The Big Read
July 29, 2008 Uncategorized 4 CommentsI retrieved this from Suture for a Living and thought I would participate. Purplesque has also posted the list. Apparently, it is a bit of a scam, but I can look beyond that.
So this is a list of 100 books and the theory is that “the average adult has only read 6.” I suspect this may be true, but only in relation to the word “average”. Half the population has below average intelligence. So “the average adult” presumably relates to the total population of adults, including medical bloggers and also adults who have had their wallet stolen and have no cash or library cards.
Anyway, here is my version of the list. I have bolded those books that I have read.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (TBR)
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7 . Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (TBR)
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Phillip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (TBR)
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (TBR)
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller I half read this one and thought it apalling. Couldn’t find the humour
14 . The Complete works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit –J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks (TBR)
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Also very strange, and not so enjoyable)
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot (TBR)
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (One of my favourite books)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (TBR)
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
(Another favourite)
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (TBR)
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (TBR)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (on my TBR for a reread)
30 . The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (TBR)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens (TBR)
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 . Emma - Jane Austen (TBR)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen (TBR)
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 (TBR)
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (TBR)
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (TBR)
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 (TBR)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan (TBR)
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune- Frank Herbert (TBR)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (TBR)
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (TBR)
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (Great book - worth the effort)
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (TBR)
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (TBR)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (TBR)
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (A must read - less than 150 pages, so if you haven’t, there’s no excuse)
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (TBR)
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt (TBR)
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (TBR)
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 (Ugh. Awful. Tried it three times)
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (TBR)
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 (TBR)
77. Swallows and Amazons
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt (TBR)
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker (TBR)
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 (So many times…)
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (TBR)
92. The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks (TBR)
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town like Alice- Nevil Shute (TBR)
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (TBR)
98. Hamlet- William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (TBR)
I think a lot of web-writers will have read more than 6 of this list. But it is fun anyway. I have marked those that are TBR (which means actually in my house), as well, and that is pretty scarey.