When the 2 for 1’s undone the writers block.

The Bookslut Blog, which I read pretty religiously and is linked over there --->, was talking about the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list, which I guess is a book but is also accessible here.
Here's my annotated list of the ones I've read. I had to contain myself to not include ones where I've just seen the movie, or saw the trailer of the movie in some art house theater. I've also come to the conclusion that my memory sucks ass. I also want to know how come there's no Willa Cather on the list. I love Willa Cather; I read her because Andrea Linnett used quotes from her books in a Sassy fashion story with prairie-ish clothes and petticoats at some point in the early 1990s.

1. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
2. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
3. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
4. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
5. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
6. The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
7. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
8. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
9. The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
10. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
11. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
12. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
13. Beloved – Toni Morrison
14. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
15. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
16. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
17. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
18. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
19. Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan (maybe--I've read some Brautigan, liked it, but don't remember titles)
20. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
21. The Wild Boys – William Burroughs (I think--see Brautigan note)
22. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
23. Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke (Did I read this? I don't remember. It's on the list as a reminder to investigate. Handke worked with Wim Wenders a lot.)
24. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
25. 
    One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez (half)
26. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
27. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
28. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
30. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
31. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
32. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
33. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
34. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
35. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes (I haven't read, but I should. We watched the movie in my teenpics class. David Bowie dances on a giant typewriter!)
36. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
37. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
38. Blue Noon – Georges Bataille (Um, does it count if I've read Scott Westerfeld's Blue Noon?)
39. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
40. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
41. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin (half)
42. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien (the first one--then I decided to sit back and let Peter Jackson do all the dirty work)
43. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis (Tiff? Did we read an excerpt from this in Women and Religion?)
44. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
45. Native Son – Richard Wright
46. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham (Does seeing the MST3K version of the movie count? Is there an MST3K version, or did we just watch it and snark ourselves?)
47. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
48. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake (OK, it looks like there are several of Peake's Gormenghast books on the list. I checked the collected paperback out of the library, read 2 1/2, but don't remember the individual titles. I also can't say enough good things about them, or the BBC miniseries.)
49. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck (Delta 88!)
50. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
51. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (I don't care what anyone says. I really like Steinbeck.)
52. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
53. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston (I don't remember if I read this, or just thought about reading this. A lot of this list is like that--I remember thinking at some point in the last 10-15 years that I should read a certain title, but I can't tell if I followed through, or got distracted by, like, the social history of birth control or something. [also a good book])
54. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain (I haven't read this yet, but the movie version is in my Film Noir Top 5. The scene where the 2 main characters meet for the first time kicks so much ass I can't handle it.)
55. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
56. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
57. Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse (only part, I think. Maybe. I think I've read all of Siddhartha, though.)
58. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
59. The Trial – Franz Kafka (Does reading the discussion of it in Jamie Rich's Cut My Hair count?)
60. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse (See?)
61. Ulysses – James Joyce (I have tried. Oh my lord, how I have tried. The last time, I got a librarian to recommend a good readers guide, and I sat there and tried to slog through with both, and then a squirrel grifted me out of half a peanut butter sandwich and I gave up and read The Tin Drum instead. That, incidentally, is completely a true story.)
62. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton (I read one Edith Wharton book. I don't remember the title; it was for a summer class I skipped too much of. We also read Beloved, a slave narrative, the first novel written in the new world [Charlotte Temple, aka crap, aka the only book I've actually physically thrown across a room] and the ubiquitous The Yellow Wallpaper. Damn women's studies minor.)
63. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton (That's the one! It felt like reading Little Women, if it was only about Meg and the shallow friends she's got at the beginning of the book.)
64. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James (less than half)
65. Dracula – Bram Stoker (You guys should see the sweet-ass illustrated version I bought for the library.)
66. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman (You can't see it, but I'm shaking my fist right now.)
67. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy (My hatred of this book is a blog post unto itself.)
68. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll (Has anyone read The Looking Glass Wars yet? I was so into the concept, but the book kind of fell flat to me.)
69. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott (I was a HUGE Alcott fan at one point. Maybe around 10 yrs old or so? I've read a lot of her books.)
70. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
71. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley (My grandmother loved this book. She had a beautiful illustrated version. I remember sitting with her and looking through it. I wonder where that book is now...someone remind me to ask my mom.)
72. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo (I haven't read this, but I could swear this movie was also a novel, and I read that. Maybe I did read Les Mis...)
73. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (I really can't stand Dickens. Hate.)
74. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
75. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
76. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
77. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne (Not yet! My local library has the movie; I think I may watch it this weekend. I'm terribly excited.)
78. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift (maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe?)
79. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus