Swiped shamelessly from Alex Beecroft
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
1.) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2.) Italicize those you intend to read.
3.) Underline those you LOVE.
4.) Put an asterisk next to the books you’d rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read.
01. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
02. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
03. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
04. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
05. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
06. The Bible
*07. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte Actively unreadable to the point of chuck it out the window muttering darkly.
08. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
09. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy I loathe Hardy, the only reason for reading it is to see just how funny 'Cold Comfort Farm' really is.
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Nobody could love Henry VIII, and Titus Andronicus is pretty horrible too!
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - hype has put me right off
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - failed to read this several times
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot too dull to continue with after chapter 3. Nice TV series though, filmed in Stamford!
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. Don't like the Russians much, find them dificult and tedious - suspect much is lost in translation
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 See above
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 O level text, taught by pseudo socialist English teacher; it almost put me off for life!
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown read it, but it was badly written and not very believable, I was pleased when it was over
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 and all of its sequels,
*47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy, no can do allergic to Hardy's novels, love the poetry.
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding horrible book, but utterly riveting.
*50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert the original was fabulous, the sequels pot boilers mostly!
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 A Shadow of the Wind Carlos Luis 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 wonderful!
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. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
*67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy More breaking out in boils, couldn't he have been left in decent obscurity?
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 Unreadable
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson Hilarious!
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
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 (Why these and not the Famous Five or Malory Towers ?)
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad horrible but brilliant
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
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare The underlining is for watching the play. It’s a bit hard going to read, but to watch it’s the most amazing piece of characterisation ever.
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
*100 Les Miserables