What fun!

Here is a meme from Zelda's blog. Unfortunately, despite my pleas for assistance, no one will tell me how to do strike out text. So for the ones I would have crossed out, I'm just going to put XXX in front of them. Herewith the instructions:

Bold the ones you’ve read
italicize the ones you want to read
cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole
+ put a cross in front of the ones on your book shelf
* the ones you’ve never heard of
(put parenthesis around the book if undecided)

1. XXXThe Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. +Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. +To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. + The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. + The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. + The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. + Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. (Outlander) (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)*
11. + Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. XXXAngels and Demons (Dan Brown)*
13. + Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling))
14. + A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. (Memoirs of a Geisha) (Arthur Golden)
16. + Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)*
18. XXXThe Stand (Stephen King)*
19. + Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. + Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. + The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)*
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. + The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. + East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. (Tuesdays with Morrie) (Mitch Albom)
31. + Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. (The Notebook) (Nicholas Sparks)
33. XXX Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. (The Mists of Avalon) (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)*
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. XXXThe Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. (Confessions of a Shopaholic) (Sophie Kinsella)
44. XXX The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. +Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. + The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)*
54. + Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)*
57. + Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. XXX The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. XXX The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)*
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. XXX The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. XXX Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)*
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. +Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. + The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. (Bridget Jones’ Diary) (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. (The English Patient) (Michael Ondaatje)
75. +The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)*
77. (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) (Betty Smith)
78. (The World According To Garp) (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)*
80. + Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)*
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)*
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. XXX Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)*
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)*
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)*
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. (The Good Earth) (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. XXX The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)*
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)*
99. XXX The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Although, you know, now that I've gone through the list, I think the criteria are somewhat crude. How do you signify that you read it, but you wish you hadn't (Legend of Owen Meany)? What about something you would read if you were stuck at the beach and someone had left it lying in the sand, but that you wouldn't really expend any energy to get hold of (The English Patient)? What about something you have absolutely no opinion about at all, although you've heard of it, all right (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)? What about books you think you may have read ten or fifteen years ago but you're not 100% sure (Lord of the Flies)? What about the ones you got halfway through but then life demanded your attention and you never finished them (Ulysses)?

Plus, who came up with the list anyway? And how did they decide what to put on it? Seems pretty darn idiosyncratic to me.

So, you know what? Leave me a note if you got this from here, and link to your blog so I can see what you're reading.