8/8/08

Have you read 6?

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:

Roland Hulme said...

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.)

Tess Kincaid said...

I want to read Charlotte Grey, too. Have you seen the film with Cate Blanchett?

Anonymous said...

What a comprehensive list! I love lots of those books.

Almost American said...

Numbers 33 & 36 are the same thing! The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is one of the Chronicles of Narnia books!

Janet said...

Almost American, Hamlet is also one of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, but what the hell, it's a fun list. :-)

Daryl said...

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

Expat mum said...

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.

Amanda said...

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.

Melessa Gregg said...

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.

Unknown said...

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.