I saw this on Okie/Brit' blogger Jan's site at Grand Lake Ink and as I also support any initiative that encourages people to read, I thought I’d reproduce it here.
The Big Read is being promoted by the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. You can find their web site here.
Allegedly, the Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of these 100 books. I guess that makes me a well read adult as I have read 64 and currently own 21 of them. The Hubster has some catching up to do having read 18 so far.
Anyway, it’s fun to play along:
Bold: I have read.
Aterisk *: Books I love.
Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read only 6 and force books upon them!!
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 (ALL)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (currently reading)
7 . Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Phillip 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 . *The Complete works of Shakespeare*
15. *Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*
16. *The Hobbit --J.R.R. Tolkien*
17. *Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks*
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler's Wife
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
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*
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 St. 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 agree with Jan that there should be something on this list from Annie Proulx, I would also add Charlotte Grey by Sebastian Faulks, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory.
What else would you include?
10 comments:
That's a fascinating list! Although I think one Sebastian Faulk's book is quite enough, thank you... And I can't believe the Da Vinci Code made it (what a lump THAT book was.)
I want to read Charlotte Grey, too. Have you seen the film with Cate Blanchett?
What a comprehensive list! I love lots of those books.
Numbers 33 & 36 are the same thing! The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is one of the Chronicles of Narnia books!
Almost American, Hamlet is also one of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, but what the hell, it's a fun list. :-)
I've read 34 from start to finish .. I started 2 but couldnt finish them ...
I would add The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon ...and I am sure there are others I would add too but I cant think of them right now.
:-Daryl
It's a very subjective list. There are a few on there that I simply gave up on as either too boring or just not my taste, while I can think of a few other (Belle Canto, for example) that should definitely be included.
I'm currently reading the Piano Tuner, which I have no doubt will be made into a film, possibly starring Micheal Caine as the Doctor and Brad Pitt doing a terrible English accent as the piano tuner. Not everyone's cup of tea though.
I agree with expatmum - it is a bit of an odd list. I've read 77 of them, but have to admit to starting Ulysses several times, but never finishing it. Doing English at A level and at degree level has helped bump up the number a bit. Of those you haven't read I would heartily recommend Five People You Meet in Heaven - a brilliant read.
I've only read 25 of those, I thought it would be more. I guess I've got quite a reading list ahead of me.
Yes I kind of viewed this list as a guide to what else I should read.
Thanks for the tip Amanda. Yes Willow but the book is much better than the movie. Roland I love Dan Brown books!
And yes a few of them are cross-overs but as Jan said, it's fun anyway.
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