Quote of the Day

7.26.2008

BBC top 100 books

I found this over at Bygone Beauty where Kalianne reports that "The BBC say the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on their list."

If you'd like to participate in this meme simply copy the list and follow the instructions below. And be sure to post a comment so we can follow each other around.

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) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
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 - 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 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
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 (why is this on the list?)
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 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 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

(55)

~Suzanne

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd highly recommend you try "Rebecca"! It's funny that it was the first of du Maurier's works that I tried, and I was sadly very disappointed with the others. My volume looks like a cheesy romance novel the likes of which I'd never ordinarily read, but there's something about the voice of the narrator, and the way she tells the story, that brings me back to it over and over again.

Also, I wanted to say that your voice on your blog sounds to me like someone who is an admirer of British literature. I mean that as a compliment, though I suspect you'll take it that way.

Anonymous said...

I've read 48 of those. There were a couple of books on that list I thought were terrible. A few I have no intention of reading, but also many that I want to read. I wonder on what criteria this list was assembled?

Anonymous said...

I've read only 22 on the list -- which is a fair cry better than the average 6, but quite a bit less than I should think. Oh well, I think this list will make a good take to the library for inspiration. I always wander the aisles aimlessly, waiting for inspiration to strike. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes not.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Katie, Rebecca is a wonderful book. One you can read and re-read. Aren't great books wonderful. I can see that you've enjoyed many on the list!

Anonymous said...

I've read 49 of them, so I guess I'm better than average. I too wonder about the selection criteria.

Anonymous said...

I've only read 11 although I am currently reading Emma which is on the list. I also wonder about the criteria and agree this is a good list to keep in mind when at the library.

Anonymous said...

Don't knock Bridge. She's a modern classic-- P&P for the current generation. ;>

Will go back and count. Is this the same list that was going around a while back? Will check to see.

Anonymous said...

I've read 57 of those. But, I don't really agree with list as the top 100 books. Then again, the beeb and I often disagree.

You must read Anne of Green Gables. Must. There were others that I saw you left without the intention of reading, but that one stands out.

Anonymous said...

I've read 18 of these, so I've got quite a bit of work to do. Rebecca is my very favorite of all time, though!

Suzanne said...

Thank you Katie, that is indeed a compliment. Perhaps the zillions of pages of British lit that I have consumed are starting to take over.

Suzanne said...

I wondered that too Memarie

Suzanne said...

Alas Kate, she probably is P&P for the modern gen. What a sad commentary. You, btw, are the big winner for Most Well-Read.