The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books listed here:
How many of these books have YOU read?
I have marked in bold the ones I have read, in italics the ones I am in the process of reading, and in blue the ones where I have only seen the movie.
Recently I have determined to read more of the 'classics' -- But I can see by this list that I have a long way yet to go!
And I must confess that there are a number of books listed there that I have never even heard of. I have highlighted them in green. Time to do a search and see if they are books I would enjoy. If you have read any on my unread list, which would you recommend?
Why don't you copy and paste the list into your comment, and in some way mark those you've already read, the ones you are in the process of reading, and the ones you've only seen as a movie -- so we can compare with each other.
Then, go here to check out the site and see how 316 others responded on the site...makes for interesting reading in itself!
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
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 - read some, but not others...
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
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
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
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
That makes 17 I've read; a couple I am in the process of reading and I have seen 8 as movies. I think the BBC was quite incorrect in their assesment. But let's see how YOU do!
First a comment. I wish you had a Followers section. I keep up with most of my blogs from those I've indicated that I am a follower of theirs. They get listed on my blogger page every time they post a new one. That means by the time I've looked at all the new ones I've forgotten about your lonely blog on my master list. Now it's after midnight and I want to watch your clip of Abbot and Costello and I want to do the Reading list too, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. But tomorrow I have to go to see the cats and start our Christmas Letter....I know I could train my brain to go to your blog first, but my brain isn't very cooperative with changes in routine! I'll be back.
ReplyDeleteOK, ChrisJ, I now have a followers list - so no more excuses! It actually has always been there, only somehow it got hidden from view.
ReplyDeleteI clicked a wrong button, as I am want to do, lost my followers list and don't know how to get it back!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, back to the book list. Oh dear, I feel very embarrassed to tell you that I've read 65 of them! I need to get out more!!! x
The comments box does not like my list and refuses to accept it, but in a nutshell, I have Read 21,
ReplyDeleteonly seen 21 as a film play etc.
Never heard of 17
Partly read 4 and not read 37 books I have heard of. Some of those I inherited and probably will never read.
The list is odd since some are whole series and one is a part of a series already mentioned.
These books are ones you marked as unknown, which I have read and some I have enjoyed.
ReplyDelete9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
The first one is a trilogy, 1st book Northern Lights, was made into a film as The Golden Compass and published in the USA as the same - by an English writer.
2nd book The Subtle Knife and 3rd The Amber Spyglass. All very readable but meant for teenagers and with a bit of an anti Christian slant in the third book.
TBH and myself both enjoyed these very much.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Harsh but a gripping read about WWII on a Greek island and an unrequited love. Lousy film version would not recommend you watch it, they changed everything. Horrific, sad, funny and tragic in turns- definitely Kleenex needed.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - Considered a Si-Fi classic very complex and well thought out, but I never quite understood the fuss made about it and I like SF.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth Booker Prize winner about an arranged marriage in India.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon life as seen through the eyes of an autistic boy, who incidentally lives in my home town. TBH and I both liked this one a lot.
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - poignant romance between two servants in a big house who cannot allow themselves to form a real attachment. More Kleenex needed.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks a great Scottish writer – This book, his first, is grim, shocking and very difficult to stop reading. About a boy growing up in Scotland if I say any more it will become a spoiler. Not everyone's cup of tea the three main characters seem to be dangerously insane to a greater or lesser degree. Not so much Kleenex needed after this one, more disinfectant.
TBH and I much prefer The Crow Road and The Long Approach to Garbadale both later books by him and I would recommend them as a much more enjoyable read.
Elizabeth, I am VERY impressed! I think my problem is that altho today I love reading, and writing, back in my school days for some reason I hated English Lit - so I wormed my way out of reading many of the classics (which, by the way, I don't consider many on this list -having googled most of them and read the reviews). Now it's hard to get into them. One needs a lot of quiet time to get into Dickens, Austen, the Brontes etc. which I just don't have these days. That is at least one positive thing for you at the moment, I expect :}
ReplyDeleteSnafu - thanks so much for this synopsis of all the books I've never heard of. I did take it upon myself to hunt them down on line, and the only ones I think I might like to read, from your list are: The Remains of the Day and The Curious Incident...
ReplyDeleteOthers that I thought might be good are:
Life of Pi, Cold Comfort Farm, Notes From a Small Island, Shadow of the Wind, and The Lovely Bones.
I will have to get them from the library whenever I go to visit ChrisJ, as that's the only time I really get any extended reading time!
Forgot to mention that I really don't like to read anything 'dark' and I don't mind the Kleenex ones, as long as they have a happy ending. I hate the smell of disinfectant :}
ReplyDeleteOh I forgot Cold Comfort Farm, that is quite funny.
ReplyDeleteThanks for putting the followers list up. You now magically appear in my list. I have read 40 of these books. I'm particularly pleased with myself that I have read the full length version of Les Mis. I've just finished one that should have been on this list except that it is primarily for Americans. It is "The First American -- Benjamin Franklin" by H.W. Brands. Took me two weeks, but it should be required reading for U.S. Students.
ReplyDelete