My cousin sent me a list, via Facebook, of 100 books everyone should read. I don't know who makes up these lists, but according to the person who did, only about six books on this list are usually read by the average person. I'm supposed to star the books I've read. My total is 38, and I thank my cousin for giving me a new must-read list! Let me know how many you've read?
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 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 BernieresX
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 MarquezX
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 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
Those without stars? On my Christmas wish list. For next year. Well, except for Dickens. Don't go giving me grief - he depresses me and I can't tolerate a depressing book. Oh, and Confederacy of Dunces. I actually started reading that in high school and hated it. No desire to go there again, unless you all overrule me.
Until I write again ...
Flea
17 comments:
I've read 12 of them. For some reason, the classics don't always resonate with me. I didn't really care for Dickens either. I liked Horatio Alger much better! But he was mocked as writing crapola!
I've only read 10 of them.
I like this list. I think I am going to steal it for a blog myself. There are some books on that list that I just have no desire to read and some I have read and now wish I hadn't wasted my time on!
Just saw the comment on Confederacy of Dunces. I agree with you - I started reading it and just COULD NOT get through it! I don't have any clue why people would think it was a good book.
What, nothing by WEB Griffin or Clive Cussler? How can books that bring such joy not be on a list. I read the "Brothers Karamotzovf" and "War and Peace" and I swear I'll never read another Russian novel. I have trouble keeping my mind in a good book. By their rules, I could have been Glenovitch(Son of Glen), Dennis, Colonel or Denny in any order throughout a story. Stupid but that's why I don't read science fiction. MUD
I am 38 too! And you must read Confederacy of Dunces. I read it three times, and may again. I love it!
I own a lot of these! I lost count on how many I've read... Booper is being a pain and won't let me concentrate!
My total is 39. It would have been 40, but I just couldn't get past the opening passage of Lolita and the premise of the book.
I'm wondering if some of mine should have expiration dates, actually. I read a bunch back in high school to prepare for the AP Literature test. In many cases I remember the titles but I remember little else.
I think I'm at 35 - but I still (having seen this before) cannot understand the inclusion of The Time-Travelers Wife. HORRIBLE book & NOT destined to be a classic. How can it be on the same list as Austen and the Brontes???
My son will be pleased that Willie Wonka made it on the list!
Love your snowy blog...(it's doing it here right now!).
HUGS!
I know I have read at least 35, maybe more. Many sound familiar, but I don't think I finished them if I started them. Many of them are from my English classes starting as far back as 8th grade so my recollection is a little fuzzy.
WoW! I've read 43 of the books. Who knew? I've always been an insatiable reader... especially for the classics. I literally had to force myself through James Makepeace Thackery's "Vanity Fair", as it was an extremely difficult period piece to read, full of varying views on one's level of position in one's class. It was tedious and took me months to finish. But then, I loved the Jane Austens, which were quite readable.
Thanks for sharing this! It makes me feel ever so much better for having a blog with grade school reading level like I do, LOL! Must be cause I cain't wriite.... If I'm so stoopid, how could I read all those books? Oh, that's right! It was the Frontal Lobotomy.
;-)
Would it count to read selections from one on the list? For example, a lot of Shakespeare aficionados have read a lot of his work, but not all.
I've read a lot of them but I didn't count; I disagree with the list on some that they think are so great. Phooey. there are others that should be here too but like you said, who makes these?
I seriously need to get crackalackin. I have read....um....err...uhhh...(whishpers)6.
I think some of the books on this list should be deleted (Condederacy of Dunces, Time Traveler's Wife, etc.) but I have read 44. It would have been a few more if I could have struggled through a couple more (Confederacy of Dunces for one). Do I get extra credit for reading the Three Muskateers in French too?
Looks like I have some reading to do. Can you believe that I've never read Pride & Prejudice? I bought it though, and am waiting to finish the book I"m currently on to start it.
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