8 December 2010

  • BBC Book List

    This is making the rounds on facebook but I thought I would share it here.  I enjoy reading and while I don't have nearly as much time to read as I once did, it remains a favorite pastime and one for which I am indebted to my parents.  They made reading a regular activity from my earliest days and all through my childhood we went as a family to the public library every other Friday evening after dinner.

    books2

    Have you read more than 6 of these books?  The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

    Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES.
    Bold those books you've read in their entirety
    Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

    1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 
    2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien   
    3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
    4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
    5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 
    6. The Bible 
    7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte  
    8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
    9. His Dark Materials/The Golden Compass – 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
    15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 
    16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 
    17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
    18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger  
    19. The Time Traveller’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 – CS Lewis 
    34. Emma – Jane Austen 
    35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
    36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
    37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
    38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
    39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
    40. Winnie the Pooh – AA 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
    45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
    46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
    47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
    48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
    49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
    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  
    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
    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
    75. Ulysses – James Joyce
    76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
    77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
    78. Germinal – Emile Zola 
    79. Vanity Fair – William Make
    80. Possession – AS 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
    85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
    86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
    87. Charlotte’s Web – EB 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
    97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
    98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare  
    99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
    100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

    So, what about you?  What have you read?  What would you like to read?  What would you like to go back and read again?  There are many I would like to go back and read and others I would love to read again.

     

Comments (14)

  • I don't value what other people think I should read. Some of these book represent pop culture of their time. Some of these books are written in a rather disagreeable style. Let's face Shakespeare is not an easy read. There are a number of Dickens' books, but where is the Oscar Wilde classic or for that matter a single book by Ayn Rand.

    I am an avid reader, but most of these books would NOT appear on my list what makes me look intellectual.

  • You know, I read a lot as well.  I have bookcases filled with books I've read.  Hardly any of them appear of this list.  According to the list, I'm just average.  Not.

  • 23.

    Love Sherlock Holmes!!!

  • I've read 58 of these books, probably due to my major (English lit). Wrote my thesis on 100 Years of Solitude. Mitch Albom's books never fail to make me cry in public locations, haha.

  • I have read your list and I think you have good taste since it is the same as mine. I found Card - Ender's Series to be of interest. If you being make sure you find the first in the series - it is one those you need to follow from the beginning. Thanks for sharing.

  • I personally have read about half of these. I was an English major in college so they were required. There are a lot of really good authors that do not appear on this list that I have also read.

  • No list is going to cover each individual's reading preferences, of course, but it is interesting to go through a list and see where I stand in that list-maker's selections. I'm happy to say I've read 43 of the books on this list, 4 of them twice, one in French (Le Petit Prince). Charlotte's Web was a favorite of Chris and Jennifer's as they began getting into chapter books as children. We read them together. There are 250 books on my reading list, so I have quite an eclectic interest when it comes to reading. Belonging to a book discussion group certainly stretches my choices as we encompass the choices of several people. Thanks for sharing this.

  • Does the movie version count? Surprisingly, I've read 14 on the list. A little embarrassing since my own brother and mother have read over half of the list but considering I only read during the summer, not bad.

  • i've read 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 25, 29, 33, 36, 42, 51, 52, 54, 57, 58, 59, 61, 65, 72, 87, 88, 97, 98, 99, and 100 (abridged - does that count?). i'm surprised that the bbc claims people will only read 6 of these; there are so many classics, many of which are taught in schools. i feel like i missed reading a lot of the classics, though.

    oh, and i think listing 33 and 36 is kind of cheating... the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe is part of the chronicles of narnia!

  • @kunhuo42 - Well, at least you didn't ask if the musical counted!  Ha ha...  There are a lot I would like to go back and read again.

    @oldpartner - 14 is better than none!

    @jandsschultz - Glad you enjoyed it.

    @stebow - @everyday_yogi - @amygwen - Oh, the list certainly misses a lot of worthy books and contains many that are questionable.

    @Fatcat723 - Well, it is the BBC's list (actually, The Guardian in London's list) so I can't take credit for it.

    @moolgishin - So when you need some sympathy you take his books to a public place and read them?  =D

    @yang1815 - Have you watched the BBC mini-series called "Sherlock"?

  • @christao408 - 

    Negatory. Good?

  • I've got 57 out of 100 read and I've started and failed to finish 4... sorry but War and Peace is off the list (3 strikes and you're out). I would like to revisit some of these (Watership Down and The Three Musketeers especially). Of course I'm reviewing the HP series and I've read Sherlock Holmes a couple of times. The Chronicles of Narnia are once again going to be on the list in anticipation of seeing the next movie - Voyage of the Dawn Treader (I am in love with that Reepicheep mouse - swoon!)

  • i have not read most of them but have seen quite a few of them in films. from your list, i have read only 5 (one which i had to read back in high school), and 3 titles there which i own the books but not yet have the time to read. i own many books and devote an entire cabinet solely for them, unfortunately i buy and own more than i have the time to read them. yeah, i'm a slow reader.

  • curious, I always thought the lion the witch and the wardrobe was part of the narnia series. It's listed separately

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