I stole this from
Wendy, who got it from someone else. It's the Top 100 list of books from The Big Read, whatever that is. I'm led to understand that most people have read six or fewer books from the list. The last two are missing and I'm not sure why or what they are.
Anyway, here's the drill:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. I haven't read it, but Nancy has five or six different versions on DVD....
2.
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien. I've read the whole series several times. Long, sometimes dry, and incredibly detailed, but a classic story.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte.
4.
Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling. I strongly disliked the fifth book (Harry was such a whiner!), but overall I loved this series.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee.
6.
The Bible. I've read most of it, but to be completely honest I don't think I've ever made it all the way through the Old Testament.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte.
8.
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell.
9.
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman. Intelligently written, complex, and thought-provoking. And it's not about killing God. You shouldn't believe everything that shows up in your e-mail Inbox.
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. Still working on this one.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16.
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien. See #2, above.
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks.
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger.
19.
The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger. I've never even heard of this before, but it sounds intriguing.
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 HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. It's Star Trek meets Monty Python in written form. What's not to love?
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck. Just to save time, if it's by Hemmingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, or Steinbeck, and it's anything longer than a short story, I haven't read it and don't intend to. Like life isn't depressing enough already.
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. I've read the entire series several times. I always find something new when I read.
34. Emma - Jane Austen.
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini.
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres.
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden. Seeing the movie was enough.
39.
Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne. I know I red this when I was younger, but I can't remember a thing about it.
40.
Animal Farm - George Orwell. All books on this list are equal; some are just more equal than others.
41.
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown. Good, but not great.
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving.
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery.
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood.
48.
Lord of the Flies - William Golding. I read this in high school. Hated, hated, hated this book, more than any other book I ever read for any class—with the possible exception of "Flowers for Algernon".
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51.
Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen.
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56.
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens. Sophomore English class.
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley.
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck. See #28, above.
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov. I've heard the Police song, why would I need to read the book?
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold.
64.
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas. A great story, even if it moves a little slowly. Dumas was apparently being paid by the word when he wrote it.
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac.
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy.
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding.
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie.
69.
Moby Dick - Herman Melville. I've read half of it. Maybe I'll try again one day to read the whole thing. But probably not. So that's why half the title is bold, but the other half is not italicized.
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett. One of my favorite childhood books.
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce.
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. It seems to me I had to read an excerpt from this for a Lit class at Weber. That was enough.
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt.
80.
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens. The audiobook featuring Patrick Stewart is better.
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker.
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86.
Charlotte's Web - EB White. Wow, this one takes me back. I mostly remember how much I hated the ending.
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom. Never read this one, but I've read "Tuesdays With Morrie". Does that count?
88.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad.
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery.
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93.
Watership Down - Richard Adams. A great story from an unorthodox point of view.
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole. Wait, there's a book about the 2008 Presidential election out already?
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96.
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas. Read it, didn't love it. The four leads were idiots—at least that's what I thought of the portrayal.
97.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl.
98.
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo. I've read the entire unabridged translation, thank you very much. True, the length and level of detail would make even J.R.R. Tolkein wince, but I'm glad I read it. If any book on this list deserves to be called a classic, this is the one.
So, by my count, I've read 18 of the books on this list, and parts of at least three others. That surprises me a little, but not as much as the number of books on this list that I've
never heard of. I've got to expand my horizons a little, I guess.
