Eat Any Good Books Lately?

The Big Read says that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.


1) Look at the list and bold those you have read
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Mark (in red, strikeout, etc) ones you would never read even if someone paid you.
3) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 or less and make them read.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've read 38 out of 100.

So what do they mean when they say the "top 100 books they've printed"? It's not original works (they didn't publish the Bible first, I'll tell you that!), but there's a decided lack of classical and international material. Nothing Greco/Roman, nothing from India or China that I notice, but they do have a couple Spanish, a couple French, and a large number of Russian ... but no Germans! But it includes the Hitchiker's Guide. I'll admit that's fun stuff, but still ... . It's a Strange list.

And now..... THE BIG RED TOP 100


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 3 or 4 times
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien half a dozen times or more
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte maybe
4. The Harry Potter Series JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible entire Old Testament 2-3 times, entire New Testament 6-10 times
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte maybe
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 and I wish I hadn't
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare complete, maybe not, but I've read a lot
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien half a dozen times
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger another one I could've skipped, though don't hate it
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell I started it until my wife recommended against it.
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy I read it almost entirely while soaking in the bathtub over the last few months before my mission (no, not one very long bath, you jokers!)
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Just pulled it out of storage to work on again
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh .
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky loved it
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll I recently recorded me reading this for Joy
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy maybe
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis several times and we're reading them together again
34. Emma - Jane Austen .
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis several times
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 several times
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown I'll join Steve on this one.
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving Actually, I'm not sur eif I read this one. But it's familiar
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 This one is due for a reread
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 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' Diary - Helen Fielding I tend to frown on modern, sexed-up remakes
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker twice
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 half a dozen times
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 half a dozen times
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 3-4 times
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo I read Hunchback first.