Well, everybody else is doing it...

[lirazel]

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read six and force books upon them.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (well, I'm in the middle of it now, but I'm enjoying it)
4. Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6.  The Bible  (well, okay, so I'm not totally thrilled by Leviticus and such, but the general idea I love)
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  (not complete, no, but a whole stinking bunch of it.  except not stinking.  You know what I mean)
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  (well, actually I more just loved Fitzgerald's prose and not necessarily the story itself)
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  (read to me, as a child.  Still counts)
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 - C.S. 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  (I still can't believe I wasted my time on it)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins  (a very underrated book)
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  (you people have no idea how obsessed with Dune I was at 14.  None)
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  (but I have seen the episode of Wishbone, which totally should count!)
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 (I really enjoy Bryson, but I haven't read this one)
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  (I adore this book even though I hate everyone in it)
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  (well, I've read a whole bunch of Sherlock Holmes stories, even if I haven't read this particular collection all the way through)
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery  (there's nothing about this book that isn't beautiful)
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  (no one has read this, but you should read it, read it, read it!)
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

45/100.  Huh.  I have no idea what that says about me, really.  Especially in light of this list.  There are some really bizarre repeats in there (like listing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as separate from the Chronicles of Narnia, both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings,  and Hamlet as separate from Shakespeare's complete works).  Not to mention the fact that people like Steinbeck get two entries (I can totally understand both War and Peace and Anna Karenina being listed) and Faulkner, among others, is not on there at all (*is very offended by the absence of favorite author*).

Oh, well, these lists are always arbitrary and perplexing.

Although I personally think that I should get +1000 points for having read The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman in its entirety.

Comments

[granola-bean.livejournal.com]

I am very impressed. Especially for Tristram Shady, which is on my book list for next semester, so I know how long it is.
Also, A Prayer for Owen Meaney should be on your intended books to read list because I have to say it is fabulous. One of my top five favorite books of all time.

[sowell.livejournal.com]

I totally concur about Owen Meaney. LOVE.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'll have to check it out!

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Tristram Shandy is quite the adventure. We had a teacher who I swear thinks exactly the way the book works, so it was awesome reading it with him. Once you get into its flow, the humor is hilarious. I'm sure you'll have fun with it, even if it is ridiculously long.

I haven't ever heard of that book, but I will totally be adding it to my list now. Thanks!

[sowell.livejournal.com]

There are so many great books not on this list.

Althouth this list also reminded me how many of these I need to read. Since I left college I've slacked on real literature, hardcore.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

So true.

I'm sure I'll do the same thing once I graduate, with the exception of some writers I've fallen madly in love with during classes. But yeah, there are many great works that I know I would never have read if I wasn't required to read them. They're always just floating out there, and you know you should read them, but it's easier to get distracted by the more accessible works...or the prettier covers.

[serendipily.livejournal.com]

You have thoroughly impressed me. So the ones left alone ... are they the ones never read ... or the ones that are read but have no acknowledgement to them? O.o

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Haha! Glad to impress you!

The ones left alone are the ones I haven't read that I don't have plans to read, actually.

[serendipily.livejournal.com]

*gasps* You don't plan to read "The Catcher in the Rye" or Bleak Houses" or "Of Mice and Men"?!!!!!

*drops dead*

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I know, I now it's shocking. I actually might read Bleak House--I want to read a Dickens that I actually like, and I've heard that one is really good.

But I've never had much interest in Of Mice and Men, and from what I understand about Catcher in the Rye, it perpetrates one of my least favorite literary offenses--presenting artists or writers as "different" and superior to other people--like you can completely excuse any of their vices simply because they are artists. I really, really hate that, and I've been told that's one of the conceits of the story. *shrugs* Besides, there are so many, many books I'm so excited about reading, I don't really care to add ones I'm indifferent to to my list.

But you can be ashamed of me if you want.

[serendipily.livejournal.com]

*turns*

You are shuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuned!

I am a very prominet person and do not enjooy peopple whose opinons differe from mine. I can tolerate it like two seconds but then it gets buggy like.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

*weeps to have disappointed you*

[moonlightrick.livejournal.com]

I suspect the repeats are to allow for people who have read the most popular book in a series (eg. most read TLTW&TW not all of Narnia; and many are forced through a Shakespeare play for a class, whereas the complete works is says something more). There are some interesting absences, though, true enough. Personally, I rather wtf'ed at no One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but then these are just the top 100, and they're clearly trying to cover a few different stops--including children's books, classics, newer ones, and such.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I am crazy in love with your icon.

Yeah, you're probably right. These lists just always strike me as totally bizarre--with the millions of books in the world, all so different, it strikes me as presumptuous to make such lists. But maybe that's just me.

[moonlightrick.livejournal.com]

Hee, thanks! wicked_visions made it; I'm not sure if they made all of the sytherclaw icons floating around, or if it's a general fad, but I love them *g*

Well, exactly. There are far too many books, tastes, times, styles, genres, and on forever, to ever even create a full list, let alone with a limit of 100.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Of course. If you're going to make a book list, make it of your individual favorites or in a specific genre or something.

And that icon is hilarious, too. I can soooo identify with that!

[moonlightrick.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who <333. More than occasionally funnier than any sitcom *g*

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

So looking forward to it. I'm over halfway done with BSG, so DW is not far away for me!

And I don't really watch sitcoms--not my thing, unless it's That 70s Show or Designing Women, both of which, I can, for some reason, watch any time for any length of time. So all my humor comes from ostensible dramas--mostly of the Whedon variety. I can't tell you how often I quote them in real life. It's kind of sad.

[moonlightrick.livejournal.com]

I'm not much of a sitcom person, myself; The Office, one of my other favourite shows, is the rare exception. Whedon's "dramas" are way funnier than they should be, though, which is just one of the reasons why we all love him so :D