Thursday, February 26, 2009

Are you well read ?

The BBC has reportedly named these the top 100 books a well-read person will have read, but estimated most people have only read about 6 of them. If my eyes do not fail me, I have read 49 out of the 100. I can think of many more I would add to this list and some of these I would remove.

Sadly, we had to leave our books when we left the jungle so suddenly. We miss them but are trying to rebuild our library. The books I have read are in bold and my notes are in red.



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (A favorite!)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ( I read this almost every summer and have read them aloud to all my children)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
(In English, Spanish, and the New Testament, in Ye'kwana)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (Reminds me of Obama's presidency)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
( Another read aloud)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare--(I've read MOST of them!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (A great read aloud for even young children!)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
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 Several times, I just finished the biography of Margaret Mitchell)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
(Another favorite)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( I devoured this while recovering from a surgery)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (If you haven't read it as an adult, you should!)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
( Another good read aloud)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (A classic to read over and over and over...)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (Really fun to read aloud to children)
34 Emma - Jane Austen ( I have read the all of Austen's works)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
( Fun read aloud. Shouldn't this be part of the Narnia Chronicles?)
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 (Make sure to read this to your children! You will all enjoy it.)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code
- Dan Brown ( I had to know what all the buzz was about)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (read with your daughters, and all the sequels!)
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 ( I LOVED THESE! Even rented the movies)
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 ( Another must read)
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 ( My husband's favorite)
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 (Read aloud with young boys, they'll eat it up)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Lovely story)
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 ( Almost every Christmas up until recently)
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 ( Read aloud)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( I have re read these several times)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (I read it in Spanish)
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 ( Good to read aloud with your children)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ( A must read for younger children)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ( Read it...don 't watch the movie!)

How many have you read?


Do you have any favorites you would add to this list?

27 comments:

Most Rev. Gregori said...

I read 62 of the books on your list, and two books that I would add, are:

"A PIECE OF MY HEART" - by by Keith Walker (The stories of 26 American women who served in Vietnam)

"SAIGON" - by Anton Gray (A history of Vietnam from its founding {known as Annam} up to the Vietnam War)

Brooke said...

The Inferno is my favorite.

Brooke said...

I might add Journal of the Plague Year by Defoe.

Dawn said...

Not counting, I've read the majority of the same ones you have - and not read the ones you haven't!

Mike's America said...

Does it count if you saw the movie?

Oswald Bastable said...

24

CrimeSceneFairy said...

These are the ones i've read
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
The Bible
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkie
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (I tried reading it anyways...i don't remember how far I got.)
Charlotte’s Web - EB White
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I'm reading it now. we have the adventures, the memoirs, and the return of sherlock holmes, plus the hound of the baskervilles in one book, and i'm almost halfway through it.)
The rest i've either never heard of or don't really want to read.
Lol, where are all the Ted Dekker books!?

Unknown said...

Well, I know I read some of these in English lit but can´t really say I have read very many. A shame to be sure. Of course some I would not even think about reading.(why mess with the mind)

This list makes me think that I am not a reader after all. I will try to get some of the other more respectable titles to read to my boys.

Can´t believe Harry Potter made it on this list!!! GRRRRRR That woman is a satanic witch...(personal opinion of course)

Always On Watch said...

Great post! Well, you could have expected me to say so as I teach English literature.

Sadly, many literature courses today don't include the reading of or from such classics. My course "holds the line" and forces students to explore the classics, but I work with homeschoolers, who are more classical-education oriented.

Anonymous said...

Well, I guess I've read just under a third of the books. The one they left off in my opinion is A Little Princess, which was one of my childhood favorites that I liked better than The Secret Garden! They didn't include the books I like to read: mission stories (!) such as Inn of the Sixth Happiness and Elizabeth Elliott books and a million more (including the one I can't wait to read in the future--The Jungle Hut or whatever you're going to call it!), Holocaust stories, biographies and mysteries (especially Agatha Christie and John Grisham and many more). I hope someone will be able to read the books you had to leave behind. Books are like good friends!

Betty said...

I am not well read! I admit it. Much of my reading was done in German, so I guess that´s my excuse... :) But I love to read!
The thing with me is I don´t remember titles or author´s, so I can´t really add any.

Anonymous said...

Clearly the BBC is clueless. No "Flashman Paper." No Horatio Hornblower. Their literature critic must be a wino.

Subvet said...

I've read 25 of the 100. Just my opinion, but there are others more deserving of being on that list. Examples would include Milton's "Paradise Lost", Homer's "The Illiad" and "The Odyssey".

Glenn B said...

I have read at least 30 of them, one I cannot recall for sure so maybe 31. I also read the list and I have to say that whoever wrote it up considers some absolute trash to be necessary reading. Charlotte's Web and Harry Potter indeed falling within the top 100 reads! The author of the list also apparently does not realize that if you read the Complete Works of Shakespeare, then you would have had to have read Hamlet - yet Hamlet is listed as an individual read.

The ones I have read:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas



There are other works I would place onto this list to include:

The Complete Works (stories, poems and novel)of Edgar Allen Poe

The Iliad by Homer (no not Homer Simpson)

The Odyssey by Homer

A Single Pebble by John Hershey

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

Lost Horizon by Jame Hilton

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

The Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Col. Jim Corbett

The Doors of Perception Aldous Huxley

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin

Frankenstein by May Shelley

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

The Thundering Herd by Zane Grey

The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

There are many more I would recommend but I do not have the time right now.

All the best,
Glenn B

Gecko said...

I've read about 20 of these, but agree there are a lot that should have been included, one of my favourite authors, Ryder Haggard.

Rita Loca said...

I agree, the list is very inadequate and several of the titles are very juvenile. Bu this is the list from the BBC...

Findalis said...

93 out of 100. Some, if not all, I consider old friends. Especially #1.

Anonymous said...

I read 51. Too many of Jane Austen, IMHO. Perhaps I show my bias by not saying the same about Dickens. There should have been more Greek and Roman classics added.

Anonymous said...

I object to your list. Sorry. Well read today ain't what it used to be.

Rita Loca said...

FJ, Not my list, the BBC's list. I agree many great works are missing, especially Greek classics and several on this list are juvenile classics.
My list would like quite different.

Christie said...

We're reading the Secret Garden right now (my girls and I). I have to agree with Soul Skittles about the Dekker books. I'm reading Renegade now, but his Black-Red-White trilogy are my faves of all time. And I did love The Little Prince, but I've only read it in French. I'll have to look for it in Spanish. I'm ashamed to say that I've seen the movies of many of these but never took the time to read lots of the longer books.

MightyMom said...

what a bizarre list!!

Thursday's Child said...

OK, time to cut and paste the list to a document and get busy. :D

Brenda said...

I think I have read about 35 of these books. Some I will choose never to read, others I will save for when I am bored. . .

Michael said...

I've read 24 of those books, as well as some other works by the same authors (Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, for example).

I think I'll make a post about this. When I have the time.

Rebecca said...

I think I've only read 19. How sad. I must correct this with Alaina. I would add the Little House books for sure.

Anonymous said...

No Faulkner? No Hemingway? Blasphemy!