Thank you, Facebook! This is one of billions of tags floating around. So maybe I haven’t been on my favorite TV show or gotten a word into the dictionary, but, dang it, I can read books! Apparently the BBC published this list, thinking that most people have only read 6 of these.
I’m happy to be ahead of this curve! An “X” next to the title means it’s one I’ve read. An “A” means I started it and didn’t like it enough to finish it. I’ve read 41, and attempted 6. I love how diverse this list is–I can get credit for reading Jane Eyre and Bridget Jones’ Diary. This is my kind of reading!
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – X
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – A
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte – X
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee -X
6 The Bible – X
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell – X
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens -
11 Little Women – Louisa May Alcott – A
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy – X
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier – X
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 – X
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell -X
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 -
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh -
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – X
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – X
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll – X
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame -
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy – X
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens -
33 Chronicles of Narnia (all books) – CS Lewis- A
34 Emma – Jane Austen – X
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis – X
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini – X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres – A
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden – X
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne -
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell – X
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown –
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving – X
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery – A
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding – X
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan -X
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel -X
52 Dune – Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen – X
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zifon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens -X
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley – X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – X
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck -
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov – A
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 – X
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding – X
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 Inferno – Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal – Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession – AS Byatt – X
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens -X
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker -
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert – X
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 Arthur Conan Doyle -
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton -
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad – X
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 – X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl -X
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo -X
March 9, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Did you like Emma? I tried to start it a few years ago, but thought it was a bit dry. Perhaps I need to give it a try again.
March 9, 2009 at 3:22 pm
HONESTLY, I liked the movie (Gwyneth Paltrow version) just as much as the book. And it just took a couple of hours to get through! I felt like it captured every important detail of the plot…and yet Emma is one of Austen’s longest books.
March 10, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I’ve read a lot of these, too, but after a few decades I forget which ones I’ve really only seen the movie and THINK I’ve read the book! Thankfully your brain is not as old as mine and you don’t get muddled up between versions like that!