Ha! Fifty-two!
X 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
X 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
X 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
X 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
X 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
X 6 The Bible-
X 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
X 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
X 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
X 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
X 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller x
X 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
X 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
X 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
X 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
X 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
X 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
X 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy -
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
X 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
X 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
X 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
X 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
X 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
X 34 Emma - Jane Austen
X 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
X 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
X 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
X 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
X 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
X 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
X 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
X 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
X 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
X 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
X 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
X 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
X 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
X 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
X 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
X 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
X 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
X 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
X 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
X 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
X 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
X 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
X 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
X 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
X 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
X 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
X 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
X 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
19 comments:
Wow, you are the bomb! I was shocked to realize that I have only read 11 of those books. I have started a few of them and never finished out of laziness, so if I could count the ones I started or owned, it would be more like 30 - does that work?
I scored a paltry ‘36’ – you are the Queen of Books (although I would like to see Kimberly Clutters score on this list – I have a feeling she kicks ass on any list of books read … anywhere). Some of mine I might not have finished out of sheer boredom but it has been so long I can't remember, but as a point I generally force myself to finish just to say I finished, so my number is sort of ‘squishy’.
A few questions/comments:
#14 – Complete Works of Shakespeare – ARE YOU FRIGGING NUTS or do you have a terminal disease that keeps you in bed for long periods of time? And what’s up with that and #85 being Hamlet? I’m a betweener – read the main ones – like Hamlet, but not all. I have the leather bound edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare – I was going to give myself a half point for that but decided that would be just wrong.
#25 – The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Probably my favorite book on that list there. I mean, how are you going to know the meaning of life without having read it? A must read for crazies.
#64 – The Lovely Bones is a beautiful book – you should read it. It is a hard read, though – heart wrenching wise. It is in my list of top 10 on your list there (I SO KNOW YOU CARE WHAT I THINK)
I need to copy the list and start reading. I have another list of the top 100 books of all times and I am trying to work my way through it (and failing spectacularly) – Luckily it does not have the Harry Potter books or the Chronicles of Narnia – neither have enticed me to read them.
Thanks for posting the list - I am in a reading slump and this will give me a goal to work towards.
I'm probably a 10-- that's better than the average, right?
I think I had in the 40s somewhere.
You MUST read On the Road. That book CHANGED My life. seriously.
I feel stupid...I need to get to a library..and get a library card..
Of COURSE I so care what you think. Why else post it?
Yes, I've read the complete works. I actually go through them every so often, though not all of them anymore. Some, well, suck.
I COVET your leatherbound set. Leave it to me in your will. And get a security system - I might try to knock you off for them.
I think it is possible I read Hitchhicker, but since I can't recall it, I don't count it. And I didn't count Confederacy of Dunces or Madame Bovary b/c I quit them in disgust quite near the beginning. I feel no remorse putting down books now. I also feel no remorse shunning all the Dickens, Hardy, and Steinbeck left on this list. A girl's gotta have standards.
By complete works above, I mean Shakespeare.
I read Madame Bovary in college - required reading in my literature class. That and another who's name I cannot not recall which was so horrible it changed me and not in a good way. Both required, test at the end ....
Utah University, non-LDS professor, I think there was an issue there that she wanted to jolt all the innocent Mormons - and it worked!
We did get to review her at the end of the semester and I lambasted her. I think it should be my choice to read something very controversial, not required or you get and 'F'.
Life Experiences 101
I think I've read 26 totally, and parts of about 10 others. I really need to widen my reading variety!
Rachel got 42 and I got 18. But I'm sure I've got the highest score for having seen the film versions of these books. I feel like I should get a point for reading Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov". It's the only Russian monster I've tackled, and it was great!
Does BBC assume that only Americans will have read about 6 (and that the British will have read many more)?
I love the Russian literature I've read. Esp. Crime and Punishment. Hated Anna Karenina though. War and Peace is yay. Okay, here's the thing, though. I always feel like the ends of the stories just sorta fizzle out. Maybe that's the American big finale in me.
I do not know that basis for this list. Someone should research those redcoats.
I got 23 which pleasantly surprised me since I've never really thought of myself as a big reader, there are a lot that I only read halfway, mostly because I either hated it or had to return it to the library. Also why is Chronicles of Narnia on the same list as The Lion the witch and the wardrobe? I've checked out both Le Mis and Count of Monte Crist many times promising myself I would read it and always got too busy and had to return it to the library.
26. I should read more. and yeah shouldn't we get double points if we've seen the movies and read the books?
26
34! Even if it's nowhere near your #, I feel good about myself for having trounced their expectations of me! Such snobs.
I've started several more of the listed, but I think I have something against classical literature. Especially when it is about animals. Watership Down? Moby Dick? Charlotte's Web? Snooze fest. I couldn't finish. And Gone With the Wind? Call me unamerican, but I give it a huge yawn. Didn't care. Didn't finish it. And don't even get me started about Marquez. Hate all of his characters; am I missing something?
Lori, I had a male version of that same professor (except he's not even a prof--no phd--I think they're just afraid of firing him; maybe he's blackmailing someone?) at the BY. Talk about a chip on a shoulder/an ax to grind/ pick a tired cliche and he fit it, right down to his black turtleneck. His class accounts for several of the books on this list that I started and didn't finish. Tests or no tests. :)
Also, I have a file with the e-book version of all of these books. Courtesy of BBC, natch. I'll e-mail it to Jen if anyone's interested and has a Kindle or the likes.
Jen, do you remember when I was dog-sitting for my cousin in Spanish Fork and the puppy got so excited when you came over that she peed on your leg? I feel a little bit like that puppy when I visit your blog. All wriggly and out of control. (And the comment stream is my equivalent of an uncontrollable bladder.)
Well Jen, you are well on your way to the bookstore dream - you are definitely the most well read person I have ever met, and I would have guessed that even before this post because of the way you speak. Very high-intellect in a good way. And yes I will take care of the business side. I love that stuff.
Also, I was really happy someone as wise and cool as Lori Hurst recommended The Lovely Bones. I just read it and it was not best read, and hardly had a plot, but really changed the way I think about life and the afterlife. I almost felt embarrassed that I had gotten so much out of such a gritty book written by a non-prophet, but I have really been struggling with how often I hear people within our religion say (in an effort to comfort) that when we die, we go to heaven. I love that notion, but really, it isn't true, we go to yet another waiting room. And though I believe we receive a rest from our cares, I had a hard time conceptualizing of what the rest could be or look like. How do we have a rest, yet not be consumed by the loved one we leave behind who are still in turmoil? This book helped me paint a mental picture of how that may be. I can't wait to read some of the others.
ugh! another reminder that i'm horribly un-well-read! i'm in the middle of moby dick right now which must count for something...and i miss book club, by the way--there isn't one out here right now...
I'm proud to say that I've read NONE of those books! Jen and I like to balance eachother...
I got 43..not too shabby..but the complete works of shakespeare? you're nuts
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