Tuesday, November 23, 2010

How Many Have You Read?

Thank You Rachel @ Rachel Morgan Writes for posting this.
The BBC apparently thinks the majority of people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here...
Instructions:
• Copy this list.
Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.
I have read:
  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 – Daphe Du Maurier
  16.  The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
  17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
  18.  Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
  19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
  20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
  21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
  22.  The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
  23.  War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
  24.  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
  25. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
  26.  Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  27.  Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
  28.  Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carrol
  29. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
  30. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
  31. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
  32.  Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
  33. Emma -Jane Austen
  34. Persuasion – Jane Austen
  35.  The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
  36. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
  37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
  38. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
  39.  Winne the Pooh - A. A. Milne
  40.  Animal Farm – George Orwell
  41.  The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
  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
  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
  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
  61. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
  62. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
  63. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
  64.  Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
  65. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
  66. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
  67. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
  68. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
  69.  Moby Dick – Herman Melville
  70. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
  71.  Dracula – Bram Stoker
  72. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
  73. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
  74.  Ulysses – James Joyce
  75.  The Inferno – Dante
  76. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
  77. Germinal – Emile Zola
  78. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
  79. Possession – AS Byatt
  80.  Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
  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 – E.B. White
  87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
  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
  94.  A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
  95. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
  96. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
  97.  Hamlet – William Shakespeare
  98. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
  99. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
  100. ??? (For you observant types, yes the list does appear to be missing book no. 100, and a couple of titles are double listed, as well)

I’m not sure what the significance of the list is – I couldn’t track it to the original source, but it’s got some great titles, a good mix of the old and the new.  There are books here I haven’t even thought about since childhood.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I‘ve got a lot of reading to do.

7 comments:

  1. You've got me beat, Dan...I only have 14! Great list, but I can think of many great books I've read not included on that list! Tennessee Williams, Mark Twain...ect. Shame that I have read just over 10% of what's on this distinguished list! Maybe we should each come up with out own lists!

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  2. That's a good idea, making our oen lists. I like these kinds of lists. It reminds of books I want to read as well as the books I have read and haven't revisited in on while.

    I'm going to take you up on that list. 100 books you've read and loved. We can see how many made both our lists.

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  3. Yikes, there would be many holes in my list! I think my only saving grace would be Dickens. Fun idea :)

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  4. Yeah, I benefited from the prevalence of SF&F titles, myself - Dune, Hitchhikers', LOTR. I'd like to know the significance of this list, or if it's just some random titles someone threw together.

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  5. Getting started on the list!

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  6. That's awesome. I'm kicking around some titles, too. I'mthining about making it something like 100 books that have had some kind of inluence or significance in my life. That can include classics, children's books I loved as a kids, or just 'fun' books I wore the spine out of.

    Can't wait to see yours!

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  7. I've got 49 read and four started, but only because so many of them were mandatory reading in high school and college. I'd guess that's where the list originated.

    I was delighted to see 43 on the list. A Prayer for Owen Meany is my all time favorite, and from a technical standpoint, one of the best books ever written.

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