Books to read…

image_pdfimage_print

Stole this one from Tanja’s site. It looked like fun.

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, estimates that the
average adult has read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
How about you?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (multiple versions)
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 (Partially)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16The 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 (Not Yet)
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 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
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 Marte
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 Nighttime – 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
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’sWeb – 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

I counted 41 read from this list. Some of them I had to read for High School or College,
and can not remember them. Others on the list I’ve looked at but
could not get through the first chapter. Some I haven’t even heard
of. The list is lacking Science Fiction, not even Jules Verne or
Isaac Asimov. I feel both authors have better books than the Dune
Series by Herbert

7 thoughts on “Books to read…”

  1. You got a high score too John. Seems like most bloggers are avid readers too. Just like you, I have read some books in high school, and some sound familiar, but I cannot remember them clearly.
    Now I mostly read detective books, I love the ones that are set in England and Scotland, they give me so much peace and comfort.

    We have to get together in a coffee shop one day and just talk. I think we have a lot to talk about together.

    Tanja

  2. St Louis is about half way… I’m more of a Science Fiction and Fantasy reader. I will also read a good mystery or two. Some Astronomy books. I do know most of those books (about 70-80) and I don’t see myself reading any others off the list. I may some day read “The Hitchhikers Guide”. I really liked the radio program they did on that.

    I may have to put up a list of my 100 favorite books.

  3. I couldn’t think of a list of 100 fav books. I read so many that I really liked, but I’m sure I forgot half of them again.

    So St. Louis, is that an invitation? 🙂

  4. Tanja, I guess, sort of? (How’s that for wishy-washy?) Actually according to map quest, Oklahoma City is more in the middle.

    I’m not planning any trips west soon. All my trips will be to Florida to see my kids (Daughter, her Husband and the grandkids). I’m not even sure when I can make that trip. It will be my youngest’s senior year of High School. Can we say College Trips!!!

    So much to do, so little time and money…

  5. Ah John, and it’s scary too right? 🙂 But you know what, I’m probably one of the most relaxed easy going people around. Makes me kind of boring too I guess.
    I got a wedding to attend of one of the widows in October in Ohio. If I find a chance to really go, then maybe you can be my arm candy?

    Tanja
    (ps so how many people are reading my attempts to flirt? how much am I embarrassing myself now?)

  6. Tanja, I don’t know about scary. 🙂 Just different. While I’ve been told change is good, in fact I tell that to people all the time, I’m one of those people who doesn’t like change. I like patterns too well.

    If you need “arm candy” in October and it isn’t too far from home, I would be willing. I like to stay in my comfort zones too.

    And to your ps, if the stats are correct I get 20-30 different visitors a day. I’m not sure if it doesn’t count me more than once a day if I close my internet connection, and get back on. Of course, all my friends and family see my blogs.

  7. Tanja –
    I just noticed an increase in the number of people reading from the Netherlands, something to do with you perhaps?

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *