The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How did you do?
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Star the books you LOVE.
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
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 (Really? Complete? I've read a lot.)
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 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
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
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’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
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
How about you? I got this off my friend's blog. Who knows if the list is legitimate, but it seems like a good variety of contemporary & classic. I should re-do this list marking the books that I own but haven't gotten around to reading yet. Or, similar books by the same author- like #97. I've read Man in the Iron Mask, but not The Three Musketeers. So close, yet so far away.
This is kind of a freebie post, but I thought it might tempt some of my literary friends out of "lurking"!
Like a waterfall in slow motion, Part One
2 years ago
Posts
16 comments:
Noel's (26/100) reads(B), audio(A), and movies(M) from the (fiction) list:
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (B 1970s, M 2000s)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (isn't this Jane Austen? M 2000s)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling(A,M 2000s but not all in the series)
6 The Bible (B, 70s, 80s, 90s, and today)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (B 1970s)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (B 1970s)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (B 1970s, M 1980s)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (A 1970s, M19xx)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (M 1970s)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (B 1970s)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (M 19xx)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (M 2000s)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (M 2000s)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (M 1970s)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (M 2000s)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (M 1990s I've been to Prince Edward Island)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (M 1970s)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (M 2000s)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (M 1980s)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (M 2000s)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (B 1970s)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (B 1970s)
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Guthrie 1970s)
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (B 1970s)
92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery (B 1970s? if I red this, it was in the original French)
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (M 1970s)
Many of the "B 1970s" were in English class. Maybe I was being well rounded by English teachers!
Key fictional books I've read that are not on the list:
* _Giants in the Earth_ by OE Rolvaag
* The Immigrants tetrology by Wilhelm Moberg
* The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
I have read 22,not to bad for small town north Dakota but than again what else is there to do?
Movies don't count Noel!! Sometimes the plot and ending are even different!
I have read:
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (1st part only)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (not completely)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
I'll admit I read the abridged version of War and Peace, so it was only 800+ pages instead of 1000+, but I still count it. I actually did like it too.
I want to read (most are sitting on my bookshelf just waiting for me):
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I've heard that the recent "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wordrobe" did some re-ordering and re-mixing of events. Other than that, a lot of the M's are BBC productions shown on PBS and, to my knowledge, pretty close to the books.
I've also checked that Bronte is, in fact, the author of _Jane Eyre_ . I liked the book ending of Jane Eyre better than the PBS ending for its theological richness. That was a case where I had the book version from Google books available as I was semi-watching the PBS version with my wife.
Noel, sorry, but I totally agree with Kim. If we were counting movies, I'd add about 10 more to the list. Let's all use the same scale! But I'll give you the audiobooks.:)
By the way, I did orginally bold the titles I'd read, but for some stupid reason Blogspot doesn't recognize bolding. So now they are in red. Sorry.
Boy, no slack from the Book Club ladies! My score drops to 11.
The list of 100 books started showing up on blogs in early summer 2008. I couldn't find the list on the NEA site. They do have a list of about 20 books which has little overlap with the list of 100: http://www.nea.gov/pub/BigReadCatalog.pdf .
Some notable (male-friendly) authors on the NEA list of 22 not in the list of 100:
Ray Bradbury
Ernest Hemingway
Mark Twain
(Can you tell I'm feeling better from my cold from my surfing?)
24. What a good list! I have been looking for something like this to start a book club. Also, just got a library card, so I'm sure all of these will be there. Yay books!
Oh man! I am such a slow reader! It would take me forever to get through this list! I'm going to repost on my blog... thanks Lyz for a "freebie post" : ).
Ruth and I have the same number (24)!
But in the interest of whatever, most of those books were crammed down my throat in high school english.
18 or so. And, I've got to say, that list is TERRIBLE. First of all, you can't count The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe AND The Chronicles of Narnia. I'm convinced that whoever wrote this list took a bunch of required reading from high schools, added a lot of recently adapted for film novels, toss in some recent best-sellers and call it good. The Curious Incident... is NOT that good of a book.
Aaron - I agree with you in some regards. This list was never supposed to be a Top 100 - it is supposedly a publisher's list. And since of course series of novels are also sold individually, you get The L, W, & W separate from Chronicles of Narnia, and also The Complete Works of Shakespears AND Hamlet.
Your assumption sounds good, except for some oddballs in there, and some I've never heard of. So they must be science fiction?
And usually the books we English teachers choose to "cram down your throats" (and it feels that way to us sometimes too!) are actually really good books that end up lists like this! So you could do worse than developing a list off of the "recommended reading" from high school.
And again, I highly recommend The Count of Monte Cristo. Skip the movie, though.
Oh, and also? The Curious Incident...is a far better book than The Da Vinci Code.
But I do think this is a good list for a book club to go off of! Go, Ruthie!
I agree, the count of monte cristo is a great book. I'll lend you the Hitch-hiker's Guide if you like; it's kind of a cross between the Phantom Tollbooth and Monty Python in space, for adults.
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
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (well it will be soon!)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis*
34 Emma - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini*
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas*
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo*
Well I managed almost 40 and there were a few I started or have on my shelf. Thanks for the list Lyz.
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