Wednesday, July 23, 2008

100 best reads of all time - how many of you read?

There's a list circulating the web of the top 100 reads of all time posted by the The Big Read, claiming that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.

Sadly, I know I haven't read many of these myself. How many have you read, post a comment & let us know!

I've bolded the one's I've read below.

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 (uh-hum! Didn't exactly finish this one for SOME reason)
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 Hitchhiker'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's Adventures 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
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
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 - A. S. 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

Yup, 6 on the nose for me. Too bad we can't count the ones we've watched as movies!!

Now I feel a little pathetic. Oh well.

10 comments:

Rachel Sarah said...

I've read 21 on this list... at least that many on my current to-read list. :>)

Katrina Hope said...

I beat you! That makes me feel a little good....since you have been reading like a maniac!

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (not sure why they list these seperately!)
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Twelve? :)

Still not great when you are counting out of 100. I am keeping this list though, it looks like a good guide/goal :)

Rachel Sarah said...

Thanks Kim. I've printed off this list and will let it inspire me... my to-read list just got bigger! These are the books I've read so far.
1. Pride & Prejudice
2. The LOTR
3. Jane Eyre
5. To Kill A Mockingbird
11. Little Women
16. The Hobbit
21. Gone with the Wind
30. The Wind in the Willows
32. Chronicles of Narnia
36. Lion, Witch, Wardrobe (repeat of 32, though)
40. Winnie the Pooh
49. Lord of the Flies
54. Sense & Sensibility
59. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
73. The Secret Garden
81. A Christmas Carol
87. Charlotte's Web
91. Heart of Darkness
99. Charlie & the Choc.Factory
100. Les Miserables

Rachel Sarah said...

oops... I HAVE read The Bible too. :>)

Katrina Hope said...

I just told kris about your book blog- She responded, "doesn't surprise me" only she thought I said, "book logue" She said, "Oh, I thought she had a book logue, like a massive worm around her house" ...you know where you add another link for every book you read- funniest thing!!!! lol.

Then I told her it's called "I Smell Books" and started laughing. She said she is going to start a blog called "How we all became our father, slowly"

lol. funny stuff.

Unknown said...

Wow Rach, quite impressive to have read 22 of these books!!

Kati I think you've only read so many of these because your lit classes have assigned them, so does that really count as beating me??

And oh my word that comment that Kris made is HILARIOUS! She should do it. And maybe I will make a book logue, just for Kris, just for kicks - though I don't think Jason would dig that idea too much. Maybe I should wait till we have kids someday ;-)

Just Tera said...

Cool list you should share it on Goodreads group.

Anonymous said...

15 for me, but most of those were done along time ago! Kim Rankin!Hi Kim

Unknown said...

Hi Kim Rankin!!!! Thanks for stopping by! I love to find out when folks from back home check in on us :-)

MsC said...

Thanks for checking out my blog! I went thru the list and I numbered 25 that I have read. You've inspired me to read all 100 though. Many of the titles I have heard about, and should definitely be on my 'read it!' list.