Have you read these books, BBC says you probably haven't.

[BillieBoy]

There's this new note thing going around Facebook asking how many of these books (list following) have you read. BBC states the average person has only read 6 out this 100. When I saw this the first thing that came to mind was I bet the hive's average is WAY higher I'd venture to say at least 20. I've read 54 out of the 100. Come on WTMer's lets smash that average!

 

Here's the list:

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 –

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks -

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 -

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 Hossein -

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 Zafo -

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 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 -

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 –

 

/SIZE]

[gingersmom]

My kids by the age of 13 will have read over 20 of those books.

 

Why did they pick those particular books?

[Nicole M]

I've seen that list before. I totally lose respect for the list-maker when I see The DaVinci Code on there.

 

I've read about 70 of them. [ETA: I'm not bragging; I'm just old.]

[Satori]

I read 39, but have I have recently decided to try to read more classics, and already want to read at least 20 more on that list. (I read all the time, but a lot of it is homeschooling, technical, how-tos... or stuff that isn't quite classics...)

 

Now that it's a handy list, I can finish it all off in a year or so!

[sweetbasil]

I've seen that list before. I totally lose respect for the list-maker when I see The DaVinci Code on there.

 

I've read about 70 of them.

 

:iagree:

[plansrme]

I knew reading the complete works of Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy would come in handy one day. :001_smile:

 

What is Bridget Jones doing on there???

 

Terri

[BillieBoy]

I'm not even sure of the validity of this whole thing. But I did find the FB results interesting among some of my distant accquantances and my homeschool buddies.

[Nicole M]

Did anyone here see the BBC list of children's classics? They had an article about wonderful books that most children aren't reading anymore. That list was how I learned about Swallows and Amazons, one of our all time favorites. Last summer I thought my boys (then 11 & 16) were too old to hear me read it again, but they insisted. We read it every summer. I think we'd read everything else on that list, but I'd love to see it again.

[rowan25]

I've got about 31, but most of them were ones I read in high school! :lol:

[usetoschool]

I have read over 40 of them - honestly, some of them I am not interested in ever reading but am still familiar with the plot. So, how about a poll so nobody has to be assigned to go through all of the answers and calculate the average? 0-10, 10-20, etc. Or, I suppose some bright homeschooled child could be assigned that math project for today? ;)

[Plucky]

I've read 47. That is an odd list.

[Tree House Academy]

Why did they pick those particular books?

 

 

:iagree: I was wondering that too...some are classics. Some are ...not.

 

As an English major in college, I have read 66 of them.

[shadowcat]

I've read 43 of them.

[melissel]

What is Bridget Jones doing on there???

 

 

I'm wondering the same thing. Blech.

 

I've read about 30, but I'm working on it!

[Guest Dulcimeramy]

I've read 35.

[BillieBoy]

Darn I tried adding a poll, but it was too late. Anybody's dc need a math project today?:D

[Veronica in VA]

54 of them. I wonder about some of them, too.

 

Veronica

[BikeBookBread]

I've read 31 on that list. Like others, I really want to know what this list is...what is the meaning of the ranking? Certainly not literary importance! Bridget Jones - blech??!! Has anyone googled the BBC article or list? (Sorry if this has been covered already, I didn't read the entire thread.)

[Satori]

Well, WTMers blow that "statistic" of 6/100 out the water, like you predicted. :)

 

It was based on a nomination of 100 favorite books:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

 

And the next 100, making it the top 200 of popular culture's favorite books:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top200.shtml

[Alice]

58

[the4Rs]

I've read 25 of them. The average is 6? Is it possible that these "average" people never had to read a book in high school english classes or in college for that matter? Most of the 25 were school assignments.

[BikeBookBread]

Well, WTMers blow that "statistic" of 6/100 out the water, like you predicted. :)

 

It was based on a nomination of 100 favorite books:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

 

And the next 100, making it the top 200 of popular culture's favorite books:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top200.shtml

 

AHA!

