If I ever go on the “Hoarders” show, it will be for having too many books. Not that I think that that is even possible…. Heh, I might need help sooner than I think! > o <
My mother says that the one thing she taught me to do well is read, and while she taught me how to do far more than just one thing well, I must agree that reading is probably top of the list.
Apparently the BBC says that most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books on the list below. That is surprising to me, an avid reader and lover of print, but then again, the world would be so boring if we all liked the same things.
I love sitting down with a good book and a cup of tea, but I often read my old favourites over and over again, so I am not in a hurry to get through this list. And, to be perfectly honest, there are probably quite a few books that I would not want to read anyway. So if I do read most of the list, I think I will be doing fairly well! Anyway, shall we see how many I have gotten through?
~ BBC’s Top 100 Reads ~
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x {Love it – I will read this one over and over again, and never get tired of it.}
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x {A good book series once you get past all the walking. Seriously there is too much walking!}
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x {*shudders* Creepy. Sorry, but I don't like the Bronte sisters at all.}
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x {Started it - wanted to finish, but it wasn't my book and I couldn't borrow it. *Edit – I did end up finishing it; I had just forgotten. It's a powerful read. Not something I'd read over and over again, but still good. }
6. The Bible x {I think it goes without saying that this one's my favourite... }
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x (Stupid. And creepy.)
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x {Love this book ~ I've read all four in the Little Women series, they are so much fun! But the last one "Jo's Boys" is really sad.. *sniff* }
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thoms Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare x {Not quite - do Terry Prachett's versions count? I do love The Tempest however, I find it hilarious, The Merchant of Venice and a Midsummer Night's Dream.}
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x {This book was so funny and I found it really easy to read after the slog of LoTR times 3!}
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 x {I have started this, but my copy that I found is missing a whole bunch of pages that I did not notice, so I have stopped. I need a complete story!}
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x {Yes, and unsurprisingly the book is better than the movie too.}
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x {Anyone out there that has not read this one?}
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x {I adore Ratty and Mole and Badger. Toad was always a silly fool to me - even when I was quite little!}
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x {Sad, sad, sad.}
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x {Another series I keep coming back to and loving everytime.}
34. Emma - Jane Austen x
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen x {I've read all of Jane Austen's stuff. She's just so brilliant!}
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x {Such a happy sad ending, I really love this one. Both the movie and the book.}
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x {Winne-the-Pooh - yay!}
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell x {I personally thought this book was silly, although I did see the point he was making}
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 x {I have read them all ~ they are so timeless and so good; I love Anne spelt with an 'e'!}
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 x
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 Tart
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x {This is such an awesome, truly EPIC novel!}
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x {One and Two.}
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville x
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x
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 {I saw the movie and I really do not want to read this book.}
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
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 x {One of my childhood favourites}
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton x {Ooooo - I loved Enid Blyton as a kid!}
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry x
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams x {The best book with animals I can think of ~ beautifully written with such a captivating story.}
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x {One and two!}
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo {I want to read this very badly...}
~* ♥ * ~
So I have managed to read 35 books off the list and there a quite a few more I am interested in going through; so I should be busy with that and all the other books I am always adopting!
Oh, and do share how many you have read! I would love to know the count, and which ones are your favourites. ^ w ^
xox,
bonita
I hope that you don't mind, but I reposted the list on my own blog and commented on the books that I have read. ^^" I have read 26, I believe, of the books on the list. Les Miserables is an incredible read, as is Catch-22 and many others. Thank you for sharing this, I very much enjoyed reading your comments-I'm tickled by your hatred of the Bronte sisters-and commenting on my own. Take care! (P.S. I would LOVE to have a library like the one in Beauty and the Beast as well! :) That is my favorite Disney movie.)
ReplyDeleteI got to 48 and I was so hoping for 50! Ah well, it will be easy enough to read at least two more - I actually have a copy of Bleak House just hanging around, waiting for me to delve into it.
ReplyDeleteReading is a fantastic way to spend your time. :)
Wow, you're doing really well Katie! Maybe I should pick up my game a
ReplyDeletebit... The problem is I have too many good books to read!! > o < Not
that that is really a problem. ; D
Of course I don't mind. > u < I only got the list off somewhere on the
ReplyDeleteinternet/an email {I cannot remember} so it's free for anyone to repost. :
D I will have to check out what your thoughts are on in the different
books.
I think I need to do a post about this list as I love it. I can't believe you don't like the Bronte Sisters, they are my favourite authors. I have read every book they've written. Mind you, this probably stems from studying Jane Eyre for A Level English Literature when it was best to love it rather than loathe it given the amount of times I had to read it. That said Jane Eyre isn't my favourite. I love Wuthering Heights but I can imagine it's not everyone's cup of tea.
ReplyDeleteI also quite like the walking in Lord of the Rings - tee hee.
Great post - thanks x
I completely get that a lot of people adore the Bronte sisters ~ I know that
ReplyDeletetheir books are up there with Jane Austin and Charles Dickens, etc. I was a
bit hesitant saying that I don't like them; but honestly, I don't! It's
good that you do though Lottie, because I imagine reading a book you don't
like over and over again for school would be not nice at all... : )
LoTR ~ I must admit I didn't notice the walking so much the second time I
read the series. Perhaps I was skimming it out of self-defense??! ; P
Ah, another book worm! yes, my dream home also features towering shelves of books. Mind you, I'm very lucky to have grown up in a house crammed with books and I'm delighted to see how many of the ones on this great list are either ones that I've read or are on my 'to read' list.
ReplyDeleteMmm, that's what I enjoyed as well ~ books are every where in my parent's
ReplyDeletehouse! I still have quite a few 'to reads' on this list also, I cannot
wait to get stuck into them. : )