoral (1997)
    87.    ( - ) Don DeLillo - Underworld (1997)
    88.    ( - ) Robert Kiyosaki - Rich Dad, Poor Dad (2000)
    89.    ( - ) Rick Warren - The Purpose Driven Life (2002)
    90.    ( - ) Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code (2003)
    91.    ( - ) Cormac McCarthy - The Road (2006)
    92.     
Kids Corner
    93.    ( - ) Franklin W. Dixon - any of the the Hardy Boys series (1927-79)
    94.    (x) Carolyn Keene - any of the Nancy Drew series (1951-79)
    95.    (x) E. B. White - Charlotte's Web (1952)
    96.    ( - ) Dr. Seuss - The Cat in the Hat (1957)
    97.    (x) Dr. Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham (1960)
    98.    ( - ) Eric Carle - The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969)
    99.    ( - ) R. L. Stine - any of the Goosebumps series (1992-2009)
    100.    ( - ) Lemony Snicket - any of the A Series of Unfortunate Events, er, series (1999-2006)
    101.    ( - ) Christopher Paolini - Eragon (2003)

Notes from the Survey Author
First and incredibly inadequate stab at 100 American essentials. Texts that capture American spirits. A mix of literary and popular, and a product of the moment. So much is missing: Native American, Western; wow, no Invisible Man or Willa Cather . . . No, Gabriel García Márquez is not American, but he's just that relevant. Let me know what you think are the most glaring omissions and inclusions overall.

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