The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?
1) Look at the list and color those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Remark on the books you LOVE.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen After starting this one a million times I finally got through it and I like her writing but her stories have always been predictable and hard to get caught up in, for me.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling I am not sure why these are on the list...I like them but top 100, what?
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee LOVE IT!
6 The Bible. LOVE IT...except for the begats but I read those too
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell read this one lots of times...a favorite
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Started it and never finished...not a Dickens fan
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott Can you be a girl and not read Little Women. As a kid I remember wanting a super nice copy and it was $50 and I thought that was so much money that I wouldn't be able to afford it until I was retired so I would just pick it up and covet every time I went to the bookstore.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller started this one many times. It is my brother Jeff's favorite but I can never get into it?
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare-No, but I have read LOTS of them
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier this is another one I read often...I LOVE it and the movie is okay too if you are not a reader.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger Of course, and I love it.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger I keep trying to borrow this from the library but it is ALWAYS checked out.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot .
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald Another one of my brother Jeff's favorites and I like it but not LOVE
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 I have tried this one lots too but I always put it down at some point.
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck I am re-reading this one right now...you know I love Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll Yes, and it is so NOT a kids book. I feel like it took me inside the mind of a crazy person.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy I love this one. One of the best opening lines in any book.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis A few times and I am sure I will read it a few more
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Yep, but didn't we already say that?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini I just read that one a couple weeks ago. I liked it because it took me into a world so much different from the one I know and made me very grateful for where I live. The story was predictable to me but I still really liked it.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden I LOVE it. I've read it 3-4 times.
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne Of course...I love all things Winnie the Pooh, oh except for cheesy lame baby clothes.
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell LOVE it, but 1984 is better
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown I love this one too but steer clear of the movie. Super clever and interesting but again, Angels and Demons is better
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 I read this as a kid and I liked it but I am going to re-read it with Alyssa soon
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 More LOVE!
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Well written, but wow, it is disturbing...another one in that category is In Cold Blood...so disturbing but so well done.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold Okay, speaking of disturbing...I read the first chapter of this and felt physically ill. I have never picked it up again and I will never forget that horrific first chapter. I hear it is awesome but I can't go near it.
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 Good book, but I saw the musical in London and it was too lame for me.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce Someday.
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 The one Dickens book I finished, but still NO love from me
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker Another good one
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 I didn't read this until college in a Children's Lit class and I don't know how I missed it during childhood...SO GOOD!
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom I tried to borrow that one at the library too and it is checked out but I did read For One More Day and I think I am a Mitch Albom fan now.
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 Love it, the musical and the book...and I am wondering why Hunchback of Notre Dame is not on this list??? That one is maybe even better than Les Mis
I have seen this on a few blogs that I read so I thought I would see how well read I am? I did better than the average of 6 (34, and I think I should get partial credit for reading almost all of Shakespeare's works) but I am not even half way to the 100 mark. I would like to see a list of the top 100 books ever written, not just the top 100 that have been printed because Harry Potter? Seriously? How do you get any points from The National Endowment for the Arts for that? I know, I am a book snob.
Second Week of School
3 years ago
15 comments:
This is awesome...I have been looking for a good book reference. Maybe I will just start checking them off of this list.
P.S. My comment code is haltents...ha ha!
Harry Potter because that series was like a revival in reading for the younger generation! I can't believe you don't like Harry!
'Cause Harry Potter's freakin' awesome!" I say in my can't believe anyone doesn't love them voice... ha. I did this on my blog now too. It was fun. I thought I read more of them than I had but I beat Doug anyway (he has only read 3 or 4!) but you beat me.
Hi Julie,
I've read 18 of those, but I think that's a lousy list.
Dad
What??? No Twilight on there:) Well I love about half of Jane Austen books. I have the whole collection in one big book my mom gave me 10 years or so ago. I love Persuasion. I did my Junior Thesis on it and I got an "A". Needless to say that was high school. But I actually have never gotten through reading Pride and Prejudice. Oh yeah and when do you people find time to read all your books? You and Jenny Green are BIG readers. But I will say your list is sophisticated though missing a few of the classics that I don't even have any interest in reading!
Okay I have made the blogging world angry again by not showing Harry Potter enough love. I am not changing my mind about Twilight (still yuck) but I like Harry Potter. I have read them all and I will probably read them again someday but they are not classics.
Sarah, I like that they got kids reading again. That is one of Twilights redeeming qualities too...let's just get kids away from video games and into books.
And Melanie, unfortunately I can't read as much as I'd like to. I read most of those before I had kids. But now that I don't work at home anymore and all 3 kids sleep through the night I can read again...yay!!! My kids are in bed for 11 hours and I only sleep for 6 so that gives me 5 hours of sweet, quiet time to read, clean or go to blogland. Oh yeah, and exercise...how is it that I never seem to find time for that one?
I'm impressed with how much you've read, but I think I agree with your Dad that I don't love the list. Anyway, I'm totally on your side about Harry Potter, even though I liked them, too. But I'm kind of a "wannabe" reader--I used to do a lot more, oh, well!
It was fun to see what you have read and what you like. You do have sophisticated taste but reading your comments makes me want to give some of them a second chance (such as John Steinbeck).
And, I am not a big Harry Potter fan. I just never got hooked. I read the first two and just got bored but maybe someday I will give that another go too.
My count is 21, so I fell short a little to your count. I WILL hit the 100 mark someday. Whenever I have a really good book, I make time to read...usually that demands giving up the tube though.
Wait, I have 22! I didn't see the Time Traveller's Wife. That is such a good book, you have to read it!
I plan on working on that list when I am in a more permanent place. Right now I am not. I am on the 4th book of the Twiglight series. and am now just liking it, unlike Harry which I loved right away. I want to read the classics though.
Katelin told me about this list and I had to check it out. I agree with your pops that it's a crappy list. Also, I agree with you re: Harry Potter. Those books deserve some credit for something (I'm not sure what), but they are NOT literature. Being happy about them just because they got kids to read is like being happy about McDonalds because "at least it gets kids to eat."
There are some better book lists at the link below. There is one put out by the publishers, one by the readers, and also a list of the top 100 nonfiction books ever.
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
Jared
My dad, Katelin and Jared are all book snobs like me. HA,HA!
Read 28 of them. But I agree with your dad - not sure who came up with the list. Some are right on target and others are just there because they are suppose to be, not that they are really good. Hope they are not in the order to be read because Les Mis should be in the top three. I recommend that as your next read.
Tony & I have talked about going to the Atlantic Provinces (Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, etc) for several years. I even sent for a bunch of information from there a few years ago. So instead of reading Anne of Green Gables to Alyssa, let's plan a trip there in a few years so we can all see the real place!
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