My cousin, Leslie posted this on her blog, which she stole from our mutual friend, Jeanna's, blog. It is BBC's list of the top 100 books (according to them.) Jeanna quotes the BBC as estimating that on average, most people will have likely read about six of these works. I copied Leslie's idea and put the titles I've read in bold. I also added some comments where I felt necessary, in italics. (I give a lot of credit to College Prep English in HS). I thought this makes a good list for when I might need a good read. How many have YOU read??
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (BY FAR my all-time favorite.)
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (only read parts, too sing-song story-telling style for me, thanks.)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible (never all the way through, but most of it)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (started, but not finished... it's on my list for this year)
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read several, but not all)
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (lame-o schmame-o!)
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (started, but never finished. I'd like to revisit this one.)
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I've read three of them, at least)
Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion - Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (started, but in Spanish. Very hard to read at my level of Spanish.)
A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (Loved it. Very cleverly written.)
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan (Started, but just couldn't get into it.)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (Read parts, but someone told me the ending and I lost interest.)
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (I read the abridged version, twice. does that count?)
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Weird and slightly disturbing.)
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (Skimmed it. Once she was sleeping around, I lost interest. But I skipped to the end to get "closure.")
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web - EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (again, some but not all)
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Twice!)
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Great fable. Used to be an all-time favorite, but lost some appeal after the 4th or 5th read.)
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watership Down - Richard Adams (I started this one about 10 times. Never got into it, but I guess it's supposed to be really symbollic?)
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I read the abridged, 450 pg., version)
4 comments:
I can't believe you haven't read MOby Dick....MOBY DICK!!! You've read a ton of books. I'm impressed. I should print this and finish the ones I haven't read.
Wow Kam!! What a lot of TERRIFIC Reading you have done! I'm IMPRESSED!! Reading all these titles makes me want to run to the Library and check out some books...Quick!! I'm for sure wanting to read "Woman in White" now that I see that you enjoyed it so much! Love, Mom
I think I've read about the same amount as you on that list. But a few different ones.
Here's my take on Jane Austen. I think I've read all her books. Unfortunately, I felt they weren't as heart racing as any of the movies that have been made after them. Ok books, better movies. Which is not typical for me.
Woman In White by Wilkie Collins is one of my all time favorites!!! Glad you posted this. I'm about to read Watership Down for a book club. Thanks for the heads up on that.
A Town Like Alice I read and enjoyed pretty well. But it was slightly dirty. Slightly.
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