Going back to two memes that went around at the same time a few weeks ago

[chanaleh]

[... because I am procrastinating on going home and being Highly Productive with the rest of my evening.]

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

Copy the list and
1) Bold the ones you have read.
2) Italicize the ones you intend to read.
3) Underline the ones you LOVE.

Comments

[jbsegal]

You may want to re-edit this.. you have a bunch of bold AND italic movies…

[chanaleh]

You really are Mr. LJ-Helpful, aren't you? :-) Always the public servant. I have been trying to fix the markup since I put in the initial post (I did try to preview it first, but there was some server weirdness that got in the way). I think it's OK now.

[jbsegal]

When things confuse me (I was kinda interested in what the actual answer was), I try to get de-confused. :)

[msmidge]

What is the Big Read?

[chanaleh]

Apparently, "The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest."

EDIT: No, wait. A little further searching reveals that this was a BBC program which collected nominations for "the [presumably British] nation's best-loved novel". So that kind of explains the patchiness of the results.

[sun_in_winter]

The NEA Big Read project actually seems like a pretty cool idea, even if it is not the source of your meme! :)

Re: Ulysses

[goljerp]

You don't need to have read The Odyssey first for Ulysses to be worthwhile. On the other hand, reading Ulysses on one's own is tough. There are many opportunities I missed while I was in college (missing hearing Dr. Isaac Asimov speak, and skipping the chance to go hear Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach sing being a couple of the biggies), but I did take an English class where we read Ulysses, and it was totally worth it.

[spwebdesign]

That's a very suspect list of books, not just the Helen Fielding, which I would argue belongs more than anything by Dan Brown. I wonder how they came by this list.

[chanaleh]

Found! http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

[spwebdesign]

Thank you. I searched through the entire Big Read website and was really starting to wonder. This makes sense now and explains some of those selections.

[42itous]

I'm too lazy to copy the list etc. but I've read 28 of those books, and my dad read 8 others to us as bedtime stories.

What does "top 100" mean? Most copies sold? Employee favorites? Most pages?

[chanaleh]

Actually, a little further searching that this was a BBC program which collected nominations for "the [presumably British] nation's best-loved novel". So that kind of explains the patchiness of the results.