Reading meme.

[cadeira]

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and underline those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Bold the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them ;-)


1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (Oh, I guess having watched the film doesn´t count?)
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (Still, doesn´t count?)
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling (Come on, the audiobook counts.)
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger (I should read that one again, I was too young to appreciate it fully. I believe)
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (I´m nearly through the audiobook. If you want to hear Hugh Laurie saying "We were all pretty gay.", this is your story.)
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling (Stephen made me do it!)
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (I´ve seen the mov... alright, alright.)
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl (Movie... still... doesn´t count? Oh, well.)
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas (I´ve read Fry´s "The Star´s Tennisballs" though, which is kind of this book playing today, isn´t it?)
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell (That animation cartoon haunted me in my dreams.)
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (Oh, Maggie Smith, how I love thee.)
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell (LoL, noez)
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett (My first Pratchett, still kicks ass.)
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding (William Goldman said that he willingly accepts all the praise he gets for Golding´s work every time he is mistaken for the other author.)
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind (And oddly enough, I thought it was great.)
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell (The title alone sounds promising.)
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl (... film...)
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (Yes, yes. I read this book. And laughed. A lot. Also, I was about 15 when I did it.)
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

I´m only at eleven. Ugh. Wouldn´t have thought that... Much to catch up on. But what´s with Rosamunde Pilcher and Jaqueline Wilson on that list?

Comments

[theempress14.livejournal.com]

Ha! I've got Eleven as well! (twelve if you count that I STARTED Count of Monte Cristo) Take THAT, big read! Though, I'll never finish the list because I don't read Harry Potter. No. I refuse.

[cadeira.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well. You know the thing with Harry Potter is... everyone was talking about it and... it´s huge. So I thought, why not?! Give it a try. I bought the first book, read into it and thought it was rather cute but then it spawned into something I just couldn´t wrap my head around and so I didn´t read on because there was much better stuff around. But THEN I coughobtainedcough the audio book version read by Stephen Fry and that makes it all worthwhile, seriously. When I´m doing stuff in the kitchen or when I´m commuting Harry is around and this marvellous, incredibly versatile voice creates this magic world in my ear. I´m simply a sucker for good audio fiction... so maybe if you DO want to give it a try... let me know.

[theempress14.livejournal.com]

I read the first one back when it first came out (when I was in middle school) and didn't care one way or the other for it. I tried the second book and couldn't get through it. and then it turned into EXACTLY what you described and I just refused after a while. Not that I don't understand what happens through the whole damn series, via friends and family. It's like watching te the HP Penguin enclosure of the fandom aquarium.

If that is your way of saying you have the HP Stephen Fry read audio books and you're willing to share... *grumble* then I guess. I can suffer through what I've perceived to be RJ Rowling's pretentious little world for Stephen. drop me a line. My email is in my profile!

[triedunture.livejournal.com]

lolz, I stole this to flaunt my literacy. But this list is so totally biased; you shouldn't be ashamed of 11.

[cadeira.livejournal.com]

Okay, I admit it. It´s not a totally random list. It´s the BBC The Big Read list.
Everything wearing the label BBC gets treated special by me. I don´t know why but now I feel compelled to read every single one of those books because it´s the 100 favorite books of the Brits.
"Has read all books from the BBC´s Big Read." CHECK!
I´m sure that makes a good impression on the immigration application.

[triedunture.livejournal.com]

For US citizenship, I think you have to sing Stars and Stripes Forever and then crack open a beer can using only your teeth.

For UK citizenship, I imagine you must brew a good cup of tea and prove you got book-learning.