Good Catholic literature?
Jun. 26th, 2008 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafThe other night I was in a bar with an American Jesuit, an Italian Dominican, and a Polish Nietzsche scholar (that sounds like the start of a bad joke, doesn't it?) and the talk turned to favourite books.
The Dominican said, "I have heard one of my fellow brothers say that you only need two books, the Bible and the Summa Theologica, but I think that's going a little far." He paused, meditatively. "I would say you need The Lord of the Rings, too."
On that note, here is the - alleged - Big Read reading meme, though as others have pointed out, the list that's circulating on LJ is not the original one, and has a glaring problem.
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike through the ones you couldn't stand.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Though I'm waiting for the lobster translation....
6. The Bible .
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - I loved the first one, but I'm afraid the sermons eventually got too much for me.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Up to a point, Lord Copper. I haven't read The Phoenix and the Turtle or The Two Noble Kinsmen.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier. At least, I did when I was fifteen, but I'm not sure what I'd think of it now (though I may be prejudiced by my mother telling me to read it now, while I'd still like it.)
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger. A deeply irritating and manipulative book.
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell One of these days, if only for the intertextual LOLs with Hermann Kant.
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. As in, I liked the first two books and the cricket match. But Adams isn't a patch on Pratchett.
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Obviously, given that I've read 33...
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Am actively avoiding this, actually.
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown. Tried to read this, but couldn't take teh stupid. Of course, giving up early on probably helped my blood pressure.
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving. I know I've read this, but all I can remember about it is that it had an armadillo on the counter and for some reason reminded me strongly of Katz und Maus. This suggests to me that although I'm not a great Grass fan, he is a much better writer than Irving.
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins . On the whole the Moonstone is a better detective story - but it doesn't have Marion. Or Fosco...
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy Debated as to underlining this, but I don't like it quite enough. The only Hardy I love is Under the Greenwood Tree.
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding Ick.
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan. Have never managed to get on with McEwan.
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
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
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov. Glanced at it and gave up.
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
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker. Only in an abridged (and probably expurgated, come to think of it) edition at primary school. I'm not really a fan of vampire stories, which is weird, because I have written a few (at least partially tongue in cheek, though).
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. Today I was looking at a picture on the net and thought 'Who's that striking woman with Fred Truman?' Then I realised it was Ted and Sylvia. All I can say in my offence is that they were both wild young Yorkshiremen...
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome. I like some of the subsequent ones even better, but definitely right up with the best children's books anywhere (and in fact, one could almost scratch the 'children's')
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert I don't suppose that the Posy Simmonds graphic novel counts, although that is a very good book...
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry. Never mind reading this, I haven't heard of it...
87. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom. I have an intrinsic situation of books set in heaven. Dante did it brilliantly, and CS Lewis made a respectable job of it in The Great Divorce, but on the whole...
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks. I tend to love or loathe Banks; this falls into the loathe category. I probably just have a weak stomach....
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute. Have no idea whether or not I've read it. If I haven't, it's one of the few books at my parent's house I didn't read growing up.
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl. Though I was never a great Dahl fan, except for Danny Champion of the World and the autobiographies.
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Dominican said, "I have heard one of my fellow brothers say that you only need two books, the Bible and the Summa Theologica, but I think that's going a little far." He paused, meditatively. "I would say you need The Lord of the Rings, too."
On that note, here is the - alleged - Big Read reading meme, though as others have pointed out, the list that's circulating on LJ is not the original one, and has a glaring problem.
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike through the ones you couldn't stand.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Though I'm waiting for the lobster translation....
6. The Bible .
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - I loved the first one, but I'm afraid the sermons eventually got too much for me.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Up to a point, Lord Copper. I haven't read The Phoenix and the Turtle or The Two Noble Kinsmen.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier. At least, I did when I was fifteen, but I'm not sure what I'd think of it now (though I may be prejudiced by my mother telling me to read it now, while I'd still like it.)
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger. A deeply irritating and manipulative book.
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell One of these days, if only for the intertextual LOLs with Hermann Kant.
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. As in, I liked the first two books and the cricket match. But Adams isn't a patch on Pratchett.
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Obviously, given that I've read 33...
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Am actively avoiding this, actually.
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown. Tried to read this, but couldn't take teh stupid. Of course, giving up early on probably helped my blood pressure.
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving. I know I've read this, but all I can remember about it is that it had an armadillo on the counter and for some reason reminded me strongly of Katz und Maus. This suggests to me that although I'm not a great Grass fan, he is a much better writer than Irving.
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins . On the whole the Moonstone is a better detective story - but it doesn't have Marion. Or Fosco...
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy Debated as to underlining this, but I don't like it quite enough. The only Hardy I love is Under the Greenwood Tree.
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding Ick.
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan. Have never managed to get on with McEwan.
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
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
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov. Glanced at it and gave up.
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
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker. Only in an abridged (and probably expurgated, come to think of it) edition at primary school. I'm not really a fan of vampire stories, which is weird, because I have written a few (at least partially tongue in cheek, though).
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. Today I was looking at a picture on the net and thought 'Who's that striking woman with Fred Truman?' Then I realised it was Ted and Sylvia. All I can say in my offence is that they were both wild young Yorkshiremen...
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome. I like some of the subsequent ones even better, but definitely right up with the best children's books anywhere (and in fact, one could almost scratch the 'children's')
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert I don't suppose that the Posy Simmonds graphic novel counts, although that is a very good book...
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry. Never mind reading this, I haven't heard of it...
87. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom. I have an intrinsic situation of books set in heaven. Dante did it brilliantly, and CS Lewis made a respectable job of it in The Great Divorce, but on the whole...
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks. I tend to love or loathe Banks; this falls into the loathe category. I probably just have a weak stomach....
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute. Have no idea whether or not I've read it. If I haven't, it's one of the few books at my parent's house I didn't read growing up.
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl. Though I was never a great Dahl fan, except for Danny Champion of the World and the autobiographies.
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo