another 100 books

The Daily Telegraph published the "best" 100 books written since 1982, according to the employees of Waterstones (that's the bookstore in the airports, isn't it?).

I have read 15 of them.

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon (2004)
  An epic story told on a small scale. Our hero is a boy with Asperger Syndrome. The heroic acts include walking through a pedestrian tunnel. After reading it and falling in love with it, I bought it for my nephew.
• The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
  Ugh. Tiresome and cliched. The scene where we first see the Taliban is striking, and I kept reading looking for more scenes like that. There were none.
• Life of Pi, Yann Martel (2001)
  Terrific story. Just get yourself past the first 50 pages. Once the boy is in the lifeboat the book becomes un-put-down-able.
• The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
  Lots of cool people love this book. I did not. I don't know why I finished it, but I did so with great effort. I like comic books, super heroes, and magicians, but this particular combination bored me.
• A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
  There is a beautiful passage in this book about Eggers' mother's funeral (or her funeral as he imagines it, I think) that made slogging through the story to that point worth the effort. But the rest, as I wrote elsewhere, is a tedious work of self-indulgence.
• Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
  An epic story told on an epic scale. I never saw the movie, but I'm pretty sure that the book is better than that. I bought this book for someone - my father, maybe?
• Longitude, Dava Sobel (1995)
  Oh, that's right, I did read this one. I don't remember much of it. But I do remember liking Sobel's Galileo's Daughter much better.
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1994)
  I only remember reading this because I remember the man-in-the-well scene. I think there was a cat in the book too.
• The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx (1993)
  This I liked.
• Fatherland, Robert Harris (1992)
  I don't usually read this kind of thing. What's it called? Alternative history or something? But I sort of liked it while I was turning the pages, but it's certainly not one of the best books I've read.
• A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
  This, however, is one of my favorite books. One of the top three, I'd say.
• Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood (1985)
  KR and I listened to this audio book on a trip. Does that count? It was good. Scary good.
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera (1984)
  We saw the terrific movie first. I liked it better than the book.
• Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
  Were there characters in this book? This is the book that introduced to us words like "cyberspace" and invented the internet or whatever. It was boring. I don't know why I finished it.
• The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco (1983)
  I read all of Umberto Eco's novels hoping they will be this good again. None have been. (The movie is good too.)

Others on the list I did not or could not read.

• Carter Beats The Devil, Glen David Gold (2001)
  I started this, but set it down after 50 pages and never picked it up again.
• Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden (1997)
  Never picked up the book, but I fell asleep listening to the audio book.
• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy (1997)
  I set the thing down after only 10 or so pages. I usually give a book 50 pages, but not this one.
• English Patient, Michael Ondaatje (1992)
  Good movie. I heard Ondaatje read from the book, and it was not an easy book to listen too. Very lyrical, very complex sentence structure.
• American Psycho, Bret Easton Elllis (1991)
  I read an excerpt from this online or someplace and was sickened by it. I've steered clear of the book and the movie since then.
• Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
  Here's another book I gave up on after 50 pages.
• Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follet (1989)
  This looked really interesting to me: the building of a 12th century cathedral. Sort of Umberto Eco-esque. So I borrowed it from my mother in law and never bothered to open it.
• Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985)
  I haven't read this one, but I did read One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book I will read again someday.

And my favorites left off the list. (Oops. A commenter points out that some of these were published before 1982.)

• Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1955)
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960)
• Rabbit, Run, John Updike (1960)
• Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner (1987)
• Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins (1990)