There’s this meme going around Facebook at the moment, so I thought I’d drag it out of the social network and onto my blog. It’s pretty flawed, as these things always are, but interesting nonetheless. (Although I am confused by 14 and 98 – bit of a cock up there). Anyway, it goes like this:
Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!
So yeah, the usual chain letter nature of these things applies here. I’ll bold and italicise as instructed. If you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged.
1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (Does And Zombies count?)
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 – This could be a bold one, but I’m not sure I’ve read everything.
15) Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier – not sure if I finished it ornot, was quite young
16) The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17) Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19) The Time Traveller’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 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 – I don’t think I’ve read all seven, or whatever it is.
34) Emma – Jane Austen
35) Persuasion – Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis – Isn’t this part of the Chronicles of Narnia? It’s the 14/98 situation all over again. This really isn’t a very well thought out list…
37) The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
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 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
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 – Yep, I’m one of those people that’s actually read this whole book. I now know far too much about whales.
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 Thackera
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 I’ve read a lot of Sherlock Holmes, so I assume this is one of them. Is this an omnibus edition or something?
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
97) The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
That’s not a bad result, I suppose. Certainly more than six. But I do question the list. Including “complete works” or series, then adding another item which is a book from that series is a bit redundant and shows quite a lack of thought and planning in the list. But there you go. The list did at least make me notice a couple of things that I’ve been meaning to read but still haven’t, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
Tag!
EDIT: Thanks to Trudi Canavan in the comments for pointing out that the list from Facebook is not, in fact, the same as the original list from the BBC, which you can read here. Which is also out of date, having been last updated in August 2004. Ah, the internet is a minefield of “almost”.
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I’ve read about 20-21 (includes one I *think* I’ve read, but I’m not 100% sure).
If you look at the original list, the Facecrooks one doesn’t match: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml
Haha! Look at the Aussie version:
http://www.abc.net.au/myfavouritebook/top10/100.htm
Is it my imagination, or are there a lot more spec fic books on that list?
Ha! Thanks Trudi. I’ll add an edit into the original post. No surprises that Facebook and its denizens corrupt a good thing!
I counted 19 of the list that I’ve read, and several of those I did not enjoy.
Did you finish the ones you didn’t like?
I think most people would have read more than six. Many of the books on the list are required reading in many school curriculums in the US.
A few on the UK curriculum too.
Exactly. So who *hasn’t* read at least six?
I hit about 15-16 (lost count and also the motivation to recount) but if you add the movies I’ve seen (Yeah that counts…) it’s probably another dozen. If you add on the ones I want and intend to read if I ever discover the standard day is now 36 hours long I’m probably up over half of them.
not sure that seeing the film ‘counts’ as reading the book…
seeing the film is a valid way to spend time, and in many cases get the gist of a storyline, but it ain’t reading the book
from memory, only two of these appeared on my school curricula
and it’s nice to know you’re no better than I am at finishing books you’ve started, al!
also took a quick look at the australian list, and was heartened to see that 2 of the top 10 are actually by australian writers
Seeing the film definitely doesn’t count as reading the book. Shame on you, Damien!
Monika – it’s a new thing I’ve got going on. I used to read the whole book regardless. I felt that if I’d started it, I had to see it through. Now I think, Fuck that! There are too many books and not enough time to waste hours on something that isn’t moving me.
Also, some of those are things I’ve read part of at some point and have every intention of reading eventually. “The Count Of Monte Christo”, for example – I’ve got it on my iPhone and plan to finish it at some future point yet to be determined.
I’ve managed 27 – quite pleased with that! Alan – you really do need to read the Wasp Factory – very twisted.
Hey, I read 6 of the first 10 on the list… & 25 of the total list.
James – it’s one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for donkey’s years. I’ve read pretty much all the Iain M Banks books, but none of the Iain Banks ones.
Bryce – nice going. Seems everyone here has read well over the 6 suggested. Then again, that number was probably pulled straight out of the arse of whoever corrupted the original list from the BBC. Also, anyone reading this blog probably has a bigger disposition to reading than others.
I find it hard to believe that most people have only read 6. My 12 year old daughter has read 6 of the list above, and started a couple more!
If you go back to the ‘original’ BBC list, she’s read 17 of them (although splitting out the Harry Potter series, and adding Jaqueline Wilson and Roald Dahl was of great benefit to her numbers!)
Your 12 year old is a beacon for all the other young people out there. There would be some 12 year olds that haven’t ever read a novel. Probably because their parents haven’t either. Good for her!