I really hate those book lists that seem to be made to show that someone is more well-read than others, or a list that has been generated to say that  not enough people are reading classic novels, and then they add in books like Bridget Jones’ Diaphragm or Five People You Meet in Line at 7-11 proving to me that they can’t even come up with a list of 100, 75, or even 50 books that people should read.  Who cares? (Note: that paragraph was one long run-on sentence and I refuse to fix it!)

Read what you want is what I say.  I like to read.  I have an English Literature degree and I enjoy Elmore Leonard over Jane Austin.  There are days where I want zombies over true love or a great graphic novel (yes, they count) over a two thousand page trilogy.  I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but I’m addicted to Philip K. Dick.  I studied classics of the romantic periods but my favorite books are the Fletch novels.  If you are reading… good.  Pick up a romance novel, a paperback about aliens, zombies or Predators and you are reading, and that is what the authors wrote them for.  Books are for people to read!

So forget the stupid lists and start writing down what you read.  Once you hit 50, 75 or 100, go back and see just what you read and I bet the list is much better than the BBC’s 100 Books You Are a Loser if You Haven’t Read list, or The Pretentious Bastard Printed Matter You Need list.  Your list will mean a lot more than if you have ever read 100 Years of Soy Sauce or Paprika and Prejudice.  Make your own list.

So, that’s what I did.  I used to just keep all my books, but when I came to Taiwan four years ago I had to start trading books in and not collecting them, so I made a list.  Facebook did erase the list a while back and I had to piece the list back together from blogs and memory so I am missing three books (I know from the number I read each year), but this is a pretty damn solid list.  So…

The Last One Hundred and Two Books I Remember I Read and Maybe You Should Too, If You Want, But Don’t Have to Because it Doesn’t Make You Any Better if You Have, Although I Read 100% of Them, So Beat That you Pencil Necked Geek…

(The list is in reverse order because that’s the way it is on my computer and there is no way I am re-typing over one hundred titles and authors)

1. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard (currently)
2. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
3. Bigger than Hitler, Better than Christ – The Rik Mayall
4. Predator: Cold War – Nathan Archer
5. Books of Blood Vol. 1 – Clive Barker
6. George’s Marvelous Medicine – Roald Dahl
7. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
8. The Punisher Max Vol. 2 – Garth Ennis
9. WWE: Are We There Yet – Robert Caprio
10. The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
11. Parker the Hunter – Richard Stark/Darwyn Cooke
12. The Punisher Max Vol.1 – Garth Ennis
13. The Paper Men – William Golding
14. Iron and Silk – Mark Salzman
15. Out of Sight – Elmore Leonard
16. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
17. The Naked Sun – Isaac Asimov
18. Of Love and Other Demons – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
19. Shit My Dad Says – Justin Halpern
20. The Talking Horse and The Sad Girl and The Village Under the Sea – Mark Haddon
21. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
22. Living Between Fucks – Cry Bloxome
23. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Jane Austin
24. Unknown Man #89 – Elmore Leonard
25. Gates of Eden – Ethan Coen
26. The Amityville Horror – Jay Anson
27. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
28. Generation A – Douglas Adams
29. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
30. Vengeance is Mine – Mickey Spillane
31. The Leaf Storm – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
32. The Masque of the Red Death – Edgar Allen Poe
33. Thai Girl – Andrew Hicks
34. Platform – Michel Houellebecq
35. The Caves of Steel – Issac Asimov
36. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
37. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said – Philip K. Dick
38. Chinese Fairy Tales – Sun Xuegang
39. Turn Left, Turn Right – Jimmy Lao (read and translated with Eva from Chinese to English)
40. The Shack – Wm Paul Young
41. Welcome to the Monkey House – Kurt Vonnegut
42. The Short Stories – Ernest Hemingway
43. No One Writes to the Colonel – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. Chinese Myths – Sun Xuegang
45. Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
46. White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
47. RANT – Chuck Palahniuk
48. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie
49. Please Don’t Call Me Human – Wang Shuo
50. James and the Giant Peach – Roald Dahl
51. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
52. The Gum Thief – Douglas Coupland
53. Running Scared – Gregory McDonald
54. Loop – Koji Suzuki
55. The Lake House – James Patterson (Avoid this one at all costs!!!)
56. Fletch, Too – Gregory McDonald
57. The Inheritors – William Golding
58. Freaky Deaky – Elmore Leonard
59. The Catcher in the Rye
60. Darkly Dreaming Dexter – Jeff Lindsay
61. Dearly Devoted Dexter – Jeff Lindsay
62. Dexter in the Dark- Jeff Lindsay
63. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
64. Killshot – Elmore Leonard
65. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
66. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
67. Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams
68. Fortress of Solitude – Jonathan Lethem
69. Werewolves in their Youth – Michale Chabon
70. Heart of Darkness / The Secret Shaker – Joseph Conrad
71. Spiral – Koji Suzuki
72. Post Office – Charles Buckowski
73. No Country For Old Men – Cormac McCarthy
74. The Cheese Monkeys – Chip Kidd
75. Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie
76. Teacher Man – Frank McCourt
77. On The Run 1-3 – Gordon Korman
78. Memories of My Melancholy Whores – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
79. Snakes & Earrings – Hitomi Kanehara
80. The October Country – Ray Bradbury
81. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
82. In The Miso Soup – Ryu Mirakami
83. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Philip K. Dick
84. Swag – Elmore Leonard
85. A Spot of Bother – Mark Haddon
86. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
87. Ripley’s Game – Patricia Highsmith
88. Galapagos – Kurt Vonnegut
89. Carioca Fletch – Gregory McDonald
90. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
91. Pagan Babies – Elmore Leonard
92. Marathon Man – William Goldman
93. Diary – Chuck Palahnuik
94. Everything in Silico – Jim Munroe
95. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
96. Stick – Elmore Leonard
97. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
98. How to Be Good – Nick Hornby
99. War of the Worlds – HG Wells
100. Traveling with Che Guevara – Alberto Granado
101. Skylar – Gregory McDonald
102. The Invisible Man – HG Wells

I would be interested to see how many of these books my friends have read, but I don’t expect a high number since these are not classics (well, some are).  They’re just books that kept me entertained and I like to remember.