There's a "note" going around on Facebook that says "The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?"
The rules state that you are to place an "X" next to books you've read, a "+" next to books you loved and a "*" next to books you plan to read. I've read 36 of them, which I have to confess disappointed me a little.
I think this list is very random, and rather silly (for example, #14 is the complete works of Shakespeare, and #98 is Hamlet)--but it gives me a nice list to work from the next time I'm at a loss for what to pick up at the library.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (saw the movie)
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (saw the movie)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X+
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (these should count as more than one) X+
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X+
6. The Bible (I've read enough to know I don't want to read the whole thing)
7. Wuthering Heights X
8. 1984 - George Orwell X
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X+
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I can't remember if I read this or not) *
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read a lot, but not all--this should count as more than one)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (saw the scary 1970's cartoon)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X+
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (I've started this at least 5 times) *
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (this should count as more than one too) X
34. Emma - Jane Austen (saw the movie)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (I read A Thousand Splendid Suns, though) *
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X+
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X+
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding X+
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
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 X
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (saw the movie)
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (saw the movie)
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker (saw the movie)
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (my English teachers think I read this, but they're mistaken)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath X
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (saw the movie)
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker (saw the movie)
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White X+
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arth Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (HATED IT) X
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain B
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare X (and why isn't this considered part of the Complete Works of Shakespeare?!)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (saw the play)
Posts
Little, Big
3 months ago
9 comments:
I've read 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 18, 21, 22, 26, 27, 33, 40, 41, 46, 48, 51, 57, 61, 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 81, 87, 89, 91, 92 and 95. Sooooo many mor I WANT to read.
ooops, *more*
:) Thank goodness for audiobooks--now I can read and drive without getting strange looks from other drivers!
Just like the BBC to be condescending. Why else would they start out saying there's no way most of us have read these books?
I've read quite a few - more than six! I've also read hundreds of other books I'd put well above any on this list.
Lori, the list is certainly not representative of what's good to read . . . but I'm sure somebody was paid a goodly sum to put it together. Wonder how we could get gigs like that?
My response to Lori: Amen, sister. I admit "Bridget Jones" was fun enough, but not exactly a "must-read".
I've haven't even read half of these - not great for an English graduate. Have read the works of Shakespeare though.
Rebecca
http://frombrain2bookshelf.blogspot.com
Rebecca, my status as English Major is precisely why I was disappointed at my tally . . . but I'm sure you have read plenty that isn't on this list!
v. true. Seems a fairly random list.
Rebecca
http://frombrain2bookshelf.blogspot.com
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