100 Classic Books Meme

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Which of the BBC 100 ‘classic’ books have I read? As blogged by Thaeydiddlediddle. If you want the book list and instructions in clean html format, grab it here.

Instructions:

  1. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
  2. Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
  3. Star ‘*’ those you plan on reading.
  4. Tally your total at the bottom.
  5. Tag your bookish friends including the person whose list you saw!

The List:

  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 – Various Artists x (some)
  7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
  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
  13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller x
  14. Complete Works of Shakespeare x (some)
  15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
  16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien x+
  17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
  18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger x+
  19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
  20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
  21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell x+
  22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald x
  23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
  24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy x (some)
  25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams x+ (should refer to entire series)
  26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
  27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  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
  32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens x
  33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis x+
  34. Emma – Jane Austen x
  35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
  36. The LionThe Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis ? Referred to above, no?  Anyway x+
  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 x
  41. Animal Farm – George Orwell x+
  42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown x
  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 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
  51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
  52. Dune – Frank Herbert x+
  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 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-time – Mark Haddon x+
  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. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas x
  66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
  67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
  68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding x (should I admit to this?!)
  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 Burnett x
  74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson x
  75. Ulysses – James Joyce
  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 x
  82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell x
  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 x
  88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Alborn x
  89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
  90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton x (don’t remember but probably, read tonnes of hers when I was a kid)
  91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
  92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
  93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks x
  94. Watership Down – Richard Adams x
  95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
  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

Think that’s around 53, though it could be less since I haven’t read 100% of the Bible, and they duplicate CS Lewis Narnia, or more, since they list lots of series. Also some of the classics I’ve read only because of school.

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. I’m sceptical about this claim, particularly because averages lie. I’d say it’s more likely that there are people who don’t read books, who’ve read ~none, and people who read books, who’ve read probably 20+ of these.

Still, an interesting list.