BBC Book List

Tuesday, November 30, 2010


So I've been seeing this list everywhere, like at Wicked Wonderful Words and Chasing Bawa and I love lists, so I couldn't resist.

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How incredibly depressing is that?

Put an 'x' after those you have read. Unless I counted wrong, I've read 71.75 (I'm counting the 3/4 of Shakespeare's complete works that I've read).
 

*UPDATED 1/5/16
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen [X]
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien [X]
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte [X]
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling [X]
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee [X]
6 The Bible [X]
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte [X]
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell [X]
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman [X]
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens [X]
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott [X]
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy [
X]
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller [X]
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare [about 3/4]
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier [X]
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien [X]
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk [
X]
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger [X]
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger [X]
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot [
X]
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell [X]
22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald [X]
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens [
X]
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [X]
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams [X]
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [X]
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky [X]
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [X]
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll [X]
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame [X]
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy [X]
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens [
X]
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis [X]
34 Emma-Jane Austen [X]
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen [X]
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis [X]
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini [X]
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres [
X]
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden [X]
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne [X]
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell [X]
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown [X]
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez [
X]
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving [X]
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins [X]
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery [X]
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy [ ]
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood [X]
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding [X]
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan [X]
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel [X]
52 Dune - Frank Herbert [ ]
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons [
X]
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen [X]
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth [ ]
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos RuIz Zafon [X]
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens [X]
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley [X]
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon [X]
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez [ ]
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck [X]
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov [X]
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt [
X]
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold [X]
65 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas [
X]
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac [X]
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy [
X]
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding [X]
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie [ ]
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville [
X]
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens [X]
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker [X]
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnet [X]
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson [X]
75 Ulysses - James Joyce [ ]
76 The Inferno – Dante [X]
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome [
X]
78 Germinal - Emile Zola []
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray [
X]
80 Possession - AS Byat [X]
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens [X]
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell [
X]
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker [X]
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro [X]
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert [X]
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry [ ]
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White [X]
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom [X]
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [X]
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton [ ]
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad [X]
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery [X]
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks [ ]
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams [X]
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole [X]
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute [ ]
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas [
X]
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare [X]
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl [X]
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo [X]


Photo by moi.

11 comments:

Falaise said...

Only made it to 43, although I expect that to rise soon!

It's a bit of a peculiar list if it is designed to show if you are "well read". Dan Brown? Mitch Albom? Enid Blyton? Really?

Also, what's the point of including Hamlet as a separate entry from the Complete Works of Shakespeare?

Kristi said...

That is really sad if most people have really only read six. I think I've read about a third of the books, but most that I haven't read are on my TBR list. I'm impressed that you've read so many!

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

Ha, I know, Mitch Albom! And they have the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe listed separately. Also, if you're only going to pick 100 books, why have 2 or 3 from the same author?

I do think there are some great books on there though and I've added some to my TBR list.

Teacher/Learner said...

Wow, that's impressive! I've only read 18 in full but I'm looking foward to tackling more in 2011. It's my first New Year's resolution ever :D

Jenners said...

I think I've read 42 ... your 71 is very very impressive. It is an odd list though! Some of the ones (Bridget Jones Diary) surprised me. I hope to knock off a few more in 2011.

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

It really is an odd collection of books. I will be trying to read a few more of them next year too.

Unknown said...

Goodness! I really need to read to even catch up with you! WOW, impressive!

TexasRed said...

You're definitely ahead of me. I'm over half-way, though: TexasRed Books

Yvonne said...

Love the list of books presented. I haven't read all of them but definately a lot more than the average 6. Thanks for the list!

Hannah said...

I love Ransome's Swallows and Amazons. Take it on your next vacation and read it with an adventurous young person you love!

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

LifetimeReader - I've never heard of that one (outside of this list), but now I've added it to my PBS wishlist. Thanks for the recommendation!