I'd visited Cate's Garage Sale Finds before and thought it was hilarious. Now there's some new stuff on the site (thanks to Jeff for the tip). Go have a look . Laugh.
A while back, someone decided to compile the 100 best works of fiction of all time. I'm feeling decidedly less than well-read.
Of the 100 books, here's the one I've read because I had to for high school English classes:
- William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; Othello
- Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC), Oedipus the King
Books I chose to read, but also for school-related purposes:
- Emily Bronte, England, (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights (her sister Charlotte's book, Jane Eyre, did not make the list; I did read Jane Eyre in my spare time because I liked Wuthering Heights
- Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960), The Stranger (had to read it in French; gave up and read it in English)
Books I've read entirely of my own volition:
- George Orwell, England, (1903-1950), 1984 (that was the only Orwell on the list; his non-fiction essays kick ass)
- Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories (I'm going to assume that there's only one anthology with this title)
Books that I've read parts of (not fully), but of my own will:
- Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910), The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (I've only read the title story, which I really liked)
- Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House (started it, wandered off, never got back to it)
Not surprisingly, the list is fairly Eurocentric; the only Asian titles I recognized were the Ramayana and the Tale of Genji (I think there were one or two others). And, for non-English-language works, it begs the question of whether they meant the stories as rendered in the original language, or a translation (and if so, which translation).
Anyway, I really should get dressed (it is after 3pm after all) and go read my project management text for school.