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.

BBC's 100 Books

The BBC believes most people will have read only six of the one hundred books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions: Look at the list, and mark those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (movie)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (movie)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (never)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible (X)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (movie)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (parts)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( - )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (movie)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (movie)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (parts)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (parts)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (parts)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (parts, movie)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (parts)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( - )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ( - )
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (movie)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (movie)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (parts)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (movie)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (parts)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ( - )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (movie)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (movie)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (parts)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (parts)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (parts)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ( - )
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (movie)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (parts)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (movie)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (movie)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (parts)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ( - )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (movie)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ( - )
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (parts)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( - )
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( - )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ( - )
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( - )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ( - )
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ( - )
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (movie)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (X)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (movie)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( - )
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (movie)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( - )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( - )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (X)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ( - )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( - )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (parts)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (X)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( - )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ( - )
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( - )
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( - )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( - )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (movie)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (X)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (parts, movie)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (movie, play)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (movie)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( - )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (X)
76 The Inferno - Dante (parts)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( - )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( - )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (movie)
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( - )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( - )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (movie)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (movie)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (parts)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( - )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( - )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (never)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( - )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (X)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( - )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (X)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( - )
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( - )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (movie)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (never)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (play)

I seem to have read 20? And (parts) of, or seen a (movie) or (play) of 42 more. And (never) want anything to do with a few after that.

Earthling, American, and mis-anGlop that I am, I'd like to see a good international list and an American list.

Best Movies of 2008

I've fallen pretty far behind in my movies ratings, but I've apparently watched and rated at least eighty movies in 2008. These ten, I rated eight out of ten, so they come out on top.

• Trouble the Water (2008)
• The Life Before Her Eyes (2007)
• After the Wedding (2006)
• Tombstone (1993)
• The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
• Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
• Ordinary People (1980)
• The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976)
• The Defiant Ones (1958)
• Ikiru (1952)

Listed in reverse chronological order, by release date. Only Trouble the Water was released in 2008.

Stuff White People Like

Whaledreamers at IMDb
imdb.com/title/tt086...

Rabbit-Proof Fence at LibraryThing
librarything.com/wor...

Attended a screening of the movie Whaledreamers yesterday and a concert by Steve Earle on Friday. Whaledreamers was a pretty bad documentary about worthy subjects, including a displaced and fragile Aboriginal tribe. A treatment I like better of Aboriginal struggles is the book Rabbit-Proof Fence, by Doris Pilkington.

Steve Earle
steveearle.com

Allison Moorer
allisonmoorer.com

Judson Memorial Church
judson.org

Steve Earle was most entertaining to me between songs. Adding recorded backup music a few songs in was a very bad move, I think. I enjoyed the music of his opening act, Allison Moorer, more. Earle, 53, and Moorer, 36, are married and have a seventeen-year age-gap relationship. The concert was held at Judson Memorial Church, which describes itself as progressive.

What particularly struck me at these events was the homogeneity of the audiences. Whaledreamers' audience appeared almost all White. Steve Earle's audience appeared actually all White and, moreover, styled incredibly unvaryingly. Button-down shirts, no makeup or hair product, plenty of steel grays. It was like baby boomer Vermont, activist, White, and well-to-do, came to town.

Whaledreamers was marketed as an environmental movie, and Steve Earle is known for his progressive activist politics and country music. Are these all such White movements? Even in New York City? I couldn't help but be reminded of Stuff White People Like, stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, a funny, self-referential blog I recently discovered.

Tree Planting

Busy day. Planted trees with NJCF at our Wickecheoke Creek Preserve. So excited. Really enjoyed the outing. With Tim, Alix, Ray, Louis, Steve Gruber, and some local volunteer named John.

World Literature Book Club discussion of The God of Small Things in the evening.

L'enfant sauvage

Watched L'enfant sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) this evening. I find feral children, raised in the wild without human society, interesting.

Open-Air Movie: Dreamer

Took myself out to the open air movies for the first day of summer. Flemington, New Jersey is sponsoring a free "Family Fun Fest" series. Tonight was Dreamer. An injured horse, a little girl, against all the odds, etc. Awful, formula movie. Got at least three rounds of tears out of me.

The New World

Matinee movie on DVD, with - DVD! Watched the often visually beautiful The New World starring Q'Orianka Kilcher in an enchanting turn as Pocahontas. (Kilcher is apparently a cousin of the singer Jewel.) This could have been a moving, complex story about heroism, adult relationships, feminism, and the clash of civilizations, foreshadowing the genocide of Native America. It should have been told the whole way through, through the eyes of Pocahontas, and it should have been called Pocahontas. Instead the screenplay and editing were painful and featured gratuitous voiceover.

The Squid and the Whale

Movie Night. Watched The Squid and the Whale. Opened the windows and listened to the rain and thunder.

Place of Reeds

Finished reading the book Place of Reeds, by Caitlin Davies, 1997. Decently written and a detailed impression of life for a white foreign English woman in a black native Motswana family. Unfortunately, it feels time and again as though Davies gives us only half her story.