 

Strangely, I've only read 10 of the second 100.

[melissel]

Well, WTMers blow that "statistic" of 6/100 out the water, like you predicted. :)

 

It was based on a nomination of 100 favorite books:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

 

And the next 100, making it the top 200 of popular culture's favorite books:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top200.shtml

 

The BBC's 100 and the OP's 100 are not quite the same. It looks like someone took some liberties with the BBC's original list and it turned into the one that's going around.

[caitlinsmom]

I've got about 30. Could be 35, but honestly cant remember if I finished reading them or not. :) I am surprised to see some of those on the list. Bridget Jones and Jane Austen don't (in my mind and not having read Bridget Jones) go anywhere the same catagory in regards to literature.

 

Interesting list

[aggieamy]

I've read 22 of them ... a few of them I bet I've read 10 times, like Sherlock Holmes. A couple are even sitting on my nightstand to be read this weekend.

[JFSinIL]

I have read 42.

[BillieBoy]

The BBC's 100 and the OP's 100 are not quite the same. It looks like someone took some liberties with the BBC's original list and it turned into the one that's going around.

 

It does look different but fairly similar. I just copied my list from the one going around FB. Maybe they wanted to include some more recent poplar titles??? I still think we are a fairly well read group. :D

[Impish]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - yep

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - yep

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - yep

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - yep

6 The Bible - Not completely

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - yep

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -yep

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -yep

 

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - yep

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 -yep

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks -

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -yep

19 The Time Traveler’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 -yep

34 Emma-Jane Austen -

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -yep

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 -yep

 

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -yep

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -yep, one of my all time faves

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -yep

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -yep

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -yep

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 Zafo -

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -yep

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 -yep

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 - yep

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - yep

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - yep

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 -yep

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -yep

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 - yep

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - A cpl

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -

 

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - yep

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - yep

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 -yep

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo –

 

/SIZE]

29 out of 100...not bad, considering most have been read as a teen, outside of school. Although, there are 7 books in Harry Potter...and I've read *some* Shakespeare, not all. There are some, like Bridget Jones I think are ridiculous to be on the list.

[melissel]

It does look different but fairly similar. I just copied my list from the one going around FB. Maybe they wanted to include some more recent poplar titles??? I still think we are a fairly well read group. :D

 

Of course! I was thinking of the questions about how the Da Vinci code and Bridget Jones got in there. Bridget Jones was on the original list, but I couldn't find the Da Vinci code. It's still a good list to work from. I love that The Time-Traveler's Wife and Atonement were on there too. Those are two of my all-time favorite books.

[Ginevra]

I thought it was odd that they had "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe".

[yellowperch]

I've read about 74 of them, but I'm old too.

 

I have to admit one of them was Bridget Jones and another was Davinci Code (I wanted to see what the hype was about) and the 26 or so I didn't read included the Bible, Collected Shakespeare (I've read much but not all ) and, of course, Ulysses.

 

I did get double points for Narnia and the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. All the Tolstoy was from high school and most of the Austen from College. But I'm 90 percent sure I read them!

[SilverMoon]

21.:blush: I have committed to upping my good book list this year though. Poring over booklists on the internet for my tween ds this year did it for me. I was embarrassed at how many I hadn't read and started making a list for me too. :tongue_smilie:

[gardening momma]

Mine is a relatively low number (12) but at least it's higher than the average given (6). But there are a number of books on the list that I've have read at least parts of, but have not read in their entirety (Bible, Complete Works of Shakespeare, etc..) and so I did not count them.

[elizabeth]

:lol:

I've seen that list before. I totally lose respect for the list-maker when I see The DaVinci Code on there.

 

I've read about 70 of them. [ETA: I'm not bragging; I'm just old.]

 

:lol: Same can be said for this lady. Just age.

