Here's a meme that sounded like fun. I only do the ones that sound like fun. I think this list will annoy me, though. I'm not sure because I haven't read through the whole thing, but I just have that funny feeling. It's a canon of sorts, and canons always annoy me because they are necessarily woefully incomplete, and in the (also necessarily) violent selection process the canon-makers usually end up leaving out anything by writers who happen to be women and/or people of color. (ETA: I see that I was not completely right--but also not completely wrong--about this. Also, there are a bunch of books listed on The Big Read's website that aren't in this list for some reason. Perhaps some of these 100 are from past lists...but I wish some of the ones on their current list were among these 100.)
Here are the instructions (ganked from![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stoner_witch ):
"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. (HA--if you see any un-bolded, un-italicized books in my list that you think I should read, let me know. As a former professor told me: "Life is short, and your reading list will be long.")
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (This is a dumb exercise because I am a big enough dork that...if I've read a book and it ends up on a "best of" list like this, it is probably one that I loved. Not necessarily, though--see below.)
4) * Star books that you've read for pleasure (versus something you read because someone made you. it also counts if you've reread it for fun later) [Likestoner_witch , I'm not doing this one because I don't make divisions between reading for pleasure and reading for work--and nobody ever has to "make" me read anything. If I want to read it, I read it; and if I don't, I don't. If I'm taking a class and a book is assigned, I consider wanting to be in the class tantamount to wanting to read the book.]
5) 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 ;-) [BLEARGH. Count me out of this activity. Some people read. Some people don't read. Other people fall somewhere in between. I am fine with this state of affairs.]
Here's the list:
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 (I've only read selections from it, not the entire thing, but I would wager that I've read more of it than the average person.)
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 (Long time ago--don't quiz me!)
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 (I don't think I"ve read this one...)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Why is this listed separately from The Chronicles of Narnia, #33 above??)
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 (I really respect this book, and I think it's good, but I don't actually think it's her best work--I love other books by her, but not this one.)
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 (I've taught this one.)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (This is an uncomfortable book, wonderfully told--but is sooooo often misread...)
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 (I bought it on its anniversary and haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I'm not a huge fan of the beats. This will be one of those "read it to know what it is" endeavors.)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (I have been meaning to read this for some time--I started it once but got distracted by other things.)
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (I want to read this--but I have to read The Satanic Verses first.)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (I resisted and even dreaded reading this for a long time, and I ended up adoring it.)
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 (I loved this when I read it--it is partially responsible for my going to graduate school back in Vermont. I keep it on my shelf, but I am seldom tempted to pick it up again, and I don't think I would love it if I read it now, though I would probably still enjoy it.)
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 (I'm reading Never Let Me Go now, and loving that as well--I love Ishiguro's restrained yet effortless-seeming prose.)
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 (many times)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Here are the instructions (ganked from
stoner_witch ):"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. (HA--if you see any un-bolded, un-italicized books in my list that you think I should read, let me know. As a former professor told me: "Life is short, and your reading list will be long.")
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (This is a dumb exercise because I am a big enough dork that...if I've read a book and it ends up on a "best of" list like this, it is probably one that I loved. Not necessarily, though--see below.)
4) * Star books that you've read for pleasure (versus something you read because someone made you. it also counts if you've reread it for fun later) [Like
stoner_witch , I'm not doing this one because I don't make divisions between reading for pleasure and reading for work--and nobody ever has to "make" me read anything. If I want to read it, I read it; and if I don't, I don't. If I'm taking a class and a book is assigned, I consider wanting to be in the class tantamount to wanting to read the book.]5) 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 ;-) [BLEARGH. Count me out of this activity. Some people read. Some people don't read. Other people fall somewhere in between. I am fine with this state of affairs.]
Here's the list:
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 (I've only read selections from it, not the entire thing, but I would wager that I've read more of it than the average person.)
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 (Long time ago--don't quiz me!)
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 (I don't think I"ve read this one...)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Why is this listed separately from The Chronicles of Narnia, #33 above??)
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 (I really respect this book, and I think it's good, but I don't actually think it's her best work--I love other books by her, but not this one.)
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 (I've taught this one.)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (This is an uncomfortable book, wonderfully told--but is sooooo often misread...)
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 (I bought it on its anniversary and haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I'm not a huge fan of the beats. This will be one of those "read it to know what it is" endeavors.)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (I have been meaning to read this for some time--I started it once but got distracted by other things.)
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (I want to read this--but I have to read The Satanic Verses first.)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (I resisted and even dreaded reading this for a long time, and I ended up adoring it.)
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 (I loved this when I read it--it is partially responsible for my going to graduate school back in Vermont. I keep it on my shelf, but I am seldom tempted to pick it up again, and I don't think I would love it if I read it now, though I would probably still enjoy it.)
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 (I'm reading Never Let Me Go now, and loving that as well--I love Ishiguro's restrained yet effortless-seeming prose.)
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 (many times)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
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