Oh, go on then... [Welcome to my perfumed garden]

Blagged from so many; most recently

davidbrider

The BBC allegedly believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here (I find that hard to believe but there you go). Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. I'm adding; underline those that are defo on your 'to read' list'. Here we go...
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - I've read bits of it; of course I have. Almost everyone in Western Civilisation's read some of it, surely?
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 Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger – One of the worst books I’ve ever read. Just terrible!
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
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
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 – Yes! I finally got around to reading it!– about ¼ way through at the moment.
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. Dunno where the typo crept in but that’s Meany, btw.
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 don’t get the Atwood love, I find her writing turgid and tedious.
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel – the overtly religious message annoyed me after a while. I’ll probably go back to it and try again sometime.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert – it’s that fantasy ‘thang’; Lord Atrium of Ampersand set out across the sandy wastes of Aardvark and etc. etc. It does nothing for me I’m afraid. It’s been done once, brilliantly - I really don’t need to read LOTR again, and again, and again...::sigh:: I know it’s a modern classic. I do intend to give it another go. Eventually. Maybe.
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 - One of my top three favourite books ever.
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - another in my top 3.
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 – Too bloody bleak!
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell – Currently awaiting delivery of my copy from Amazon!
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

And now I genuinely have to turn off the emails and get down to some work. After coffee. And Just a MInute...

And ETA (because I'm drinking coffee, listening to Just a Minute *G*) why is The Five People You Meet In Heaven in there (a rather so-so book imo) and not the infinitely beautiful and superior History of Love by Nicole Kraus? Two books linked in no way whatsoever except that I read them at the same time but the one is so much better than the other!

This is a puzzling list. I see no reason for many of their choices at all.

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12	13	14	15	16	17	18 1
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

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Oh thank the lord and all that's holy, someone else who didn't like Dune and hasn't read The Da Vinci Code. I was starting to feel quite alienated from the human race for a while there. Mind you, I couldn't get into On The Road and found it to be terribly self-indulgent and boring. Except for the bit when they're motoring into New York City with their heads wrapped in scarves, and he's ruminating on how they could be Arabs coming in to perform evil acts or somesuch. I read this not all that long after 9/11 and I remember that it stopped me cold.
Apart from that - there are 40 books on the list that I have read, and quite a number that I still intend to try, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's contributions.

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I found Dune tedious beyond belief, but I'm willing to give it another go. It's on my list to try again in a few week's time. The DVC has never appealed t me in the slightest, nothing I've heard about it tempts me and having just finished one dire dropping of a novel (The Reincarnationist by MJ Rose) that proclaimed on the reviews; 'if you loved the Da Vinci Code, you'll adore this...' I can only assue I did the right thing in ignoring TDVC.

But - How could you not like On the Road? O:! ::is mildly shocked::

*g* - nah, I understand why some people wouldn't like it but I admit, I think it's a masterpiece. I read it at least 2ce a year as a rule. :o)

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It is an odd little list, isn't it? I scored 59, but only because I long ago decided that I loathe Dickens.

I love Dickens. Pickwick is the third book in my top three. It's Jane A that gets my goat. She's so bloody suburban.

random person telling you she dislikes Dickens too.

sends you grateful random approving glances :)

i had to read one for my English class, and bleghhhh, It was dull! I also haven't read any Dutch classics. none. and I dislike Jane Austen. XD

may be many things but he is never dull! I agree he got rather po-faced and preachy later on but his early works, up to and including Great Expectations, are never, ever dull.

Have you read Pickwick? Brilliant and mad and incredibly funny.

I read GE and bleh. couldn't get into it. I might be spoiled bookwise, with all the exciting crime novels I read.. I might try again when I have time. I read for a reading-list and.. well.

This meme has a long and interesting history; I think the most exhaustive summary is here.

The six/100 is, in particular, probably pulled from thin air.

It's a fun meme, though; I like seeing what others have read.

