Friday, February 27, 2009

The BBC Says I've Read Six Of These

But I know it's more, cuz I'm rabid. So I'm going to go down this list and highlight what I've read, no cheating, Scouts Honor. I have no idea what the BBC based their criteria or point on for this list, or the estimation of Six books out of this One Hundred. It makes me want to read the ones I haven't read, just on principle. What about you?

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

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 - 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 (my beloved Irving made the list!)

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (one of the most important books of my life)

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 - Kazu 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
Maggie May said...

so i read 55, a little over half. the weird nerdy competitor in me feels that is not 'good enough'. now i will hermit myself in bed for a month reading. if i lose my job, so be it. some things are just too damn important. (but do i have to read Love in a Time of Cholera? cuz i tried, i really did, and i just couldn't fall in love.)

amanda said...

I've only read 17! And i thought I was a bookworm. I am going to book store right now.

Kurt said...

I've only read 46 of them,which made me suddenly want to throw myself in a lake.

I was going to get all upset about what wasn't included on the list (Hemmingway, Chandler) but then I realized I need a nap.

Kurt said...

Also, Vonnegut and Robbins. I came back to leave this second comment because I was so annoyed. I may be a dork, but at least I'm obsessive. Mom says I'm a prize.

Sharon said...

I can't even get through reading the list, so bravo to you for reading more than half the books on it!!

julochka said...

i've seen this list before. isn't it rather arbitrary? i don't really get how they came up with the titles on it. i mean seriously, do the complete works of shakespeare, tolstoy and the curious incident of a dog in night time really belong on the same list?

Ms. Moon said...

Strange list. I mean, Helen Fielding right up there with Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy?
Read a Confederacy of Dunces. It's, well- read it and see.

Rachael said...

26.

I thought I'd have read more for sure. I read a ton of classics in high school/college.

I've seen this list floating around, and everytime I do, I think I should print it out and take it the library next visit and start revisiting some classics.

I'm competitive like that too. ;>

agnes said...

wow.. i must say i only read like 20 of them, is it a good or a bad??? lol

shrink on the couch said...

I'm up to 46, but more if you count books that I tried and didn't like enough to continue (Time Traveler's Wife, ugh, I forced myself to go halfway and thought, no more!) I counted the Bible, even though I haven't read the entire thing. I have read most of Shakespeare, not all, so didn't count that?

Possession, I tried. It was a writing style I found hard to engage but I suspect if I try it another time it will be worthwhile.

I've tried both G.G.Marquez and couldn't get into it. I wish I could, because so many rave about these two.

Danette said...

29. What a great list. I loved so many of those, my favorites were Cold Comfort Farm and Little Women and A Prayer For Owen Meany and and and......I am going to type out that list and take it to the bookstore.

Fun!

Captain Dumbass said...

Hmm, I'll have to try this one, though I have a feeling I already have... maybe I should check my older posts first.

Why the complete works of Shakespeare and then Hamlet by itself?

Captain Dumbass said...

I knew I'd done this before.

http://richmondzoo.blogspot.com/2008/09/100-books.html

If you're bored, if not, no worries. After skimming through mine again I realize I missed some that I've actually read. Oh well.

Jenny Grace said...

Counting seems a bit over my head this morning, but my highly scientific glancing method made me feel like I'd read about 2/3 of the books.

But us nerds are more well-read than the American public at large, or so I've heard.

Jeanne Estridge said...

45, although I think I should get credit for Les Miserables because I got 3/4 of the way through it and suddenly realized I was reading a short version (only 600 or so pages), which left me too depressed to start again.

That's it. I'm going to start working the list, so the next time someone posts it, I can say, airily, "Oh, yes, I've read all those."

Girl On A Journey said...

I've only read Hamlet, Animal Farm and Oliver Twist - I started readin Tess of the D'Ubervilles but never finished

Anonymous said...

Oh Maggie - Love in the time of Cholera is so good - at the END. Same with one hundred years of solitude. I picked them up and put them down for years, and when I finally finished One Hundred Years I cried like a baby all over the place. They are lovely. I've got 44 of these down.. as much as I tried, I cannot for the life of me read little women. Save me.

anymommy said...

