Sorry but I refuse to blog about the wedding until my mother picks up the pictures of the homeless guy sleeping on the bench next to the gazebo. Why do I have the only relative that refuses to use a digital camera. Not like my sis and I haven't freakin' purchased her one. gggrrrrrr.
Getting on with it:
Statistically, the average person has read six of the top hundred books of all time. I did not come up with this list and I think there are many that are missing. However, since I've been spending this holiday reading, I thought it might make a good meme to get me back into the real world tomorrow.
I am a self defined bibliophile so I was surprised that I had only read half. However, none of the books that were left were on my list of things to read before I croak so none are Italicise . Additionally, everyone I picked up I finished and I like all I read. But I am weird that way.
Now you kids all know that fifty and above is a ridiculous number and can probably only be achieved by geeks and people with no life. I refuse to share which category I happen to fall in.
Let me know if you played. But more, which ones I did not read that I really should.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Put *** next to those you LOVED.
4) Underline those you started and didn't finish.
5) Highlight in blue the ones you didn't like
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen***
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 - God THE God wrote the bible? Naaaa.
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 Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger***
19. The Time Traveller'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
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbec***
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-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
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' 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 I can't believe this is on here and J'Accuse isn't! J'Accuse is excellent.
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 - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo***
14 comments:
Wow, I suck! I have only read four on the list. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, The Secret Garden and The Bell Jar. Hey, but I did read all 4 of the Twilight books in one week! :)
Jeez....I'm an avid reader and only could claim 20 out of this list. My tastes seem to run a bit different, I guess. I would recommend you read A HANDMAIDS TALE...but get a friend to read it too so you can do discussions of it....and I PROMISE, there will be PLENTY of discussions! Its about a society where women are not allowed to own anything (for starters) because we have no rights. Also, you should read THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. I've been told its actually the story of Christ (the Lion). As you get into it, you can recognize certain characters from the Bible, even though its not written as such. Just a suggestion.
I just finished THE GLASS CASTLE by Jeannette Walls and am still in shock over this woman's childhood.
Hmmm...I have to confess - I don't read as much as I used to due to some vision problems. Even after the Lasik surgery. Takes forever to get through a book. However I have read:
Lord of the Flies
Le Miserable
Anne of Green Gables
Charlottes Web
A Handmaid's Tale (and almost everything else from M. Atwood)
Mostly the past few years my reading is of manuals and blogs, lol.
I didn't see Archie and Veronica or Nacy and Sluggo and Baby Huey and Henry and...
damn, i read quite a few of 'em, just, wow...i know it had to be before i could drive! since then, i read novels, not this kind of deep, meaningful books!
I've read 30 of them. I probably like 6 of those though.
I wonder who decides which books get on that list and which books don't. Cause I think I would have some pretty serious disagreements with them if they asked me to help out. haha
Lucky for me and my ADD most of these I have seen the movie! BWA HA HA! It seems we have read the same exact ones, more proof we were separated at birth!
MC: My son did the same thing over the break with Twilight series.I read the first one and have the other three but didn't really get into it like so many others. GV: I will be sure to put it on my list. Seems interesting. Olly: yeah...blogs win for my reading material on most days too. CP: Yeah, what's up with that? Lib: I like a good novel myself. I am currently reading Scarpetta..a mystery and love those kinds of things. Jay: I must say, I didn't see you as the type. SK: Yup, i think u may be right.
The two that I noticed were missing right away were Angela's Ashes and Middlesex. I am sure there are many others but those are the ones that struck me.
This list is skewed to the more feminine side with all the deep romantic bronte books but I read my share
Sean the obtuse Canadian
I haven't read as many as you, but I've read some different from you. (seen a ton more movies than read of these though)
I've read
Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter series
The bible (most of it)
Little Women
The Hobbit
Gone with the Wind
Alice in Wonderland
Chronicles of Narnia (all 7)
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
Winnie the Pooh
Lord of the Flies
Dune
A Tale of Two Cities
Moby Dick
A Christmas Carol
Charlotte's Web
Watership Down
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
And I've read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and James and the Giant peach.
Funny about Winnie the Poo. I didn't know there was one book. I thought it was all a bunch of short stories that came in little hard cover illustrated children's books.
I think there are a lot of romance as per sean but I think that was when most of the novels written by male or female had that common thread because that is what sold. Even when the novel had a bigger theme, there seemed to always be a little love story subtext whether the author was a woman or man. (Exactly like films are today. Some things never change)
Although Bronte and Austin were simply love stories, that is all women were really "permitted" to write back then if they could get published at all.
OneHung hates to read. Sure, he's well versed in Playboy Advisor and Penthouse Letters, in addition to various car magazines, but he hates to read. He read enough in college, so now he had no desire to read further. Plus, he already knows everything that's important, so why waste time?
With regards to the list, most people are read X number of books, because teachers made some of them required reading in school. OneHung is curious as to how many people have read that was required reading, and how many they read simply because they like to read.
OneHung has read exactly one book from the top 100, because he took it upon himself to do so...Chuck and the Chocolate Factory made for good reading in the sixth grade.
To Kill A Mockingbird and A Christmas Carol were required reading in grade school, and Of Mice and Men made the list because of high school.
For what it's worth, OneHung hasn't read, but has seen Lord of the Flies and Charlotte's Web on the silver screen.
Chris
The hitch hikers guide to the universe is actually a compilation of a BBC radio play and if you could get a hold of it I am sure it would be worth your while
You have to have a really off beat sense of humour to get it but i laughed my ass off
Always remember to never forget your towel(if you read the book you will get that)
Sean the obtuse Canadian
Holy crap, I read like, 7 or 8 of them! I feel all smert now.
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