The Book Meme

[blairprovence]

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

 

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ, or not, as you see fit.

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 of 'em, multiple times
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - so great
6. The Bible 
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - it got less creepy once 1984 actually went by, I think
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - schoolwork.  Not a fan.  Obviously paid by the word.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - Torture
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - English major
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  - HAAAATE!
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 - Liked TTLG better - 'Twas brillig in the slithy tove...'
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 ?  twice?
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - the first three chapters - too creepy for me
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
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 - cried at Union Station in DC
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 - v. v. funny
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - yes, and now I could whale, if necessary
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 Makepeace Thackeray
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 Alborn
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 - Fave book EVAAAARRRR
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 ? twice?
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - his  best one is 'Danny, the Champion of the World' 
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Hmm, 35.  Not good for an English major.  I notice that it's heavy on the fantasy, the kids books, and the mystery.  So pretty accurate.

Comments

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

I hope they don't mean "top 100" in terms of quality, because if so Dan Brown's presence makes the list a fail.

[blairprovence.livejournal.com]

I'm not actually sure who the "Big Read" is - a publishing house, maybe? I'm pretty sure these are just random top sellers, regardless of quality. I mean, I liked Bridget Jones' Diary, but I don't think it will feature in future English classes. Agree with you on the Dan Brown - I got about a chapter in and just was NOT interested. So I didn't count it.

And a lot of books are missing, in addition to the multiple Narnias and multiple Shakespeares. Still, made me feel a little like I should return the degree. :)