Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions:
• Copy this into your NOTES to respond on Facebook.
• Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
• Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.

Older versions of the meme differ slightly, and include the instructions

Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
Star (*) those you plan on reading.

So I did that too, but change “LOVE” to ” particularly enjoyed”. My list (below) shows “[M]” after the ones where I’ve seen the movie or stage production.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen [M]
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien [M] +
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling [M] +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee *
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell [M]
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 [M]
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 [M]
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell [M]
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck *
29 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll [M]
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis +
34 Emma -Jane Austen [M]
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis [M]
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres [M]
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne [M]
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell [M] +
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown [M]
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 [M]
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan [M]
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel +
52 Dune – Frank Herbert [M]
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 Addon *
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 [M] *
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 [M]
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker [M]
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 [M] *
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker [M]
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro [M]
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 [M] +
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [M] +
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 [M]
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas [M] *
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare [M]
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl [M]
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo [M]

Okay, only 28, but I can add another 12 if I can include movie and stage productions… which is cheating, I know. And I admit it, I never finished Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yes, it’s really quite sad. And I’ve not yet read Catcher in the Rye, but it’s on my shelf and I mean to read it soon. Really. And I suppose I should say I enjoyed the Bible, and I did enjoy some parts… but to be honest, I didn’t necessarily enjoy all of it.

And what’s with some of the items on this list, anyway? I mean, The Da Vinci Code? Like Kate said, seriously?. I want to replace that with Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, which I’ve read and thought it just as good as The Five People You Meet in Heaven. And did the list’s creator not know that The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is part of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles? Or that Hamlet is part of Shakespeare’s Complete Works? What’s up with that?

What about The Diary of Anne Frank or Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, neither of which I’ve finished, but have started and seen the movies — was even part of a stage production of Anne Frank, so at least I’ve read the play. And although the list has some sci-fi and fantasy, it isn’t much for classical mystery… it could use some Agatha Christie, like Ten Little Indians (aka And Then There Were None), The Mousetrap, or my personal favorite, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. And we should include Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, which I can vouch for as being even better than the movie.

And oh, I think the list may be weighted toward women. I count at least 16 of these titles which are generally considered romance or otherwise classics for women or girls, excluding Alice in Wonderland, but including the likes of Little Women. And then there’s Bridget Jones’ Diary, which, well… you see my point. So Kate scored 51 and Hilary scored 46. Hilary’s meme list included George Orwell’s 1984, which I have read. Score another one for me. It looks like I’ve really got to stretch the rules just to crack into the 40’s, so I give up. I’ll just have to read more.

For the record, the fact that the list varies and contains duplicates makes me question the veracity of the BBC as the source. And I’m not the only one to say it, either. Indications are that the list was adapted from BBC’s The Big Read list from 2003, which is based strictly on popularity (and where three entries for Harry Potter reflect the fact that the series was not then complete). The meme list makes 37 changes to include more of “the classics” and more American (and Canadian) titles. There is no actual claim whatsoever by the BBC that people will have read less than six of these novels, but the claim is evidently brash enough to make people grab the list and prove them wrong and say, “Humph! We look down our collective noses at you, BBC! Take that!” But no, it’s just a baseless meme.

Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, debunk ‘em.

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Huzzah! That analysis is based on an excerpt from my unfinished novel, which according to the wisdom of some random autodrones, seems to be written at the same level as a couple of award-winning authors. Nice. As for my latest blog post, it turns out that

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Now, not really being a horror reader or writer, I wasn’t that familiar with H. P. Lovecraft, so I did a quick lookup. Turns out, Lovecraft is considered a cult figure and “a true successor of Edgar Allan Poe.” Not only that,

Although Lovecraft’s readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades, and he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20^th century. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft — as with Edgar Allan Poe in the 19^th century — has exerted “an incalculable influence on succeeding generations of writers of horror fiction”. Stephen King called Lovecraft “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”

I can’t decide if it’s good to be compared to such an imposing personage, or if it’s bad to be compared to someone who wasn’t very widely read in his own lifetime. Or if altogether this means that I should be switching things up and starting to write horror. Well, at least I didn’t get Dan Brown. That would really depress me.

