The Book Meme

[jeriendhal]

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
5) My additional entry, Asterix those you own
6) jeriendhal's addition: strikethrough books you tried to read and gave up on/threw against the wall.

However the 100 books listed are not the ones published by the BBC here So I thought I'd use the original.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams *
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling *
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne *
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell *
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis *
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling *
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling *
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling *
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien *
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert *
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery *
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King *
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel (this one gets a bold and a strikethough because I finished the damned thing but I didn't particularly enjoy it)
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Comments

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

You know, until The Golden Compass movie came out, I had never even heard of this series? As a voracious reader (with a wife who works in a frigging library) I thought that was rather odd.

[lennan.livejournal.com]

I'm just curious, what didn't you like about His Dark Materials? (I'm also curious about Watership Down, but the Pullman books are so polarising I just can't resist). It always seems like people either like it or hate, although I've seen some people who likes aspects of it, but really disapproved of it.

I've read quite a lot of the books on this list, but it's a pretty motley crew of books, I'm surprised at the diversity...although, as much as I like War and Peace, you've got to be pretty masochistic to try and finish it. Does reading Guards! Guards! in graphic novel format count as reading the book? XD

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I tried reading The Golden Compass but I think I got put off by the lack of any character I could really sympathize with (whatshername the protagonist completely failed to make an impression on me) and the pretty obvious axe Pullman had to grind against organized religion.

[lennan.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I see. Actually I was pretty refreshed by Lyra since she was really a "real" kid to me. I think the time that I first read it I was pretty jaded by the standard child hero affairs and the "oh-how-wonderful-and-pure-children-are" cliche that has been running around in fantasy...but yeah the Pullman axe. I kind of wished he would be fairer about the representation of organised religion, but then I also realise that it wouldn't have driven the point home as effectively.

I'm sort of torn by it, too, because I really don't mind those sorts of things on either side of the religion "debate"...although That Hideous Strength really tried my patience on the Lewis ax to grind against the scientists and atheists. The same sort of thing sort of happened in the last book of His Dark Materials, which just ended up being more preachy than anything. But it's hard for me to judge since I'm inclined to agree with some of the points (organised anything makes me wary at best because how it is so easily abused) and appreciated his willingness to not make the HEA because it wouldn't work.