[Matryoshka]

I've read 40, and does having seen the movie/Masterpiece Theatre/Broadway versions of an additional 10 count? :D

 

Bridget Jones, though - egads! That's one I haven't read, but have seen the movie... a friend lent me the book to read and I could feel the brain cells dying after just the first page, so I stopped. :tongue_smilie:

[Pamela H in Texas]

The majority of those I have read, I read before graduating high school. It seems the average high schooler would read more than 6 just in their school years.

[Alice]

I've got about 30. Could be 35, but honestly cant remember if I finished reading them or not. :) I am surprised to see some of those on the list. Bridget Jones and Jane Austen don't (in my mind and not having read Bridget Jones) go anywhere the same catagory in regards to literature.

 

Interesting list

 

I have to say I read Bridget Jones and liked it quite a bit. :leaving:

 

It is a fluffy read but it's fun.

 

And interestingly, Helen Fielding (the author) has a lot of references to Jane Austen/Pride and Prejudice in Bridget Jones. Not saying the two are comparable but Fielding definitely knows Austen. The book is smarter and the Pride and Prejudice references much more fun than in the movie.

[KarenC]

and about 10 more of them are on my list of books to read this year.

 

Karen

[orangearrow]

I've read at least 56 of those (a super fast tally mark read-though count - and only counting the series that are listed as "one").

 

And... Bridget Jones is hysterical - very different from the movie(s) and definitely brain-candy - but absolutely hysterical (if you like British humor, maybe? I dunno). :lol: In fact, I haven't read it in a while and I need something funny to read... gonna dust of off my bookshelf. :D

[melissel]

I have to say I read Bridget Jones and liked it quite a bit. :leaving:

 

It is a fluffy read but it's fun.

 

And interestingly, Helen Fielding (the author) has a lot of references to Jane Austen/Pride and Prejudice in Bridget Jones. Not saying the two are comparable but Fielding definitely knows Austen. The book is smarter and the Pride and Prejudice references much more fun than in the movie.

 

The only thing that made the movie more bearable than the book for me was Colin Firth :svengo: :lol:

[Jean in Newcastle]

54

[Orthodox6]

See annotations below.

 

Totals:

 

YES = 52

 

NO = familiar with author, but have not read this work = 25

NO = have read portions, or have seen film version only = 5

NO = never have heard of this book = 18

 

TOTAL = 100 titles, which should be 98, because there are 2 overlaps.

 

Some of these I don't consider useful for anything other than stoking the fireplace, so I'm unconcerned about how many I have read from this particular list.

 

Here's the list:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - yes

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - yes

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - yes

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - no

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - yes

6 The Bible - yes

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - yes

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - yes

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - of course not

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - yes

 

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - yes

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - yes

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - no

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – plays, only

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - film version, only

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - yes

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - never heard of it

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - yes

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - never heard of it

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot- yes

 

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - yes

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - yes

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - yes

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - yes

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - no

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - no

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - yes

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - yes

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - yes

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - yes

 

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - yes

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - yes

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - yes

34 Emma-Jane Austen - yes

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - yes

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - yes -- part of #33

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein - no

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - never heard of it

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - no

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - yes

 

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - yes

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - of course not

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - no

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - never heard of it

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - no

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - yes

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - yes

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - no

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - film version, only

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - no

 

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - never heard of it

52 Dune - Frank Herbert - no

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - no

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - yes

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - never heard of it

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafo - never heard of it

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - yes

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley- yes

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon - never heard of it

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - never heard of it

 

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - yes

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - of course not

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - never heard of it

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - never heard of it

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - no

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - no

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - yes

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - no

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - never heard of it

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - yes

 

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - yes

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - no

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - yes

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson never heard of it

75 Ulysses - James Joyce - yes

76 The Inferno – Dante - portions

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - yes

78 Germinal - Emile Zola - no

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - yes

 

80 Possession - AS Byatt never heard of it

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - yes

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - never heard of it

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - no

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - film version, only

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - yes

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - never heard of it

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - yes

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - no

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - yes

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - no -- but read at least a dozen other books by her when I was a child.

