you know how much I love peaches and cream!

I'm reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. For me, this is long overdue, The Count of Monte Cristo being one of my favourite books of all-time. What can I say about it? It's an easy, entertaining read, with an air of mystery that keeps me interested--much like Monte Cristo in that sense. I should've read this book when I was 12, but oh well--it's never too late!

That is a great choice. I read that about 5 years ago. I can't say it's better than the Count, but it's a great read. Dumas has a way of making simple story lines into epic ones. And his characters (i.e. D'Artagnon) are such romantic heros. On guard!

About a month ago I finished To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm sure most of you have read it. I honestly can't believe I waited this long to read it. It quickly worked its way into my top five all time, if not top three, even before I was done. What an unbelievable book. I won't say anything more because Len said he is planning on reading it. For those that haven't: do it! It's no wonder it's a classic.

I can't say I enjoyed that book so much... I just finished the count of Monte Cristo and loved it. It was a steady build-up throughout the whole book with a few brief not-so-intense interludes for which I was grateful because I could finally exhale. I loved it... This is another one of those "top 100" "must read" lists that seems to be making it's way around facebook these days. It's allegedly published by BBC, but I have not verified that. I somehow doubt that the BBC would put "Complete works of Shakespeare" above "Hamlet" on the same list...

How do you guys stack up? I will probably choose a book from this list that I have been meaning to read if I can find it. Perhaps something like "Brave New World" or something like that. Has anyone read that??

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

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

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

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

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

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 - C.S. Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian 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

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

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

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

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 23 out of those top 100. There are some that I think are up there more because of popularity than for being literary works of art (i.e. The Davinci Code, the Five People you meet in Heaven). I've read Brave New World, but would definitely read it again, since I haven't read it since undergrad and I remember it being really good. Anyways, it's your choice, so I won't try to sway you with any picks.

As atheistic as I am, I really loved that book. I actually read it for the second time this summer. See, I didn't think it was religious undertones at all. The point was that the differences between religions are petty, and that they are all so similar in so many ways. His message was more that belief in God is comforting, is a way to deal with tragedy, the uncertainties of life, and not necessarily something that needs to be bound by one specific religion (at least that's my take on it). I won't go into any more detail for those that want to read it.

I'm definitely interested in To Kill a Mockingbird. Some novels in that list seem completely out of place, such as The Da Vinci code. How could you put Orwell on the same list as that? Anyway, I've read 17 books on that list, most of which were high school assignments! I obviously need to catch up on my fiction.

Life of Pi... loved it! The only thing that ruined the book for me was the very end when the author makes the whole thing blatantly obvious. To me, it was very Scorsese-esque. He also usually has one of the main characters say some one-liner that explains to the audience the fairly obvious message in the film.

I read 36, and saw the movies of about another 7 or so...

I decided to go for a surf yesterday so I didn't make it to the bookstore before it closed. (Stores close at like 6pm in this part of NZ...). I will go to the store today to pick a book. Once again, I apologise ahead of time if you don't like the selection, but I think there will be a very limited assortment of books for me to pick from.

One other book that I heard nothing but positive things is Midnight('s) Children by Salman Rushdie. I checked it out and it won the Man Booker prize award in the year it was published, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize award, and the "Booker of Bookers" prize for best book in the first 25 years of the Booker prize award and the 40 years of the same award. I really never came across it and didn't know about it until recently. Did any of you guys read it? I was thinking of trying to pick it up for my travels, but am a bit concerned about starting a fairly long book that sucks ever since I read War & Peace (man I really hated that thing for the most part!!!).

I've moved JurPov's last post here.

...but it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. Alex, thanks for yet another amazing book gift. I just finished this one and I must say you were right about Atticus Finch. I feel like I owe you something.

Good to hear Len. That book quickly climbed the ranks to one of my all time favourites. As a criminal defence attorny, I knew you would take a liking to Atticus.

Yes, very inspiring for those who take on unpopular causes. You may as well recommend my next book (outside of the book club of course). I feel like I have so many classics to read.

Finished reading Midnight's Children not too long ago since it keeps popping up on a lot of "must read" lists. Overall, I found it to be quite difficult to get used to the writing style at first, but once I was able to adapt, I thought it was quite clever. In the end, I think it was quite an interesting book to read, and the way it was written was absolutely fascinating. The author seems to paraphrase a lot of ordinary events to make them seem quite extraordinary and borderline surreal. It's hard to explain, but to me it seemed at times as though the scene is written the way a young child would perhaps see it or understand it. It turned an otherwise mundane family history (which is intertwined with India's history), into a marvelous re-examination of what life is all about. It made me think at times, although this is probably a little far-fetched and just an indication of how much I let my imagination roam, how I would describe things to someone that hasn't been conditioned to see, feel, and interpret events based on the "common" understanding and "laws" of nature. If one explanation of any event was just as likely as any other explanation of that event, no matter how unrealistic it may seem to the conditioned mind, how would we see the world and our existence in it?

Has anyone read it? What are/were your thoughts?

The second book I'm reading is "At Home" by Bill Bryson. It's essentially a room-by-room history of the modern house, and how it came to be the way it is. Bill Bryson is probably my favourite writer and if the book wasn't as long as it is, I would probably pick it to make all you guys read it. Not sure if any of you read "A Short History or Nearly Everything", but that is perhaps my favourite book ever. Bryson takes the same approach of meticulously detailing the minutest details of our modern existence, all the while asking the one important question that's often left out: Why? It never occurred to me, for example, that it could have been the invention of chimneys (which for some reason didn't occur until the later part of the middle-ages), that allowed people to build multi-storey houses, which allowed, for the first time, for people to actually have "private" rooms and "privacy" in general... Maybe I'm just a scientifically-inclined nerd, but i find it absolutely fascinating. I can't count how many "hmmm" or "interesting..." or "wow..." moments I have already had in this book. Were it not for its length, I would fully recommend it even though I am only about 25% of the way through. I say that because I have full confidence in Bryson keeping me enthralled to the very end. After all, he's done it on more than one occasion before...

Juraj,and the rest of you for that matter...get on www.goodreads.com it tracks all of the books you've read and ratings etc. Alex and I are both on it.

I've been meaning to do that, but have been too lazy so far. What's the difference between "goodreads" and "visual bookshelf"? Are they both not, more or less, the same?

Unfortunately, visual bookshelf appears to have been discontinued, and facebook suggested goodreads. I've added you as a friend.

Ah yeah, I saw that the visual bookshelf was discontinued after I made the post. I wish good reads had more lists of recommended books. I couldn't really find anywhere on the site where I could look up lists of books by categories other than the basic ones (i.e. fiction, non-fiction, philosophy, young adult, etc.).

When I signed up to it, I also came across some "statistics" page that was blank due to the fact that I haven't written when I finished any of the books. It would be cool if I had this data and I could see how often I read books, or perhaps even how many pages a year I have read, or something like that...

Seems better than the visual bookshelf...

Hey y'all,

I'd like to join your book Club too! What is the current book?

Craig

Welcome another member to this prestigious book club.

The current book is My name is light by Elsa Osorio.

Craig, why do I have a hard time taking your comment seriously? Or did they sell you on it out at Dorset?

No sale needed. I just felt like joining a book club.

Hey all,

Just wondering what the deadline is for the current book to be finished. Basically this book is more elusive than Bike lanes in Rob Ford's Toronto. My only hope is to order it on amazon but it'll take 10 days.

Holla back.

reading, or rather listening to this audio book by Naomi Klein. I find it very refreshing the way it departs from most of the conventional opinions you hear in mainstream media. It's also very interesting to listen to this while reading our current book, My Name Is Light. At first I found Klein's theory about economic shocks a little tortured, but she gradually makes a solid case using historical examples, the most notable of which are Chile and Iraq. I have to say that all of the reading about what happened in Argentina is a little sickening to me, and 'not good for the soul' as they say. It just makes me angry and even more irreverent than usual, which is saying a lot. It's my first experience with a Naomi Klein book, and it makes me want to read her previous book, 'No Logo'.

and I owe Alex yet again for another gem. Just finished The Old Man and the Sea, and I loved it, for most of the same reasons I loved For Whom The Bell Tolls...simple language, raw emotion. I really liked the ending. Got any more recommendations? Hemingway or otherwise...

Interesting list of best books as determined by famous authors here