Whilst I was mid-happy dance, my husband (the electrical engineer) pushed me aside to view this list of 100 must read books and sifted through them (in some linux style command prompt thing that he insists on using on my Mac to do just about anything because apparently TextEdit just isn’t useful enough or something – really it’s just a God Forbid He Pick Up The Mouse Thing, but really…) to see how many he head read. Here are his comments on the process and his list, which I did not edit, because there’s no saving some people:

“?? means, in the case of the bible, I’ve never read the whole thing.  But I’m very familiar with it.  Tale of Two Cities and Three Musketeers I might have only read the compressed version in the childrens’ illustrated classics, but I can’t remember whether I also read them in English class (we studied them, but it might have been the english textbook compressed version).  So, that comes to a possible 31, a definite 28.

!! means I havent read it , but might someday (only two seem to actually draw me)

I deleted the rest which I don’t intend to read”

2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
??   6. The Bible
8. 1984 – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
25. The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
!!   41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
??  57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
87. Charlottes Web – EB White
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
!!   94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
??  97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

That’s 30 books read people (2 of which are in question, but still) and 2 he plans to read. Seriously? Seriously?

And then he had the gall to use his little “private school education” as an excuse – and  snootily informed me that at least half of them were torturous to read (while I sit here thinking I’d give [his] left nut to have read that many of them… not to mention to have had a private school education…). He was nice enough to walk me through the list and give me his impressions of them, which he liked, which he loathed, which he couldn’t quite remember to save his life but knew with certainty he’d read nonetheless.

My husband, the engineer, who likes to read but contests he has better things to do with his time than sit around reading all day (like moi) – although perhaps having already been forced to read 30 classics he considers himself done? I, however, will never be done – nay, even if I manage to read all 100 of these books, I assure you, I won’t be done. Even if I die – I will either drag all the books to the afterlife with me or demand a reincarnation so I can finish what I started!

And you heard it here first, on mommablogsalot.