book meme, opinionated statistics version

[kittenscribble]

One of those book memes is going around again in which you indicate, through various types of formatting, whether you finished, started, or never read books in a given list. I like looking at lists of books, but this time I decided to plop the list into Excel and tag them into categories.

Out of 106 books,
- I've read 60
- I haven't read 40
- I haven't finished 6 (ah, 100 Years of Solitude, I'll get back to you someday)
- I had to read 10 of them for class (one of which I did not finish: Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel")

Of the 60 books I read (5 of which I read through book club),
- I loved: 12
(Anna Karenina, Catch-22, Name of the Rose, Pride and Prejudice, Time Traveler's Wife, American Gods, Once and Future King, Curious Incident, Dune, A Short History, Lolita, The Hobbit)
- I considered a total waste of time: 5
(Wuthering Heights: overwrought; Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: touching story dragged out beyond all hope of redemption; Memoirs of a Geisha: uninformed and disrespectful; Foucault's Pendulum: annoyingly abstruse; Zen and the Art: unbearably pretentious)
- I thought the rest were more or less OK.

Of the 40 books I hadn't read,
- I hadn't heard of: 4
(The Corrections, The God of Small Things, A Confederacy of Dunces, Cloud Atlas)
- I'll never read: 4
(Frankenstein and Dracula: I'm easily frightened; Angels & Demons: more Dan Brown? no thank you; On the Road: too lush and incoherent for me)
- the rest, I both knew of and would be happy to tackle.

I skipped the "what do you have on your shelves that you haven't read?" bit because most of my babies are in boxes in my storage unit. At least this has gotten me out to the library more often. I've also been supplementing from used book sales over the past few months. I'll have to make sure I don't have any duplicates when I finally unpack everything.

Analysis: From that list, I liked roughly 77% of books I read (and really loved about 20% of them), and was greatly disappointed by only 8%. (I really love 1/5 of all books? Probably means my standards are set low.) Of books I haven't read, I've heard of 90% of them, and am resistant to reading about 10%. Of course, it's all highly dependent on sample composition.

Comments

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

I wanted to do that but didn't have time!

2 comments: impugning Wuthering Heights? Oh dear. And when I read Confederacy of Dunces (admittedly almost a decade ago) I adored it. But based on the fact that I already like overwrought, pretentious stuff you don't like... ;) But I don't think CoD falls in that category. Have I pleaded yet for you to read my favorite book? I need to remember to do that or buy you a copy.

[kittenscribble.livejournal.com]

When it takes 20 seconds for the remote database call to come back with your results, and you have to make multiple calls... you have a lot of time. :)

I actually know nothing at all about CoD, so I'd be open to trying it. Is it your favorite book?

I have a funny track record with overwrought pretentiousness. When it works for me, I really love it; when it doesn't work, I can't stand it. There's really not a lot of middle ground. I read WH for high school English and could not find it in myself to identify with any of the characters. I just wanted to barge in there and slap some sense into each and every one of them.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Ah, see, I thought WH was hopelessly romantic, wrote a paper on how Heathcliff was a vampire, and hoped he would come creepily obsess over me.

CoD is not my favorite, but it has the same humor and southern flavor that my favorite book, Michael Malone's Handling Sin, has. :)

[kittenscribble.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely put CoD on my to-read list, then. I'm intrigued!

I like creepy obsession, but I think I'm more a fan of the deeply-repressed, intricately-plotted "Count of Monte Cristo" type obsession. Heathcliff's temper tantrums were so gauche. ;)

[examorata.livejournal.com]

I, too, cannot stand Wuthering Heights, for what sounds like very similar reasons!

[kittenscribble.livejournal.com]

Yep! It's a pity that Gothic novels are not known for their practical and sensible characters. :D

[pseudotheist.livejournal.com]

"Foucault's Pendulum: annoyingly abstruse"

You are dead to me...

[kittenscribble.livejournal.com]

oh noes!

I love Eco, but he really let me down with that one. So much of that book was just unnecessary.

[pseudotheist.livejournal.com]

But that was half the point; it's all about how people try to make patterns out of all matter of unconnected events and intellectual detritus, and end up with these grand conspiracy theories that take on a life of their own. Sure, there was a slow part in the middle there, but in the end, it was everything the Illuminati trilogy failed to be. And for that matter, it was everything House of Leaves failed to be too...

[kittenscribble.livejournal.com]

...you didn't just ruin House of Leaves for me, did you? :P

I just didn't like the end. Which is to say, the end didn't justify the effort I put into suffering through the middle. When you have these unreliable narrators it's really hit or miss with the conspiracy-come-to-life thing, and Casaubon really missed the mark for me.

In concept, I agree, it's cool. In execution... not so much.

[pseudotheist.livejournal.com]

The only thing that could ruin House of Leaves for you is reading it...