Monday, July 20, 2009

How Many Have You Read?

I saw this on another blog:

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

1 Pride and Prejudice -
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 -
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -
19 The Time Traveler’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 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
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
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 -
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 - 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 Inferno – Dante -
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 -
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 -
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -

I've read 15. Some I haven't (or rather never) finished, however. I'm sure many of you could do much better than I did. I love books but I don't completely love reading. I wish I did. Get bored and distracted too easily. I was surprised at some of the books on the list. "The Da Vinci Code" was entertaining but I wouldn't call it great literature or anything (just my opinion). I was surprised "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" was on the list. That was an obscure book I found for book group a couple of years ago, trying to find something different. Maybe it's not as obscure as I thought. We didn't end up reading it because there was a little too much "language" in it. Ended up reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter", which was a good book. I also like to read non fiction too but this is a good list to work on.
The last book I read, a couple of weeks ago, was "The Actor and the Housewife" by Shannon Hale. It's about a housewife who becomes best friends with a famous British actor. Improbable premise, but a fun read. Although it did have some irritating elements to it.

Books I'm currently reading (sort of anyway):
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I really need to finally read a Jane Austen book.)
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (How controversial could this book be, really? It was written in 1945!)
The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman (Wal-Mart practically controls America, boring book though.)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

What are your thoughts? What would you add to this list? How many have you read? Go ahead, embarrass me!

9 comments:

Jules said...

I've read lots of 'em. I've checked out the unabridged version of "The Count of Monte Cristo" a couple of times and just haven't been able to make myself read it.

Tanya said...

I've completed nineteen of the books listed. I have started many more but never got through them; ie. Catch 22. I read Catcher in the Rye a few years ago and wondered what the big deal was. I guess a young man is supposed to follow the rules. Anyway, good list. Fun to read and it has also given me ideas for the future.

Kayleigh Mattison Hales said...

I'm not into "classics." I'm not sure how they got to be classics anyway...just because they're so old? I've only actually read FIVE (by force in school), but have seen several as movies. I'd bet Matt has read most of them, though.

Kiirsi said...

22. I haven't read very many of those...every time I think about reading one of those huge old classics I decide, NAH! I'll read some fun novel instead.

I agree about the Da Vinci Code...not great literature.

Anne Chovies said...

I've read 14 of them. Tale of Two Cities is one I'm working up to reading one of these days. Maybe this will nudge me a little closer.

Anonymous said...

I have 84 of the books in my collection - does that count the same as having read them??? (I wish)!

Deborah Allen said...

I've read 20. I SHOULD have read more. This is a great list to work from!

~jan said...

I am a little late to commenting on this post. However, I must say I have read several of these in portions. As an English major, many books get skimmed enough to write a paper and pass a test. But the list is a great place to start for someone who is trying to enhance their literature skills. I really want to count books made into movies too. That is more what the now teen generation will experience probably.

Cindy said...

Thanks for the comment, Jan! Always good to see someone new.