(no subject)
The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.
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 (if you want) so we can try and track down these people who've read only six and force books upon them.
Yeah, not so much into bolding and underlining. Will comment on those I've read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Favorite book ever
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
Read them all, very good
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
Read significant parts at various times, but can't completely say I've read the whole things. All those begats.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
Read it, found it disturbing, even if the exact imagery was somewhat dated.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Read it, found it wanted to be more shocking than it actually was.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Read it, liked it well enough like most Dickens, wouldn't reread it.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Read the first several chapters many times, knowing this was something I should have read, but put it down in boredom every time.
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Read it, still just as warped as it ever was.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
Oh please, like anyone ever reads Titus Andromechus. I've read a healthy number of the plays, and feel myself well-served.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Second-best book ever.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Read it, though it was stupid.
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Read it for school, of all things. Appreciated it as an original, even though millions like it now exist it was first.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Read it, hated every second of it.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Read it, still quote it every day
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Read it several times as a child, to the point I was sick of it when we were supposed to read it for school in 3rd grade.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Like Little Women, knew this was something I was supposed to have read, but could never finish it.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Read them all many times
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
See above
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Saw the movie, don't believe this is a classic
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Many times
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
Many times. For some reason my school system had an animated movie adaptation of this, so we saw that several times, and of course I read the book to match. Why we didn't have a similar one of 1984 I don't know. Perhaps schools are happy showing animated animals, but have a problem with people having their faces eaten off by rats?
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Read it in the original Spanish
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Nope, never. I had to read another Collins work for school, and have no interest in reading another. Ditto Camus, Wharton, Fitzgerald, and Joyce.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
And the whole rest of the series, many times. And Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Started it a couple times
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
Several times, but never got into the sequels.
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
Read it. A short read, so worth picking up if you want to knock another off the list.
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
Now I can't remember if I read this or not. I did see the movie, and I think it inspired me to read the book.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Partway. It really should not be given to teenagers. They aren't warped enough to get the weird parts, or patient enough to get through the thick parts
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Of course.
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
Of course.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
No, but I read the Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
No, never, never, never. Not even if I were on drugs.
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
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Yes. A good quick read, classic Christmas ghost story.
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
Yes, many times.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Is this fiction, or a self-help book?
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Many times.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Read it for school, never again. Nasty, brutish, and not short enough.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
In english first, although I think I remember poking through it in French.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
Read it
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Read it. Discovered it on my own before everyone else was calling it a classic.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Read it. This guy's a hoot. Stephen Brust can only hope to try to imitate it.
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Of course.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
And several others. James and the Giant Peach gave me a complex when my grandmother tried to read it to me when I was five. Danny Champion of the World was my particular favorite, with Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in second place.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Hey, where's Canterbury Tales? Beowulf? A Wrinkle in Time? Little Big? Peter Pan? Dorothy Parker and Agatha Christie? Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe? Gulliver's Travels? (Though I don't think I finished that one.)
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 (if you want) so we can try and track down these people who've read only six and force books upon them.
Yeah, not so much into bolding and underlining. Will comment on those I've read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Favorite book ever
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
Read them all, very good
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
Read significant parts at various times, but can't completely say I've read the whole things. All those begats.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
Read it, found it disturbing, even if the exact imagery was somewhat dated.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Read it, found it wanted to be more shocking than it actually was.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Read it, liked it well enough like most Dickens, wouldn't reread it.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Read the first several chapters many times, knowing this was something I should have read, but put it down in boredom every time.
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Read it, still just as warped as it ever was.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
Oh please, like anyone ever reads Titus Andromechus. I've read a healthy number of the plays, and feel myself well-served.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Second-best book ever.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Read it, though it was stupid.
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Read it for school, of all things. Appreciated it as an original, even though millions like it now exist it was first.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Read it, hated every second of it.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Read it, still quote it every day
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Read it several times as a child, to the point I was sick of it when we were supposed to read it for school in 3rd grade.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Like Little Women, knew this was something I was supposed to have read, but could never finish it.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Read them all many times
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
See above
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Saw the movie, don't believe this is a classic
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Many times
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
Many times. For some reason my school system had an animated movie adaptation of this, so we saw that several times, and of course I read the book to match. Why we didn't have a similar one of 1984 I don't know. Perhaps schools are happy showing animated animals, but have a problem with people having their faces eaten off by rats?
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Read it in the original Spanish
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Nope, never. I had to read another Collins work for school, and have no interest in reading another. Ditto Camus, Wharton, Fitzgerald, and Joyce.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
And the whole rest of the series, many times. And Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Started it a couple times
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
Several times, but never got into the sequels.
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
Read it. A short read, so worth picking up if you want to knock another off the list.
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
Now I can't remember if I read this or not. I did see the movie, and I think it inspired me to read the book.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Partway. It really should not be given to teenagers. They aren't warped enough to get the weird parts, or patient enough to get through the thick parts
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Of course.
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
Of course.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
No, but I read the Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
No, never, never, never. Not even if I were on drugs.
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
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Yes. A good quick read, classic Christmas ghost story.
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
Yes, many times.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Is this fiction, or a self-help book?
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Many times.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Read it for school, never again. Nasty, brutish, and not short enough.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
In english first, although I think I remember poking through it in French.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
Read it
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Read it. Discovered it on my own before everyone else was calling it a classic.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Read it. This guy's a hoot. Stephen Brust can only hope to try to imitate it.
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Of course.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
And several others. James and the Giant Peach gave me a complex when my grandmother tried to read it to me when I was five. Danny Champion of the World was my particular favorite, with Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in second place.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Hey, where's Canterbury Tales? Beowulf? A Wrinkle in Time? Little Big? Peter Pan? Dorothy Parker and Agatha Christie? Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe? Gulliver's Travels? (Though I don't think I finished that one.)