I thought I’d try something from this blog, but the only post I have here that’s really long enough is Down at the Crossroads, a post I did two years ago simply to capture some rough notes about an experience we had on the Blues Highway in the Mississippi Delta. And wouldn’t you know it,

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Almost makes me want to give up the craft, but then I reasoned that this post represents rough notes with very little or no editing done on it… not something I’d consider publishable. In fact, except for this one, which came up as (-ahem!-) Chuck Palahniuk, several of my unedited stream-of-consciousness blog posts came up as Dan Brown. And in that context, everything made sense again. And besides,

I write like
Margaret Atwood

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

…which made me wonder why Margaret Atwood apparently doesn’t write like Margaret Atwood.

When I’m writing, I can tend to be too focused on the action and advancing the plot (which isn’t a bad thing!) but too much can leave the finished scene feeling a little sterile, needing deeper investment in descriptives. This is where a thesaurus like Angela’s could be helpful.

In my current writing project, there are a number of scenes inside several different diners where I’ve set some conversation as the characters in this particular road story stop for a bite to eat. Strictly speaking, I need them to sit down, order and eat their burgers (or whatever), have their bit of conversation and move on. I’m typically not focused on the setting of the diner as much as I could be, describing some of the sights, sounds, and smells they find there. These meal stops on the road trip are intended to stop the action just for a bit, so adding more description here would really help not only the scene, but set the right pace for these parts of the novel.

Since I’m in the process of editing some of these scenes now, I think I’ll take a page from Angela’s book and sit down to brainstorm some words and phrases to describe some of these settings. That way as I edit or write new scenes, I’ll have a ready source of descriptors to use. Then of course, there’s her thesaurus entry for ‘diner’ as well.

Take a look at the sidebar on Angela Ackerman’s blog, and you see a long list of these thesaurus entries, covering a wide variety of emotions and settings. Each category list starts with a definition of what that particular thesaurus is, like the one for the setting thesaurus. Her list was clearly a lot of work to compile, but it now represents an invaluable resource in the midst of a writing project.

The first letter I got from J.D. Salinger was very short. It was 1988, and I had written to him with a proposal: I wanted my tiny publishing house, Orchises Press, to publish his novella Hapworth 16, 1924. And Salinger himself had improbably replied, saying that he would consider it.

Read: How a Book Publisher Failed to Get J.D. Salinger’s Final Book ‘Hapworth 16, 1924‘ Into Print — New York Magazine.

It should be obvious that writers, writing about society, would make it a point to immerse themselves in that society. But writers are artists, and like most artists we tend to think of ourselves as outcasts. The label is twofold; our creativity and panjandrum is admired, and our variance from normal nine-to-fives is frowned upon. But the mistake is buying into the outcast label, even cherishing it. Doing so separates us from our audience, making us bitter, and even worse, possibly leading to an aloof, chastising tone few enjoy reading.

Interesting contemplation thread that has me thinking about how writers might keep the reclusive tendencies at bay and opt for socialization. In the right circumstances, this would encourage the craft as it has done for other groups of writers in the past. Hence the photos. The upper one is of the Beat writers, clockwise from left: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Lafcadio Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso in 1956. The lower photo is the Inklings, clockwise from left: J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield. Of course, it’d be lovely to slip down to The Eagle and Child every Tuesday evening, but I must have misplaced my invitation. Or perhaps it expired sixty years ago. Either way, I suppose a writer needs an alternative these days.

Sometimes I’ll go be a camper at some local coffee house with my laptop… at least that’s out in public, even if it’s still dining (and working) alone. Keeps me from going completely stir-crazy, but I don’t think it’s quite what the aforelinked article had in mind.

I’ve always been a publishing person, from the time I spent studying copyright pages in books around age 8 to creating what still look like sophisticated magazines as an adolescent using only a typewriter, pen and ink drawings, and Scotch tape, then photocopying the resulting layouts. I’ve worked in bookstores, typeset professionally, written for newspapers, compiled indexes (or indices if you so prefer), launched titles, designed and created reference works, redesigned magazines and journals, created web sites, and done a myriad other things in the realm of publishing.

And now, I’ve self-published my first novel.

I didn’t self-publish because the publishing process confuses, baffles, or overwhelms me. I don’t need a publisher to figure out discounting, rights retention, royalties, or the mechanics of publishing. I did it precisely because I understand the traditional publishing process, and I didn’t want it or need it.

Some good insight here into what most people tend to think is a straightforward decision — though it clearly isn’t. The discussion that follows gets lively and offers some further insight into the question of whether to self-publish or seek out an agent or publishing contract.