"about 27"???
We all know you cross-checked and double-checked your spreadsheets. Nerd.

i said 'about' because i never quite finished on the road nor day of the locusts. and those aren't very long books.

i've finished only 12. i've started but have not finished 15 others. catch-22, which i've started 7 times but haven't completed, epitomizes my lack of desire to complete these books. it's crap like portnoy's complaint that epitomizes the reason i have a lack of desire.

I've read-- oof-- eleven of them. Interestingly, that's exactly the same number of them which I've read the first few pages of and put down.

I learned a while ago that trying to quantify my cultural intake is not necessarily good for self-esteem. Turns out though that I've read a bunch o' those, but I couldn't be arsed to actually count 'em. I've never read Uruk by Dick- it almost seems like you just pick a book by him to get him on the list. But I am surprised that Flow My Tears isn't the one they picked. Maybe that means I should read Uruk, or maybe it means the listmakers are dumb. Or maybe it's an entirely insignificant detail. One book on that list that I was happy to see, and that many might overlook, is Housekeeping, by Marylin Robinson. She's nothing if not not prolific, which is why you might not know about her, but quantity-over-quality could not have chosen a better emissary. She recently published her second novel (across like a 25 year span, but she does write a bit o' non-fiction as well) which my mother said is also amazing, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

ok, I counted. How lame is that? Said I don't count, then I go and count. About 23, 'cause I can't remember if I ever finished Passage to India, but I think I did, but I know I didn't finish Lolita (but I will, I promise), and I'm pretty sure I read Things Fall Apart but honestly, I've been a pretty dodgy student at times. Plus I think eleven other authors, though not the books on the list. Can I play first base?

27 beats me. This was mildly entertaning.

Books I've Read and Finished (18):
Animal Farm
Beloved
Catch-22 (Shame on you Nacho)
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
The Day of the Locust
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Gatsby
Infinite Jest
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Lord of the Flies
Neuromancer
1984
Slaughterhouse-Five
Snow Crash
The Sun Also Rises
To Kill a Mockingbird
White Teeth

Books I Started, but Didn't Finish (5):
The Corrections
Gravity's Rainbow
The Invisible Man
On the Road
Their Eyes Were Watching God

Books I Haven't Read, but Have Watched the Movie Of (4):
All the King's Men
Lolita
The Lord of the Rings
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

you should read watchmen. the art doesn't grab you, but the story will.

I'm clocking in around 23, with a handful of others that I've started... anyway, I want to campaign for more folks to read "Housekeeping," which made the list to my delight.

It has such a domestic name, but OK, I trust your taste.

Here's what I've read, for the obs-- curious. I've starred the ones I read for school (none in college):

*All the King's Men
*Animal Farm
*Catch-22
*Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
The Corrections
The Cyring of Lot 49
Gravity's Rainbow
*The Great Gatsby
I, Claudius
Infinite Jest
*Invisible Man
*The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
*Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Rings
1984
Portnoy's Complaint
Possession
Slaughterhouse-Five
Snow Crash
The Sound and the Fury
*The Sun Also Rises
*To Kill A Mockingbird
Watchmen
White Noise
White Teeth
Wide Sargasso Sea

I've started:
Day of the Locust
On the Road

i like brian's movie category.

in that vein then:

books i haven't read but have watched the movie of:

beloved
the big sleep
lolita
one flew over the cuckoo's nest

dude, oscar and adaptation and the presence of Mr. Nicholson and all that aside, and obviously you can say this almost any time a book is made into a movie, BUT- Cuckoo's Nest needs to be read, for real.

and a question: is The Corrections actually deserving, or did they just stick it on there 'cause it got all hyped and they want to point out that the novel is not a dead art form?

Although I enjoyed much of The Corrections, I wouldn't consider it deserving to be on this list, but there are many people who legitimately think the book a classic. So I think they put it there sincerely.

I couldn't make it through the Corrections... does it get anywhere, or just keep going like it was going?

Ok, I've resisted commenting on this list, because having Time Magazine select the best novels in English from 1923 to the present is roughly comparable to having a hearing impaired child rating the best of AM radio from 1978-86. I realize they cannot change the date of their founding, but I find "1923" to be an infuriatingly arbitrary date nonetheless. Ulysses was first published in 1922. Half of these self-indulgent pieces of crap could never have been written without the postmodern narrative modes that Joyce invented, and the other half studiously ignore or fail to understand his innovations. Besides just Ulysses, by 1923 the movement/genre/aesthetic/style that we call Modernism had almost spent itself. Since Modernism was clearly the height of English narrative fiction, this list is like "rating" the best mountain vistas in Iowa. I find this parade of ninth-grade English class fare to be nothing more than pandering to popular taste; more specifically, pandering to Time magazine's erudite readership that can now congratulate itself on having read the catcher in the fucking rye when they were sixteen and fondly remember "identifying" with Holden Caulfield's pathetic, learning-disabled attempts at cultural subversion, and can thereby consider themselves educated. If you don't believe me, cross reference the list with their "readers rankings." I mean, I'm just shocked that such socially entrenched masterpieces as "Of Mice and Men" or "A Separate Piece" or "Where the Red Fern Grows" or "The Outsiders" didn't make the list with their peers in this pantheon of canonical schlock. But after all, there is only so much room on the list --you have to make hard choices..."Finnegans Wake" clearly had to go, not famous enough --but wouldn't it be cool to put a comic book on? ("the Watchmen" tops the chart of readers' favorites). "Johnny Got His Gun," well, that novel offered real social critique, but nothing like the cultural impact of the Confederacy-glorifying "Gone With the Wind." Yes, Authors like John Kennedy Toole and J. P. Donleavy are actually "good"...but Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett had their fiction turned into movies. I can't wait to see the list fifty years from now that will doubtlessly laud such titans of prose as John Grisham, Agatha Christie, Irvine Welsh...hell, why not Danielle Steele and Stan Lee. And sure we got minorities...Where would any list of great books be without Toni Morrison? But V. S. Naipaul... V. S. Who? Ok, we'll toss a bone to the would-be free-thinkers with "Animal Farm," but "Brave New World?" Well...we don't want anyone to think that Time inc. doesn't endorse capitalism. But they made one serious misstep: "Why isn't the Harry Potter series on there!!?? It definitely should be!!" writes angry reader Robin, from Seattle...Don't you worry Robin, it will be soon. Let's just cut to the chase and acknowledge Oprah to be the all supreme arbiter of cultural capital, shall we?

Some valid points, especially since any list has arbitrariness built in, but you do come off sounding like an English grad student, or maybe like Jonathan Franzen having a bad day. There's a top 100 list of books out there for folks like yourself by the the modern library. Ulysses is #1, which ought to give you comfort.

But if every american read the 100 books on the time magazine list (which is far more likely than them reading the books on the modern library list), would that be so bad?