Wednesday, March 4, 2009

How many have you read??

A few weeks ago, one of the radio stations here was talking about the BBC's top 100 list of books to read. I thought it was interesting. The "BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here". I've only read 8 but I'm sure many of you have read a lot more. I tried not to count the movies-although I wanted to.

My favorites were:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Kite Runner
Count of Monte Cristo

I used to belong to a book club in Mesa and really loved it but since then my leisurely reading has really taken a dive. This list motivates me to be a better reader. Sooo how many have you read? What are your favorites? and what other books have you enjoyed??


Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I've seen the 6 hr movie, does that count?)
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
(seen movie)
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
(seen movie)
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion - Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (seen movie)
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (seen 6hr movie)
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
(seen movie)
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web - EB White (seen movie)
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
(seen movie)
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (seen movie)
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (seen play)

5 comments:

sherry said...

43. Did you love the 6 hour BBC version of Pride and Prejudice? If you did, then you could easily read it. And all of the Jane Austen books are fun easy reads for that matter. Many of these books I have read online. When I have a baby, I read books online while I nurse. The classics are almost all online. That is how I read Les Miserables (totally different from the play. I love them both for different reasons) All Jane Austen books. O.K, more than once. Dracula. Wuthering Heights. I am sure I am missing some. Some of them I have read while on bedrest with my babies. That includes the first 3 or four Harry Potter Books (can't remember how many were out at the time) when I was on bedrest with Mitchell. With Kindyl, the Gone with the Wind Series. (Se was THIS CLOSE to being named Scarlett;)And Jane Eyre. (One of my all time favroites) Basically, without kids, I may not have taken the time to read all of them. Oops, sorry for the novel. But I couldn't sit out on this one. Reading is a passion of mine. I may have to make it a blog post.

Unknown said...

I'm totally motivated to read that whole list before I die... well maybe not ALL of them, but that is a great list.

I counted 17 I remember reading, though I don't remember them all very well. Probably should re-read them. And 4 of them I think I started but never finished.

But some of my favs on the list included: Catcher in the Rye, Little Prince, LotR & Hobbit, Les Miz, and DiVinci Code. I'm also particularly proud that I've read the entire Bible. Leviticus was pretty tough! :)

Good post jeanna.

Leslie said...

I loved this post. It inspires intellect. Not that I have a lot, but it's inspiring. I hope you don't mind, but I copied it and put it on my blog, too. I loved it!

Scott said...

Oooh... This is cool. I am going to steal it. Finally, a list posting I can use. Thanks for posting this.

Aaron said...

Great post Jenna! I've had this post in my email "to do" box for so long, I decided to finally GET WITH IT today. I've read 14 and have marked 6 to read in 2009.