The Big Read

Jun 28, 2008 19:52

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well, let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) 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.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip 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 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
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 - shouldn't this be included in the Chronicles of Narnia?
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
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
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
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 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
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My list is more like sixty than six, which isn't too bad I suppose, but I reckon those on my flist will match or out do my number.

Someday I'll compile my own list but that could take awhile as the list continues to grow.  I went to pick up a new book to read on the train as I had finshed Stardust by Neil Gaiman, (yes it does rock, though having watched the film version a second time I've come to love it and having read the novel I can love it both equally, and differently ,as so much was changed for the film they're almost two different stories).   I went to the book store with the intention of picking up another of Mr Gaiman's novels, Neverwhere, which I did pick up and then I noticed another author's name that was somewhat familiar, Tom Holt.  I remembered Sarah telling me how fantastic his novels are, but which one?  I finally decided upon Nothing but Blue Skies, as the blurb on the back cover made me giggle, something humourous involving crap weather just seems so timely.

This book store is having it's annual 'buy three get the fourth book free' event on so on went my search for two more good reads, and checking out the 'what's new' section I saw The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark.  I've read her first novel, The Great Stink and was looking forward her next.  The title may not be too inviting, but the story is fantastic and she created such a vivid image of mid-nineteenth century London you feel as though you're there, and very happy that you weren't actually around then.  The world of The Great Stink is dark, tough, and bleak, it's not a happy book but it is a page turner.  The author is a historian and I believe the only one I've encountered that can create such believable characters and compelling story while keeping true to the time the story takes place.  It's about a soldier from the Crimean war who has been psychologically damaged by his experiences there, a murder takes place and he is the main suspect who isn't sure if he's guilty or not.   The book blurb for The Nature of Monsters puts me in mind of Jeckyl and Hyde, hmm we shall see.

And finally I picked up Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, a story about several people who leave Paris for a small village when the Nazi's invade in early 1940.  I've only read the first few chapters but I can tell it's going to be a good read, and I'm interested in how it'll end as I'm unsure if she got to finish it as she was captured and sent to Auschwitz in 1942, where she died.  There are other books by her as she was a successful writer before the war, so they might be worth a read as well.

I do most of my reading on the train to and from work as the rest of my time is spent other projects such as photography and my latest projects of altering clothes, and accessories, and I'm still trying to become proficient with Photoshop and then there's setting up my website, and then, and then, and then.

To lift such a heavy weight
Sisyphus, you will need all your courage.
I do not lack the courage to complete the task
But the end is far and time is short.

The Wine of Solitude
by Irene Nemirovsky

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