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The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. (clearly English majors are not average. This is frankly, not news ;)

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. (if I read it enough to write a 5 or more page essay or get an A on an exam, I counted it)
2) Italicise those you intend to read (generally if I intend to read a book, I read it. With two exceptions on this list)
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (for love, I'd happily read it again)
4) Strike out the ones you thought SUCKED. (I left this part out. Because, quite frankly, it was embarrassing enough that I underlined Dan Brown)

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 Expectations - 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
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
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 Middlemarch - George Eliot
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
29 Alice’s Adventures 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
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - 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
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
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
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
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
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
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
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
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-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 (I've probably read this book >30 times)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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YAY GRAPES OF WRATH!!!

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I love that book a lot. Strangely, it's one I've never re-read.

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96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (I've probably read this book >30 times)

IMHO it's his best work.

I'm not sure I made it through more than four or five chapters of any of his other books I tried. I kept trying because I love 'Alice' so much, but I kind of think this was his masterpiece.

oops I've read 42 of those.

why ooops? *g*

There were probably other things I should have been doing with my time.

You've read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time?" No one but me has ever read that! That's the best book, even though it makes me cry. I really love it.

Everyone I know has read it! Well, everyone I know in England. Possibly not here. It's wonderful.

Read The Shadow of the Wind, OMG. SO much love for that book. I'ma do this laters. LOL ♥

I somehow missed this comment! *slaps wrist*

I shall check it out. that was one of the books on the list I'd not even heard of.

I had never ever heard of it either until a few years ago I picked it up at a library sale for $1. Best dollar I ever spent. Trufax.

I've thrown #88 across the room at full force.

I've always wanted to read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night Time, but was concerned that it might make me sad. (Do you think it would make me sad?)

I really liked Brideshead Revisited. Sebastian Flyte is one of my fave literary characters :-)

It amuses me that two of you in a row have commented on five people you meet in heaven, you threw it, bevis loved it.

I really loved Curious Incident. I don't remember it making me sad, though books making me cry isn't a desperately memorable event, so it easily could have. It had such a great voice though.

I've heard good things about BR before. I should check it out.

The Five People you Meet In Heaven is well worth reading. It only takes about five minutes to get through but it's absolutely wonderful. Chris picked it up for a couple of pound because he wanted something to read and loved it. He made me read it and I agreed wholeheartedly. It's very moving but happy at the same time. Tuesdays With Morrie, also by Albom, is well worthr eading too. Again a mere matter of minutes to read it but it's one of the few books that actually made me cry but feel good at the end of it too.

And there's tweed above you who threw it across the room! *g*

most of the ones on here that I intend to read but haven't are the newer, bestseller types -- for example the Dog in the Nighttime, which is getting buzz in this meme!! :)

also the Kite Runner...

No one I've looked at has read Swallows and Amazons but me.... I wonder how it got on the list! (the first book in an awesome old children's book series)

And the one I liked better as a movie is Cold Comfort Farm. It's been beautifully distilled into the screenplay and stars Kate Beckinsale and a host of stellar English actors.

Any reason you've avoided Austen? (as an English major, inquiring minds want to know!)

My big recommendation based on your list is to read Watership Down. It's about two brothers, and one of them is psychic, and they go on an epic journey... I kid you not! Well, they're not ACTUALLY Sam and Dean but still, it's a great book. It's about rabbits, but it's REALLY about the hero's journey and how that journey is different for everyone. A little masculinist, but tolerable.

I can't stand Austen. She's my bff's favourite author and she kept trying to get me to like her, but just NO. I was supposed to read Pride and Prejudice in school and managed about a third of it. I am generally not in the least a fan of that whole era of literature.

I don't know if I could read Watership Down. My friend's mom took us to see the movie when we were six or seven and within the first fifteen minutes we were both screaming and crying and had to leave. I had nightmares about it for years. And even thinking about reading it makes me remember that.

skyblue_reverie has suggested it as well. I might give it a try sometime though :)

rivers_bend

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