I know all about The Big read, it's not abandoned as the website says, an annual thing here, lots of celebs are generally involved and the Beeb run a lot of stuff on the back of it.

I've never seen that list associated with it though.

The page you direct me to seemed interesting enough till I saw So the list was put together by a bunch of stuffy Brits.
Wow. Just... golly. So now I have to assume that blog was put together by some pole-up-his/her-arse American whose opinion I'm supposed to take seriously, then? Man...

It's an interesting meme but I'd like to see a broader range of books on there.

must keep telling myself that you had 30 extra years to read in!

and omg please finish harry potter and read the phillip pullman ones! they're gooood. good on you for not reading da vince code. it has about three billion clones by now and it's not really -that- well written or clever. I was impressed by it at 16 but ehhh. the people in it are cardboard!

the secret history is in my top three too. it's been my number one for years but it's batlling with harry potter and middlesex :)

Sorry. I gave it a good go but it did nothing for me at all. Imo, it's a kid's book. I'm sure it's a good one but I'm afraid I hated it.

I'd heard Pullman is in similar vein - it's on my list to read because I want to make up my own mind but I've decided I just can't hack young adult fic. Maybe I'm just too old now but I find it incredibly annoying as a rule. I certainly did Harry Potter.

I just can't imagine hating Harry Potter but I am sure you have your reasons. I grew up with it, fell in love at age 11 with the magic and, well, it determined my life at the time! Pullman is a bit more grown-up, especially compared to the first two-three HP books but it's still YA. it's something I'd encourage children to read because it shows a different perspective.

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Well, I've read 25 (I'm not going bother to do the edit work to put the list in my LJ), but I must admit that 5 were "have to" for school, that I wouldn't have read otherwise.

I'm always surprised at the strange juxtaposition of some of the books on lists such as this. How can "Secret Garden" and "Charlotte's Web" (lovely books) be on the same list as "Heart of Darkness" (yuck!) and "Lord of the Flies" (double-yuck!)? I know, there are people who enjoy those I consider yuck-worthy. But some of these books are pleasant children's stories, and others are (supposedly) deep, thoughtful, meaning-of-life cautionary tales. Putting them on the same list just seems weird. I mean, "Winnie the Pooh" compared to "Animal Farm"? What mental contortions do you need to go through to list them together?

And why don't they list "The Scarlett Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy? It's the one "have to read" from my school years that I actually enjoyed, and it does as much for social commentary as "Oliver Twist".
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I read all the books you cite at school actually - not sure I would have read LotF without having to. There are lots of books that imo should be on the list and others that shouldn't, it sems arbitrary.#

It does appear that the list has nothing to do with the BBC per se anyway and might have come out of a 'most read' list from the Big Reads campaign they run each year. I just don;t know! *g*

I've read fifty, but these days I'd rather read fanfiction. Now, I'll listen to books on tape that I might give a pass to actually reading them myself; I listened to The Kite Runner recently, and it totally drew me into the story.

Laurie

I like to read books. I've read a ton (and more!) of fanfic in my time but these days I've almost totally abandoned it in favour of books again. To everything its season, I guess. :o) I'm reading on average 3 books a week at the moment and that list just doesn't do the range of what's out there justice at all. I'd do my own list but I'm too lazy. *g*

The Kite Runner's on my must-read-soon list so I'm glad tyo hear you give it a good rec. I trust your judgement.

A similar list for fic? What would that be like I wonder? :o)

I found it to be a bit of a weird list too. Enid Blyton is (or was) popular but how on earth did she end up in there? Oh well.

A lot of the books just weren't my style. I was tempted to start crossing out those I'd never read, or never re-read (like Lord of the Flies).

And people on average only read six books a year?! I'm pretty sure I've read more than six books this month.

Welcome to my perfumed garden

Oh, go on then...

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Early Dickens

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heck.

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I really don't like Harry Potter.

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May