* denotes currently reading, bold denotes especially good
(after a certain length of time, * also denotes Unfinished)
Have His Carcase* (Sayers, reread)
World War Z* (Brooks)
Mansfield Park (Austen, reread)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Apex Hides the Hurt* (Whitehead)
The Devil in the White City (Larson)
The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Pollan)
The Real Thing (Stoppard)
Enemies, a Love Story* (Singer)
Heat (Buford)
Garlic and Sapphires (reread, Reichl)
Haroun and the Sea of Stories (reread, Rushdie)
Night and Day* (Woolf)
How to Be Alone (Franzen)
The Emperor’s Children* (Messud)
England, England* (Barnes)
Shiksa Goddess (Wasserstein)
I Feel Bad About My Neck (Ephron)
Letters from the Earth (Twain)
Remains of the Day (Ishiguru)
Here’s to Hindsight (Cobble)
Children of the Alley* (Mahfouz)
Fortress of Solitude* (Lethem)
Special Topics in Calamity Physics* (Pessl)
The End (Snicket)
Two Flappers in Paris (anonymous vintage French erotica. really!)
Heartburn (Ephron)
The Fermata (Baker) Another reread.
The Colossus of Maroussi* (Miller)
Bee Season (Goldberg) — a reread, but a worthwhile one.
Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner)
The Tipping Point (Gladwell)
The Amber Spyglass (Pullman)
The Subtle Knife (Pullman)
Water for Elephants* (Gruen)
I Do, But I Don’t: Walking Down the Aisle Without Losing Your Mind (Wicoff)
The Golden Compass (Pullman)
Fun Home (Bechdel)
Snow (Pamuk)
The Awakening (Chopin)
The Alchemist (Coelho) 60 million people worldwide have read this book — and every single one of them probably liked it more than I did.
Veronica (Gaitskill)
Main Street (Lewis)
Housekeeping (Robinson)
The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate (Mitford)
Middlemarch (Eliot)
The Eustace Diamonds (Trollope)
These books have a theme, which I am only realizing in retrospect: unhappy women. Young women, too! Brides! Who make bad choices! Which are often the only choices available. Hum.
None of these, unfortunately, appear on Human Events’ Top 10 List of Books Liberals Would Like to Burn. What I love about this list is it’s compiled by conservatives admittedly speculating about what THEY THINK I’d like to use to char my anti-war tofu pups. What I also love? The number one book is (get ready):
1. Bible by God
The central work of Western Civilization, defines the relationship between God and man and is the foundation of faith in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Liberal groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, have sued to keep it out of government buildings, schools and public discourse.
Boo yeah! I know I personally want to burn the Bible (“by God” — it really should say that on the cover) on a pile of my bras and, by the light of the heathenish conflagration, perform abortions via witchcraft.
Conservatives are too funny. Most of their books I haven’t even heard of, or I would totally choose to keep around for kicks. Like the “articulate” Ann Coulter: a day just isn’t complete without her hate misting its edges. Plus, I like to keep in mind what’s worth fighting for.
The Bible by God. Wow.
Well, as an oft-described-by-web-quizzage liberal-libertarian, I’ve got several #1’s (“by God”? – yeah, let’s just conveniently ignore the scholarship that proves the multiple authorship and the resultant inconsistencies…)in my home, and wouldn’t mind ever so terrbily much having a copy each of #’s 10 and 5 as well — as fer the rest?: meh…
And it should have blurbs on the jacket by the other important deities.
“A rousing tale of wrath and judgment…I was jealous of this other God, because Man can He write!” – Allah (The Koran)
wow…you have a lot of hate in you. I’ll bet you’ve been raised liberal all your life and it is all you know. Because you speak very naively.
the above comment. awesome.
i’m sorry but i’m not sure where you find hate in what i wrote. sarcasm, maybe, and a little frustration; but, considering that the list-makers had assumed i, by implication, would think of burning ANY book — a practice which reeks of nazi germany and which makes my stomach turn as much as violence towards human beings — i thought i was being rather restrained.
also, mr. anonymous, if you want the lectures you give strangers on their faults to be taken seriously, you should probably have the courage to put your name to them.
this list is amazing. it is probably also the only incidence in the history of the world in which a book by ann coulter and a book by mark twain are on the same list. with her’s ranked higher, no less!
I wanted to see the list but instead I got the top ten conservative cities in the US (#1 = provo, utah). then I found the top ten “myths” about global warming. I feel like I need to wash my brain out with soap.