I was sent this on Facebook, but decided to respond to it here. Apparently, the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the following 100 books. Following the instructions, I’ve put an “X” after those I’ve read, and a double “X” after those I’ve read more than once. In some cases I’ve put a triple “X”, meaning that I long ago lost count of how many times I’d read it.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – XX
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – XXX
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – XX
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – X
6 The Bible – XX (different parts to different degrees)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell – XX
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman – XX (but not again)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens – X
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 – XXX
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 – X
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – XX
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens – X
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – XXX
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – X
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll – XXX
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis – XXX
34 Emma – Jane Austen – X
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen – XX
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis – XXX
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne – XXX
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell – XX
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 – X
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert – XXX
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons – XX
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen – XX
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 – X
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 – XX
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 – X
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 – XX
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery – X
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks – X
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams – XXX
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole – X
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute – X
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas – XX
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare – X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl – XX
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo – X
Total: 38, which is two less than my correspondent (sigh!)
However, this is an absurd list. It has The Da Vinci Code on it, but lacks Patrick O’Brian, P.G. Wodehouse, and Terry Pratchett.
The View from the Foothills 
Don’t feel bad. I agree with you that it’s an absurd list. It’s mere chance that I got the jump on you by two. You have probably read 100 times more books than I have (and that’s a conservative estimate…)
By the way, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night” is a very interesting read. It’s the journal of a young man with autism who has lousy parents and goes on an adventure (related to the dog). I couldn’t put it down.
I’m a little surprised that you read “His Dark Materials” more than once…….
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There are three books; I read the first two twice, and the third once.
The first book was pretty good. I could see where it was going, but it was interesting, and engaging as well. The third volume…pfui. Might was well subtitle it “Dances with wimpy strawmen”.
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You beat me by eight.
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I counted 42, which is absurd, because on such lists I’m normally closer to 15-20.
It’s also absurd to list both “Complete Works of Shakespeare” and “Hamlet.”
I find it bittersweet that, on the one hand, I read so many good books in school, and, on the other hand, I’ve read so few since. Though Pratchett almost makes up for it. (And Wodehouse straddles my in school/out of school periods.)
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Will, allow me to recommend
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome.
You need to read this with your kids. A pair of girls persuade their parents to allow them to take their sailboat The Swallow to an island on the lake where they are summering for a week (I think). They quickly discover that another group of adventurers has laid claim to the island…. The plot is charming and engaging, and the descriptions remarkable (with lots of practical details, so you could imagine recreating their adventures yourself).
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I resonate with Tom. My best reading of Shakespeare was when I was taking a course in college, and we studied twelve plays. The teacher’s remarks were very inciteful and made the readings more interesting. I’m rereading Henry IV, Part 1, right now, trying to figure out why critics make such a big deal about Falstaff, and it escapes me. I mean, he’s a funny character, like Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream, but Bloom, et.al., blow him up to be a god of literature. Why is that?
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I tend to go through cycles. For light reading, I read mostly science fiction and fantasy and murder mysteries; and I cycle through the spectrum. There are times when it’s almost all F&SF, as now, and times when it’s almost all mysteries, and times when it’s a mixture.
And then, I’m usually reading something heavier at the same time. Some times I’ll read serious literature (mostly older stuff—and why isn’t Trollope on the list?), and some times I’ll read history; at the moment I’m reading mostly Catholic books and philosophy. It varies.
Re: Swallows and Amazons: sounds interesting, thanks for the suggestion! I’m reading Pratchett’s Guards, Guards to the kids at the moment; we just finished Diana Wynne Jones’ House of Many Ways, which I need to write something about. They are enjoying Guards, Guards, though I find I need to bowdlerize it a bit. (There are simply some questions my eight-year-old might ask that I’m not prepared to answer at story-time.)
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60. Yes, I’m bragging, but I agree that the list is not the best.
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Of course, I did celebrate our birthday first, which means I’ve had longer to read.
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🙂
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Wow, I’ve only read a measly sixteen–unless I can count reading the Bible in Portuguese separate from reading it in English, in which case seventeen. 14 of my 16 books are on your list. Of the other two, one I wouldn’t recommend, and the other (Heart of Darkness) I read long enough ago (sophomore in high school) that I only recall the vaguest contours of the plot which I’m sure you’re already familiar with.
I notice that you’ve read (like me) all the Jane Austen books but neither of the Bronte sisters. Any reason? (I just haven’t ever gotten around to them.)
I’ve been away from regular Internet access for the last week and a half so please accept my belated birthday wishes to you (and Sherry too since she had it first).
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Thanks much for the birthday wishes; it’s never too late. 🙂
I read Conrad’s The Secret Sharer in high school, and I’ve seen Apocalypse now; I didn’t really like either one, so I’ve avoided Heart of Darkness.
As for the Bronte sisters—I’ve been assured by others that I’d find most of the characters in Wuthering Heights to be utterly insufferable. (I don’t like Romeo and Juliet either.) Austen is an astute, somewhat detached observer; some of her characters are criminally foolish, but some are not. And the books generally focus on the latter (e.g., Eliza Bennett and Mr. Darcy). There’s a balance. In Wuthering Heights, it’s all about watching foolish people passionately ruining their lives. Why would I want to read about that?
I might some day attempt Jane Eyre.
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Sometimes you need to read great literature for the writing, not the plot or the characters. Your comment on Wuthering Heights is accurate, but the writing style is fantastic and well worth the read. Same with Moby Dick – a dismal story about a man obsessed by a white whale, but what writing! Not one of Ray Bradbury’s books was on the list, but he is another author that leaves most writers in the dust. I guess it depends upon what motivates you to read anything. I like a good plot and memorable characters, but I also appreciate good style. I suppose you can argue that great literature has all three.
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Uh… I obviously don’t know how to turn off italics – I thought I had done that in the above post. Sorry about that.
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Style is important, but for me it certainly doesn’t trump plot and characters. I’ve tried reading Moby Dick; I like sea stories, and it began well. In the end, though, I just couldn’t stick it.
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To each his own. I hear you on Moby Dick, though. The remainder of the novel never quite lives up to the opening with Ishmael and Queequeg in the inn.
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