 

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - yes

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - yes

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - never heard of it

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - yes

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - never heard of it

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - no

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - yes

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - yes (part of #14)

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - no

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo – yes

 

/SIZE]

Edited August 13, 2009 by Orthodox6

[Alice]

The only thing that made the movie more bearable than the book for me was Colin Firth :svengo: :lol:

 

With you on that one. :)

 

The second Bridget Jones book, The Edge of Reason, has a scene that is absolutely hysterical where Bridge Jones goes to interview Colin Firth about a movie he is filming. In the interview she keeps referring to him as Mr. Darcy and asking him questions about the BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series, specifically about the scene where he removes his shirt and dives in the pond. Again, it's brain candy but really really good brain candy. :)

 

When they made the second Bridget Jones MOVIE they couldn't have that scene, as Colin Firth is playing Mark Darcy and couldn't also play himself. The second movie was not very good and I can't really remember why I watched it or where but there was a great "extra" on the DVD where Renee Zellweger plays Bridget Jones interviewing Colin Firth, playing himself. It is very funny and made me like Colin Firth even more as he is kind of making fun of himself in a way and seems to have a good sense of humor.

 

Ok..that's enough hijacking of a thread about literature. And I'm wondering if I just really admitted here that I not only read both Bridget Jones books (and liked them) but also watched both movies. :001_huh:;)

[Dirtroad]

I've seen that list before. I totally lose respect for the list-maker when I see The DaVinci Code on there.

 

I've read about 70 of them. [ETA: I'm not bragging; I'm just old.]

 

BRAVO on 70... dont' say old... say WELL READ!!!!;)

 

I have read about 28 (b/c LOTRings is 3 books & some Shakespeare but not all), but never read a classic in my life except Gone with the Wind & Beowulf until I was in my 30s. We never read books in school... just brief passages in text books. (sad) Plus, most of these have come during my years as a homeschooler.... I seek to find out what I MISSED in my inadequate, gov't education of 20 years (k-grad). Working on my own literary improvement!

 

I agree about the list though. Several of those books I will never read due to moral objections or completely BORING. Why so many books by Hardy... I have read them & they are so depressing.:confused: Tess is enough... Jude was awful & Castorbridge broke my heart.

 

Where is Robinson Crusoe, Beowulf, Wuthering Heights, Iliad/Odyssey (maybe not really a book... but still an important read).... all of those should be way ahead of Bridget Jones, Harry Potter, and DaVinci code. Maybe some the contemporary books were added just to get the number up to 6.....:lol:

 

If BBC counts... I am well past 40....:lol:.

 

OH... and where was PILGRIM's PROGRESS?

[OhM]

And only around 5 of those were assigned for school reading (in high school - believe it or not, I didn't take an English class in college! - engineering, you know.)

[melissel]

With you on that one. :)

 

The second Bridget Jones book, The Edge of Reason, has a scene that is absolutely hysterical where Bridge Jones goes to interview Colin Firth about a movie he is filming. In the interview she keeps referring to him as Mr. Darcy and asking him questions about the BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series, specifically about the scene where he removes his shirt and dives in the pond. Again, it's brain candy but really really good brain candy. :)

 

When they made the second Bridget Jones MOVIE they couldn't have that scene, as Colin Firth is playing Mark Darcy and couldn't also play himself. The second movie was not very good and I can't really remember why I watched it or where but there was a great "extra" on the DVD where Renee Zellweger plays Bridget Jones interviewing Colin Firth, playing himself. It is very funny and made me like Colin Firth even more as he is kind of making fun of himself in a way and seems to have a good sense of humor.

 

Ok..that's enough hijacking of a thread about literature. And I'm wondering if I just really admitted here that I not only read both Bridget Jones books (and liked them) but also watched both movies. :001_huh:;)

 

Oh my goodness, how funny is that? Can you believe that I even read the second book, and I don't remember that part at all? In my defense, though, I bought it to read on my way home from our two-week honeymoon in Greece because I'd already read the 11 other books I'd brought, and by that point we were so exhausted from traveling between the islands and Athens, scrambling from place to place and still trying to fit in sightseeing, I'm lucky I remember that I read it at all! I didn't see the second movie though.

