Thursday, July 23, 2009

Reading List

I found this post over at Sparkle Blue Faery ... I LOVE this sort of list, helps me preen my stack of books waiting to be read!

The BBC says most people will only read 6 of these 100 Books. I've read:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (yes)
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (yes)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (yes, 1,200 times)
6 The Bible - (yes)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - (yes)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - (yes)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - (tried it 3 times, never finished)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - (lawsie yes!!)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - (yes)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - (yes)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - (almost)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - (over & over)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - (yes)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - (yes)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - (yes)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - (yes)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - (yes, 10th Grade English)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - (1/2 way thru, twice, can I count that as whole?)
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 - (yes)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - (yes)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - (yes)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - (ooh yes)
34 Emma - Jane Austen - (yes)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - (yes)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - (#33 above, yes)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - (yes)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - (yes)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - (yes)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - (yes)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - (yes)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - (yes)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - (yes)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - (yes)
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - (yes)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - (yes)

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - (yes)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - (yes)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - (yes)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - (yes)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - (yes, wonderful!)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - (yes)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - (yes)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - (yes)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - (yes)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - (yes)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - (tried & tried)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - (yes)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - (yes)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - (love it)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - (tried & tried)

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - (yes)
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)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - (yes)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - (yes)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - (yes, in English and French)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - (yes)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - (yes)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - (yes, in English and French)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - (yes)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - (yes)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - (yes)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - (yes)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - (yes)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - (yes)


My Total Read = 60
(not counting "tried & tried" or '1/2 & 1/2") ... wowza.

Instructions:
Cut and Copy the list into your notes... then...
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. (remove other persons X's)
2) Tally your total at the bottom.

[Is anyone else of the opinion that there are numerous equally worthy classic titles MISSING from this list?]

7 comments:

Veronica said...

Wow only six? I have read 48 of these books. Does that count for anything? I mean seriously who wouldn't read half of those books. And like you many of them I have read over and over and over again. Oh how I wished we had a book club here....

Alison said...

You must read Birdsong - I think it's fantastic. I certainly haven't read anything like 48 from this list however, despite being a 'reader'.

beth said...

isn't it the time travelers wife that will be out as a movie very soon ?

Cindy said...

I hang my head in shame, I am just not a reader and I will tell you why. Once I get started on a book. I can not put it down until I get to the end...I get nothing else done...so...some I have read, lots I have not even heard of....take care...

Holly said...

Read many of them, not as many as you....and I have to say, you read my blog some time back about not holding a book in my hands and reading that way much anymore. Sometimes that makes me sad...sometimes I just accept it as a phase.

Lubna said...

Wow, this sure is an exhaustive list. I have read many oh so many of them. However, what is perhaps the most important thing is whether you have learnt from these books, whether the books have enriched your life. Many of the books I have read have made my life richer. Others, sad to say, I don't remember, except perhaps the title or the broad outline.
I am currently reading The Fountainhead again and discovering a new meaning in this book. I had read it years ago when still a student.
I have no clue how I landed on your blog, was just surfing around today.
If you like books, feel free to visit one of my blogs where I review books.
Have a nice day.
Best,

Rebecca Lynch Photography said...

I have read 22 on the list and have tried to read 2 of them and couldn't get into it. Four of them I own a copy of, but have not gotten around to reading it yet.