The Book List - ganked from a few people.

[reynardo]

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Mind you, this list is significantly different to their top 100 list (there's non-fiction in there, the original list didn't include any Shakespeare, etc), but then...

1.) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2.) Italicize those you intend to read.
3.) Underline those you LOVE.
4.) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read.


01. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
02. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
03. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
04. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
05. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
06. The Bible
07. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
08. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
09. 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 HOLD ON A SECOND! You can't have this at 14 and Hamlet at 98!!!
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
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 (Preferred "The Loved One")
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 Worst 50c I ever spent at an Op shop
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
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 I really ought to consider my father-in-law's status with regards to Pi.
* 52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (But I've read "Golden Gate" and loved it)
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. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
* 67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (After having to do "Tess" for the HSC, I claim immunity against any more 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 (Read most of her children's ones, and prefer "A Little Princess" and "The Lost Prince". Also, most versions these days are abridged. I've read the full version of this.)
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (Considering I was born on Bloomsday, I should one day ....)
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 Partway through
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 WHICH ONES???
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad Uni read - I don't remember much.
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks Ahhh - I've been wondering where to start with his...
94. Watership Down - Richard Adam
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


Of course, what the difference between the survey and my friends' list is, is that we're not average. I have too many geeks and nerds and bookworms and bibliophiles in my list. It's the Celine Dion effect all over again.¹

What I'd love to see in the comments is one (one only per person) book/series that you think should have been on here. And I'll start with what was the oddest book they gave me in High School - "The Collector" by John Fowles.

1. The Celine Dion Effect is as follows: Most of my friends can't stand her music. But for some reason it sells in the millions and she is incredibly popular. So I must therefore conclude that the musical interests of a large majority of my friends does not accurately reflect that of the general population. That goes triply for science, politics and computer knowledge. And this is something I must always keep in mind when planning a business proposition, writing a book or just talking with people.

Comments

[alienor77310.livejournal.com]

There are a few SciFi books I'd like to add in there. Let's say "Stand on Zanzibar", by John Brunner.

[starduchess.livejournal.com]

I'm with alienor -- add The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov.

Personally I don't think Charles Dickens is all that great. In fact, I think I would asterisk all of his books.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a specific collection of stories -- it seems fair to list it among "books one has read" (in a way that listing the complete Shakespeare doesn't).

[droxy.livejournal.com]

I wont hit that many on the list. I did this awhile back. I think it was a different list of 100

the quick and dirty of it is this-many we had to read in public school as an assignment. If you took away the assignment aspect the list gets smaller.

4,5,7,21, 29,40,41,58, 87, (some of 89,) 99

[carolinelamb.livejournal.com]

Roger Zelasny's For A Breath I Tarry, is actually a short story (or a "novelette" as Wikipedia says) but it's one of my favourite Sci Fi tales.

What you call Celine Dion Effect, I call H.C.Strache Effect :(

No one I know likes him, yet his party has almost 25% of the votes :(

[sly-girl.livejournal.com]

Every now and again this "The average adult will have read only 6 of these" thing comes up. It's not a claim that has ever been made by the compilers of The Big Read. In fact, it's not a claim that appears to have been made by anyone other than meme makers.

[dreamy-dragon73.livejournal.com]

I notice that there isn't a single German author included. I think Goethe's Faust should be on there or a book by Thomas Mann.

[red-day-dawning.livejournal.com]

Six? I've read most of them. Haven't read The Secret garden, though. Or Swallows and Amazons.

[kurlgyre25.livejournal.com]

The have Anne of Green Gables, but not the whole series. I loved all 8 books of that series.

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Total agreement!

[jesusandrew.livejournal.com]

I'm not up for the lengthy html tag-fest these things involve at the moment, but some comments on the list:

09. I liked the first one, but found the sequels suffered from diminising returns and sometimes subverted their own mission with poorly constructed arguments. I really loved the Sally Lockhart books though! (Haven't seen the BBC adaptations yet.)

13. Haven't read this in years, but I liked it at the time. Curious why you dislike it so much?

23. Loved the 1985 miniseries, missed the more recent one, never got around to the book.

26. Absolutely agree on "The Loved One"! I was disappointed by Brideshead, possibly because I loved the miniseries with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews and the book couldn't give me the same experience.

28. Studying "Of Mice and Men" at high school was enough to ensure I'd never read any Steinbeck again.

29/40. Including sequels, the books which I most reread as a child (probably excluding Doctor Who, Asterix and Tintin books).

42. Read enough about it to know I'd absolutely hate it. Shame, because it brought a bad name to architectural conspiracy thrillers, which are right up my alley if done well (i.e. with writing talent and accurate research - honestly, if you're going to rip off Baigent & Leigh, at least get the details right, especially if the details relate to the real world...)

45. Interested in this due to spooky TV adaptation.

52. Again, curious as to why you hate it. I read the first 3 Dune books when I was 12 - haven't read them since but enjoyed them at the time.

53. Keep forgetting to track this down...

56. Worth a look, we own it.

59. Several people have independently and randomly told me I should read this book over the years, but each time I consider getting it I end up shying away. Not sure why.

62. Must read more Nabokov (partly because I love that he would effortlessly make trilingual puns).

66. Definitely worth a read if you're interested in the beats. If not, probably best avoided.

67. The 1996 movie is supposed to be good.

75. Made the mistake of starting with "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and getting bored. Intend to try this and Finnegan's Wake one day.

89. Refers to a specific collection of short stories (the first collection published).

93. Very good (and his first novel). In case you're not aware, anything credited to Iain M. Banks is science fiction (shamefully I've read none of this), anything credited to Iain Banks is mainstream (relatively speaking).

99. Great of course, although as a child I preferred the sequel. Sad to realise how long it's been since I read any Dahl.

After all that, it now seems like too much of an effort to count how many I read or to think of another book - maybe tomorrow when I'm not falling asleep.