The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?
1) Look at the list and color those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Remark on the books you LOVE.
I find this list a little too much in favor of Jane Austen...I think I got like 21%, but if I'd just get myself to read Jane Austen, I'd probably be closer to 50%. Hmmmph...anyway, obviously, there are still lots of books to read for me.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – I only read those 4 times…
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 – ok I haven’t read it all, but I have read ¾ I’d say which almost all…
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
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 Better than the movie!
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
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
35Persuasion - 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
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 – I don’t even know how many times I’ve read these…
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
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
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9 comments:
LOL -- reading Jane Austen wouldn't raise your percentage THAT high... she only wrote six (published) novels in her lifetime! But reading them will delight you, enlighten you, make you laugh, maybe make you cry, and certain make you appreciate human nature and her genius! You should try it! (I recommend Pride and Prejudice first, and at least add Persuasion after that. They were her first published and her last, and show both her growth and her consistent and unparalleled style.)
No thank you. I may read one or two Jane Austen books at some point, just so I can say I've read Jane Austen, but I don't think they are my kind of book (too much girly drama)...and, considering that this list only contains 100 books, I'd say it is very much in Jane Austen's favor, since all her books seem to be on the list. Then again, there also seems to be a lot of Dickens on there.
I agree, the list is very much in Jane Austen's favor, and I don't think any of her books are must-reads for men. The list in general favors English and American classics, which is fine, considering it is an American list (I assume).
If one scores badly on this list, it might only mean that one likes to read literature from other countries, as well. Say Goethe. Ever heard of that one? ;)
well, the comment from "Henry" was actually from me, Fran. I agree that the list contains mostly English language classics (with a few exceptions like Tolstoi and Rushdie). If it was a German classics list, I'm sure I'd had a lot more covered, especially with Goethe, whom I love. But, I think for an English list, I still did ok... :)
I've read about 40% of the list, and started several on the list that I didn't finish...
I cannot believe you haven't read Jane Austen. ;) I do think you should read Pride and Prejudice. READ IT WOMAN!
I'm at 20%. Les Miserables and Count of Monte Cristo I only half finished so I combined them to count as one.
Henry
I'm probably about 20%...with some I started but will never finish and I hope to read more on that list. I thought it interesting that The Chronicles of Narnia and the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe were separate...The LWW is just a book in a series. Also, Hamlet was separated from the Shakespeare collection.
Jane Austen isn't as hopelessly girl-y as the Twilight series. You could read Jane Austen, not because everyone else does, as a study of a classic. Pay attention to her characterization and the wit in her characters. You could read it like a historical-fiction that tells the story of English women of the 19th century. If you read Dickens to understand the English lower class, you must read Austen to understand the women of the times.
And then you're hooked and you end up reading other Austen novels just because you find that she was a fabulous writer.
I don't think I have to read Jane Austen to understand the women of those times. I may end up reading one or two of her books because it's considered a classic. But there really isn't much that appeals to me at this point to read her books - no matter what anyone says.
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