The BBC put together a list of 100 books they believe the average person has only read 6 of. I found it interesting how it combined both traditional classics as well as a few modern pieces.
Naturally, I couldn't resist going through the list & putting the books I've read in bold... (partially read is in Italics)
| 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 - read some, but not others... 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 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 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 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 Golding50 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 Seth56 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 |
So I've read a total of 13. Les Miserables is by far one of my biggest literary accomplishments. It was definitely a beast! But I can say, it's one of my favorite books I've ever read.
It makes me sad, that even sucessfully reading 2 books a month, it would take me almost 4 years to read through the whole list!
I'm curious, what's your number? Of this list, what's your favorite?

I have read 20:
ReplyDelete3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
I've read part of 9:
6 The Bible
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
My favorite read? Probably 1984 by George Orwell.
I've only completed six from the list - and half of those were required reads in high school. I read a lot but I guess I'm not a big fan of the classics. My favorite read from the list is Memoirs of a Geisha. That book is actually one of my top ten favorite reads.
ReplyDelete27 and I'm halfway done with The Three Musketeers...that list makes me want to go through it bit by bit! Favorite? Hmmm...it's a tie between Pride and Prejudice and The Chronicles of Narnia...
ReplyDeleteOne that's not on this list that I HIGHLY recommend: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.
Ohhh, I'm so gonna do this! Look for a blog-post with my list soon!!! :-)
ReplyDeletei've read 17. but looking at this list i want to read all of of them! wow this made me realize how much i've missed taking time to read!
ReplyDeleteOh, and may I add: MY FAVORITE from this list is most definitly Of Mice & Men! (BTW, I couldn't wait, my post/list is up! HAHA) Thanks for the fun idea!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty happy with myself. I read 16! Probably because I studied in England and had to read several of the Dickens books. My favorites of all time are on the list: Of Mice and Men, Lovely Bones, Anne of Green Gables and Catcher in the Rye!
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness what a great list! There are many on there I haven't read...and a few I have read! lol is it ok if I add this list to my blog? I need to read all of these! A few of my favorites from the list are The Time Traveler's Wife, Brave New World, Life of Pi. Thanks for sharing this list! :)
ReplyDeleteI've read 13 as well. :)
ReplyDeleteWow I have read 20.
ReplyDeleteI love the Narnia books, of course, but I really enjoyed War and Peace. Catcher and the Rye too.
I've got ten... impressed that His Dark Materials made it...
ReplyDeleteI'm 9 some have been awhile though I actually have 4 others that I had bought just have not gotten around to reading them yet. Love Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
ReplyDeleteI've read lots on the list (yay!). I am definitely saving it so I can pick out a good book in the future...
ReplyDeleteFavorites from the list (so good!):
- Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
- Memoirs of a Geisha
- Prayer for Owen Meany
- The Time Traveler's Wife (movie = not good, book = great!)
loved this! i joined up and linked back to you! :)
ReplyDeletehttp://thebredewegs.blogspot.com/2011/09/such-bookworm.html
I've read 24 of them! My favorite was by far Nineteen Eighty-Four. Brave New World was really good too though.
ReplyDeleteI'm dedicating my entire Thursday post to which of these 100 books I've read.Check it out!
ReplyDeletehttp://courtneygordon.blogspot.com
I have read 38! and I totally played along! I have read:
ReplyDeletePride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Harry Potter Series
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Bible (a challenge I overtook in MS)
His Dark Materials
Great Expectations
Little Women
Tess of the D'Ubervilles
Catch 22
Complete works of shakespeare
Rebecca
The Hobbit
Catcher in the Rye
Middlemarch
the Great Gatsby
Grapes of Wrath
Alice in Wonderland
The Wind in the Willows
Anna Karenina
Chronicles of Narnia
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Whinnie the Pooh
The Da Vinci Code
Anne of Green Gables
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
Midnight's Children
The Secret Garden
Vanity Fair
A Christmas Carol
Madam Bovary
Charolette's Web
The Five People You Meet in Heave
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Heart of Darkness
Hamlet