Tuesday 8 July 2008

Yet another bookish meme... via Kevin

Think I saw some version of it over at Urban Recluse some time ago, too. Before anyone starts getting steamed over the selections on the list, please check the link to see how it was compiled, okay? It's all in fun.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read six of the Top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read six and force books upon them! :)

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling (I so can't summon the enthusiasm...)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (One of the best ever.)
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (read about half)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis (couldn't finish this)
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving (loved Garp and Hotel New Hampshire.)
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (a truly frightening book)
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel (dude can write!)
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth (highly recommended by a friend)
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
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 (the movie didn't wow me, but I'll read the book)
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
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
69 Midnight's Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From a Small Island – Bill Bryson (Read A Walk in the Woods and plan to read everything by this author.)
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – A.S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (Loved the movie, so subtle and sensitive. Will definitely read this.)
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web – E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute (read so long ago I recall almost nothing)
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (read his memoir Boy and loved it)
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

8 comments:

nyc/caribbean ragazza said...

Wow only 6 out of 100? sigh.

Pacha said...

I can't read Harry Potter books either. I am sort of expecting to read them with the kids sometime but, really am rather hoping NOT!

Sandra Cormier said...

I'm surprised how many of those books I actually read! Many of the newer ones are on my TBR list.

I enjoyed the Harry Potter series because I didn't go into them with any high expectations.

I read LOTR at least ten times over the last thirty years because I discover things I hadn't before.

Matt said...

Wow. I'm impressed. If we combined, we'd fill in a lot of each other's blanks.

Go for Hitchhikers Guide. Tis short.

Harry Potter is worth it. My initial urge was to avoid it purely because of the hype, but just pretend that doesn't exist. It's good.

Anonymous said...

I have a flea market version edition of Watership Down so that would be on my italics list. I saw Atonement the movie and it was very good hence the book must be better.

I will probably do the complete list later :)

Liane Spicer said...

Nyc, that is a sad state of affairs. Let's hope they're reading something.

Pacha, my 'kid' is twenty-four and showing no signs of wanting to read them, so maybe I'm safe?

Chumplet, I think my problem is the hype. It just turns me off, contrary beastie that I am. LOTR is one I look forward to reading.

Matt, Hitchhiker has been languishing on various incarnations of my wish list for so long that I just went ahead and ordered it today. Will probably get around to HP one day when the hype has died down somewhat.

akalol, I look forward to reading your list!

PJ said...

I've read 16/100 from this list. The book list I'd mentioned on my blog was from librarything's unread books.

Liane Spicer said...

PJ, I must have seen it somewhere else then. I'm a list-o-phile, can't see one without stopping to play.