book meme 2012 World Book Night — which have you read?

Below is the list of the twentyfive books chosen for World Book Night 2012. According to the site, these books “were selected partly by a public vote for the World Book Night top 100, with an editorial committee whittling down the list”, which may explain some of the odd nature of the list. I thought I’ll keep it simple for this meme: everything I’ve read is in italics, everything I’m not planning to ever read is struck out.

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Player of Games by Iain M Banks
• Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham
• Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Take by Martina Cole
• Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell
• Someone Like You by Roald Dahl
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Room by Emma Donoghue
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Misery by Stephen King
• The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
• Small Island by Andrea Levy
• Let the Right One In by John Ajvde Lindqvist
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Damned Utd by David Peace
• Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
• How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
• Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak

Only four out of twentyfive read means this is not the list for me. A weird mixture of genres, established classics and recent blockbusters, yet not very diverse considering this is supposed to be for World Book Night. It’s certainly not all Dead White Males, but as far as I can tell these are all authors writing for/firmly established in the UK/US book markets.

To be honest, I never like this sort of list and if anything makes me less inclined to read a book, it’s when it’s being promoted as part of something like this.

(Meme found via Nicholas Whyte, originated by Ian Sales.)