 

Now I'm tempted to find the second book again and just look for that scene :lol:

[MomOfOneFunOne]

Here's the list:

YES!1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -

All of them2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -

Yes3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -

Nope4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -

One of my all-time favorites5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -

Most, We're on Corinthians and we started with Gen.6 The Bible -

yes7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -

no8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -

no - I don't think I've ever even heard of it.9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -

yes10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -

 

yes11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -

and hated it12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -

yes13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -

Can't say complete -- a great many, though14 Complete Works of Shakespeare –

Are you kidding? That's my name -- of course I have!15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -

of course, I'm also a hobbit.16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -

no17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks -

yes but didn't like it even a little18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -

nope19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -

I own it but haven't read it yet. Does that count?20 Middlemarch - George Eliot-

 

Several Times!21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -

yep22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -

nope23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -

nope24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -

nope25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -

yes26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -

Yes and that counts but it took me several times of picking it up and putting it back down27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -

no28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -

yes. not what I had expected!29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -

yes!30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -

 

Yes!31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -

Yes!32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -

Yes!33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -

Yes!34 Emma-Jane Austen -

Yes!35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -

Yes!36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein -

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -

Yes!40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -

 

yes41 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 -

Yes!45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -

Yes!46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -

Yes!47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -

Yes!48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -

Yes!49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -

 

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -

52 Dune - Frank Herbert -

Yes!53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -

Yes!54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafo -

Yes!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 -

 

Yes!61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -

Yes!Yes!Yes!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 -

Yes!70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -

 

Yes!71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -

Yes!72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -

Yes!73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce -

Yes!76 The Inferno – Dante -

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -

78 Germinal - Emile Zola -

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -

 

80 Possession - AS Byatt

Yes!Yes!81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -

Yes!84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -

Yes!87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -

Many of them but not all89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -

 

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -

yes but I just cannot stand that books and can't imagne why it's so popular92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -

Yes!Yes!Yes!94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -

Yes!Yes!Yes!97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -

Yes!Yes!Yes!98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -

Yes!99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -

Yes!100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo –

[Nicole M]

Why so many books by Hardy... I have read them & they are so depressing.:confused: Tess is enough... Jude was awful & Castorbridge broke my heart.

 

 

Funny you should mention Hardy. I was thinking about asking about him today on the boards here. I am listening to Alan Rickman read The Return of the Native. (ITA with a friend that said, that man could read the phone book and keep me enthralled!) I loved Casterbridge, which I also listened to, but couldn't get through when I tried to read the print version. Tess broke my heart; I think I was too young, 22 or something, when I read it. But it got me to wondering. There are so many "great" authors, so many "great" books that I just did.not.like. Hardy's prose is amazing. I "like" him more now that I'm older, though never "liked" him when I was still a snob about reading only with my eyes and not my ears, and I love hearing him, (though I will never re-read or listen to Tess).

 

I wondered if anyone else ever wondered why? Why do we have to read all these classics if it's just like taking caster oil, for our health, but not really something we love? Or does love of classics come with maturity? Or what?

[melissel]

I wondered if anyone else ever wondered why? Why do we have to read all these classics if it's just like taking caster oil, for our health, but not really something we love? Or does love of classics come with maturity? Or what?

 

I wonder about this all the time. I have a very hard time with most classics. Often, I cannot engage with them. Do I force myself to read them anyway? Does it get easier with time? I've read classic books that I've loved, but most, I just can't get into. It's my secret shame as a member of this board :blushing: I keep trying though!

[KrissiK]

I've read 27 on that list. Some of the ones I haven't read I know I need to read, some of them I have no desire to read, and a few - I may have read another book from the same author. I know I am not very well read, but I'm working on it.