According to the BBC, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on their list.
Kalianne at Bygone Beauty posted this meme. I've read 36 and see I have tons of reading that I need to do to catch up to many of the great classics that I've shelved for far too long.
If you'd like to participate in this meme simply copy the list and follow the instructions below. Don't worry if you haven't read many books - the list is only opinion. Be sure to include the books you'd like to read too and those you think should be struck off the list. Feel free to list books not on the list that you deem worthy. Finally, be sure to post a comment so we know where to find you!
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.( I had a hard time underlining so I put starred them)
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
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
I might read those that I haven't so I didn't want to strike through them...I can't remember really disliking any except Heart of Darkness was pretty hard to get into and not a particular favorite.
Books I feel should have been included:
1. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey
2. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
3. E.M. Forester's Room with a View
Image by Alphonse Mucha
8 comments:
I saw this at the blog you mention. It's an interesting list, and going down it, I counted 19 or 20 books that I've read. I had to read the Bell Jar in school. I can't remember a line of it. Some of these that you have read...I am not at all surprised, they are so 'you'. Such as Pride and Prejudice and Gone with the Wind.
Oh, Rebecca, this was fun! I might just have to do this one, too.
Love the Mucha. My daughter saw lots of his work in Prague.
Oh Rebecca 36 books! I have a lot of reading to do to catch up with you! ;) I like your suggestions. I'd like to read a Room with a View. I adored the film - it hasn't put me off the idea of reading the novel. I'd like to get to know Miss Honeysuckle better and the other wonderful characters in this story.
I've read all three of the ones you listed at the bottom and a whole bunch of the top 100. BTW, "Tess.." was a disturbing story but very well written.
I've read 24 or so. I'm ashamed that I haven't read more. I will have to start a reading self improvement list. My favorite on the list is To Kill a Mockingbird. I recently reread it. I love the story and its authentic southern imagery.
Rebecca...I've read quite a few of these...for the life of my I don't understand how The Da Vinci Code could be on the same list as anything by C S Lewis...I really like having a list...I wish I could read faster :)
I've read all but thirteen of these books, I just don't understand how some of these made the list. But I loved your additions.
Anon and Dee Dee, I agree completely...There are some on this list that I truly scratched my head over and many more than the three that I posted that should be on here. There's not a single Rudyard Kipling on the list, which is a real shame....Thanks for visiting and commenting!
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