Saturday, September 20, 2008

Choosing Book #2: A Conversation with Myself.

I'm done with the Lord of the Rings. What should I read next?

Here's the complete list (it's long, so I made it small). I'm going to eliminate some and then see if I can choose from the remaining:
Alcott's The Young Man's Guide
Augustine's Confessions
Beowulf
Bronte's Wuthering Heights
Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita
Calvin's The Institutes
Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People
Cervantes' Don Quixote
Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans
Dante's Divine Comedy
Darwin's Origin of Species
Delillo's White Noise
Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities
Dickens' David Copperfield
Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment
Eliot's Four Quartets
Ellison's Invisible Man
Friedan's The Feminine Mystique
Gladwell's The Tipping Point
Golding's The Lord of the Flies
Graham's The Wind in the Willows
Heller's Catch-22
Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls
Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey
Kerouak's Slaughterhouse-Five
Kierkegaard's Christian Discourses
Kingston's The Woman Warrior
Machiavelli's The Prince
Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
Martel's Life of Pi
Melville's Moby Dick
Mitchell's Gone with the Wind
Morrison's Beloved
Nietzche's Beyond Good and Evil
Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Pizan's The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry
Plato's The Republic
Rand's Atlas Shrugged
Rand's The Fountainhead
Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
Shalit's A Return to Modesty
Shelley's Frankenstein
Sjoholm's Incognito Street
Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson's Treasure Island
Sun Tzu's The Art of War
Thoreau's Walden
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
Tolstoy's War and Peace
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace's Ben Hur
Wharton's The House of Mirth
Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

Winner's Real Sex
Woolf's To the Lighthouse
Wright's Native Son


First, eliminate British authors. I want a little bit of well-roundedness. That leaves this list:

  1. Alcott's The Young Man's Guide

  2. Augustine's Confessions

  3. Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita

  4. Calvin's The Institutes

  5. Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People

  6. Cervantes' Don Quixote

  7. Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans

  8. Dante's Divine Comedy

  9. Delillo's White Noise

  10. Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

  11. Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment

  12. Ellison's Invisible Man

  13. Friedan's The Feminine Mystique

  14. Gladwell's The Tipping Point

  15. Heller's Catch-22

  16. Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls

  17. Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey

  18. Kerouak's Slaughterhouse-Five

  19. Kierkegaard's Christian Discourses

  20. Kingston's The Woman Warrior

  21. Machiavelli's The Prince

  22. Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

  23. Martel's Life of Pi

  24. Melville's Moby Dick

  25. Mitchell's Gone with the Wind

  26. Morrison's Beloved

  27. Nietzche's Beyond Good and Evil

  28. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

  29. Pizan's The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry

  30. Plato's The Republic

  31. Rand's Atlas Shrugged

  32. Rand's The Fountainhead

  33. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

  34. Shalit's A Return to Modesty

  35. Sjoholm's Incognito Street

  36. Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

  37. Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

  38. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

  39. Sun Tzu's The Art of War

  40. Thoreau's Walden

  41. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

  42. Tolstoy's War and Peace

  43. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

  44. Wallace's Ben Hur

  45. Winner's Real Sex

  46. Wharton's The House of Mirth

  47. Woolf's To the Lighthouse

  48. Wright's Native Son
Ok. Now, I will see what happens when I get a random integer: #22 is the lucky winner....that's...let me scroll up...Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

...I'm trying again. (read here for the Official List of Excuses: I already started it once. This time I'm wanting to read something I have little to no prior relationship with. I just 'reconciled' with one book.)

Again: 24...that's Melville's Moby Dick.

OooooKay. Yeah, no.

One more try: 38...that's Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. All right. Thaaaat's the one! That's the lucky winner!

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