Forty five...it's a weird list. If not for some childhood favorites, my number would be much lower!

I must be competitive too, because I want to run out and buy some books, just to feel well-read. According to who??

Unknown said...

I have the Kite Runner and The Five People You Meet When You Go To Heaven if you would like to borrow them some time.

Maggie May said...

amanda- that was my reaction too= going to the bookstore!

kurt- yup, any list is bound to inspire what was left off the list to leap to your mind.

julochka- it does seem random- i'm not sure what the criteria were.

ms. moon- i will.

rachael- i'll run you to the finish!:)

agnes- it's good! they said average is six.

phd- i read some of Possession and had the same reaction. it might be a book you are halfway through before you like it.

danette- i adore prayer for owen meany, just adore it.

captain dumbass- i have no idea why this list was set up where some books are in the series as one, and some not. weird.

miss grace-= i use that highly scientific method for testing. hmm.

jeanne- you made me laugh with the 'airily'!!

girl on a journey- i want to read Hamlet again, it's been so freaking long! i barely remember.

miel- ok...i'm gonna trust you..i have it on my bookshelf and i'm gonna try it. i'll let you know:)

anymommy= this seems to be the consensus= weird list!

kristi= ok, i'm always up for borrowing books:)

Little Miss Sunshine State said...

thanks for stopping by my blog.feel free to roam around in my archives. my blog hopes when it grows up it will be as cool as your blog!

I share your love of Anne Shirley, thyroid issues and staggering medical bills, our new president, the cute rocker dude on American Idol and wanting to work in a kick-ass nursing home (I have a background in elder care and Hospice).

The Time Traveller's Wife...couldn't get into it. It was giving me anxiety.

Andrea Eames said...

I have read 96. Now I feel virtuous :P.

I was tickled by the fact that they listed 'Hamlet' as separate from 'The complete works of Shakespeare.' :)

Lola said...

12? I feel like such a loser now. Thanks.

Chaos and love said...

36. However, its quite a western lit list. Wish it had more international authors. I loved Love in the Time of Cholera :P
My son is named after this author. I was forced to read many of the classics for class. Esp. the Austen, hehe. I was repremanded by a lit teahcer for my lack of interest.
Time Traveler's Wife is one of my fav's.

Chaos and love said...

oh, and Vonnegut and Burroughs.

Maggie May said...

ding ding ding we have a winner!

Barrie said...

I only read 51. I thought it would be more. I did err on the side of caution, but still....

Unknown said...

I did this on facebook and figured out I'd read 19 and was about to read one more. Not too bad I suppose.

Cid said...

34 is my number, funnily enough, there are very few on that I haven't read that I really want to now. Glad to see lots of Canadian content from L. M. Montgomery to Yann Martel and Margaret Atwood. But why is The Chronicles of Narnia (7 books in all) separate from The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe (the first of the series)?

Erin said...

I've read 40.

Cid said...

I just checked out the BBC's "Big Read" website and the list is a little different. I only scored 24 on that one!

Bee said...

I've read 81 of these -- although I'm slightly exaggerating by including the Bible and the Harry Potter series. (I've read large chunks; not all.)

Unlike most of the world, I've never read The Da Vinci Code.

I've been meaning to read Midnight's Children for the past year. Also, The Secret History.

I would recommend the Haddon, Niffenegger (loved it), Byatt (hard to get into, but great; I think you would love it, though), Toole, Gibbons and you HAVE TO READ Little Women. How did you get through your childhood without reading this one!! A Children's Lit prof told me that it is considered to be the first YA novel.

Maggie Madison said...

I've read 17, but does it count to have INTENTIONS on, like 50 more?

Anonymous said...

i read 25 that i remember pretty vividly. a few more that i've just completely forgotten. and i was an english major so that's kind of pathetic. a few left deep lasting impressions on me though, like lolita and ian bank's wasp factory which led me to read all of his fiction. some books are like keys in life though no one else can give you. understanding something privately by reading. so maybe quantity is over rated. that said, i would gladly shuck my career to read most of the day.

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