100 Book Meme

[dreamflower]

 

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well, let's see.

(PERSONAL ADDITION: I’m striking through the ones I disliked, putting a plus sign next to the ones I’ve read multiple times, and an asterisk next to the ones I only read because I had to for school.)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings + - JRR Tolkien (My all time favorite work of fiction, bar none, and forever)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series +- JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible +* (I read this for myself as well, but I also took courses in both Old and New Testament in college)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four * - George Orwell (creepy and shuddersome)
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (highly overrated and, except for the first book, vastly disappointing)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women +- Louisa M Alcott (I like some of the sequels even better than this one.)
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve ready many of them but not ALL of them) (
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit+- JRR Tolkien (I sort of think of this as part of LotR, even though I've only read it about a dozen times, compared to "lost track of" for LotR)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
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 (I completely fail at sympathizing with Scarlett O'Hara. Uck!)
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 (I was in college before I read this, and was utterly charmed and captivated)
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 (I think this is on here separately, even though the Chronicles are listed, because it is likely that many people who have not read all seven books, have at least read this one.)
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 (another really scary book; I actually don't think people are *meant* to *like* it.)
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (I have never read more than a few pages of this, and with any luck I will never have to!  I can't believe this piece of tripe is on the same list as some of these masterpieces!)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (I started this once, but the copy was borrowed, and I had to give it back without finishing. I really keep meaning to do that.)
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 (This is such a nasty book. I had to read it in high school, and hated it.)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune+ - Frank Herbert (I liked the original--the sequels were ponderous and disappointing)
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 (I loved all of the sequels to this as well and went on a Dumas binge when I was in high school. Our local library had dozens of Dumas books which I no longer can find anywhere.  They don't even have them at that library anymore.)
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 (I have some vague memories regarding this, but don't recall reading it--I think I may have seen a film adaptation at some point.  But I'd really like to read it.)
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 Alborn
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 (I adored this, and all the sequels as well!)
98. Hamlet* - William Shakespeare (I think this is here seperately for the same reason as TLTWTW--many people may have read this even if they didn't read the "complete" works.)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I guess I'm somewhat above average, LOL!

Comments

[addie71.livejournal.com]

Wow! You must shock the Big Read!

[dreamflower]

Most of the people on my flist who've done this meme have read lots more than six. But I guess the people who compiled it are averaging things, and considering how many people I know who boast "I don't read books," it doesn't surprise me. So you average the person in who's read none of them, and the person who's read 12, you get 6.

There are so many books on that list that were required reading when I was in school--I don't see how anyone gets away with not having read at *least* six.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I think the estimate was lowballed, actually, so people would feel good about what they'd read.

But since it seems to be based on number of copies in print as opposed to ... oh, I don't know... bought? there are some iffy titles amongst the lot.

[dreamflower]

Interesting! I didn't notice how the figures were compiled. If they are just basing it on that, it's also not going to take into account people reading borrowed books, library books, books they already own or used books.

Yeah, looks to me like the figure's pretty low.

Still, I do know a lot of people who say "I never read books!" like it's something to brag about.