(no subject)

[carmenbeaudry]

Apparently the folks at the BBC figure that, out of the following 100 titles of "great literature", most people will have read only 6. So if you're so inclined, put this list up in your LJ, as follows:
* (asterisk) - you've read it
+ you've read it and liked it. More + the more you liked it.
- you've read it and hated it. More - the more you hated it.

And here goes...

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen ---
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ++++
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte +
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling ++
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee ++
6 The Bible *
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte +
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell *
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman +
10 Great Epectations - 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 *  Read it all, liked some, hated some
15 Canterbury Tales - Chaucer *
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien +++
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger  +
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Beowulf *
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
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ---- Steinbeck sucks
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 – thought it was stupid
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
52 Dune - Frank Herbert *
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen --- Ok, so I don’t like 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 Huley -
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 Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury *
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold *
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Aleandre 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 Bryson
75 Illiad and Odyssey * the Illaid was ok, loved the Odyssey
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 +re-read it every year at Yule
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Colour 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 *
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad +
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery ++
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 The Rubiyat - Omar Kayam +
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl  ++
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ++

 

Comments

[gwalchgwyn.livejournal.com]

nearly 75% is nothing to snease at. It being the BBC, reallly explains the predomiance of British lit and the lack of "genra" lit cos of course si-fi couldnt be lit. yes there are some si-fi, but some pivital books are missing., and dame there seams to be a lot of "chick" books, bridget jones diary...there are only 99 book better then THat in all the world and time..i dont think so.but it is britsh and a chick book soo.. they include it. but I supose with any list of the best _____. there's going to be some 'debate'.
there are a lot here that are on my someday list and alot ive never even heard of.
still
needs more robots

[corbaegirl.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, I agree with the ones I've read as being classics, but some of the others.....not so much. I agree, needs more SF.

My point exactly...

[kathrynmice.livejournal.com]

There is some Azimoff (However that is spelt) that has slipped from Sci-Fi into classic into lit in the last 25 years.

Some other very strange omissions, Dante for a big one. and only one male british author besides Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens? Whats up with that. There were dozens. None of which I can think of at the moment. (I threw the book lists out for my college lit classes several years ago. No more feeling guilty that I never finished the required reading!)

Rosceline

Re: My point exactly...

[kathrynmice.livejournal.com]

British BIG boys, is what I was thinking... sorry...

That and the bizarre...

[kathrynmice.livejournal.com]

mix of adult and children's literature. All British by the way. I think I am sensing a pattern emerging.

Rosceline
(I will shut up now.)

[courtierka.livejournal.com]

I got to read more. I think I have only read about 25 of them.

[corbaegirl.livejournal.com]

That's better than the 6 the BBC thinks most people have read.