Every year, I like to set up a little challenge for myself. One year it was to read the entire Bible. Another year -- actually I think it was the same year -- I decided to read one book a week for a whole year. The past two years, it has been to read a book at least every other week. I think this year I should have set the 52 books goal again, I'm only about ten short of that. This year, I think I'm going to attempt to knock off some more the books on the list below. A friend on facebook posted it on her account. I found it interesting (and a tad embarrassing being that I was an English major many moons ago). 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. The instructions were as follows:
Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.
Anything written in red is where I took liberty to add my thoughts :o).
Here's mine:
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 Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger I soo want to read this one!
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 I really don't know if I've actually read this as a novel or just the child's version.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame Currently reading.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis I've listened to almost the entire dramatized version.
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis I've listened to the dramatized version.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden I'm itching to read this one too.
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. 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 It's sitting on our bookshelf.
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 This one intrigues me.
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 Peach got this one for Christmas.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
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 Another one where I can't say if I've actually read it.
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 - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom Another one I'm itching to read.
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 My favorite book as a kid.
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
Well there you have it. My illiteracy in print ;o). A mere 19 out of 100 books.I know there are quite a few on this list that I will happily work on reading this year, but I'll confess now, Lord of the Rings, will not be one of them. I had all I could do to keep my eyes from rolling into the back of my head when watching the movies. Seriously!! How long can they film a battle!?
What are you reading? Does anyone else set reading goals for the new year?
I'm so glad you decided to take on your book-a-week challenge for 2011! I saw the BBC list on Facebook a couple of years ago. I can't remember how many I'd read, but it was somewhere in the 60s. I think. I'm sorry you won't be reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. My advice is not to let your experience of the movie turn you off to the possibility of reading the books. You know what they say about the movie never being as good as the book ...
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll psot your thoughts on the books as you read them!
Have a great week!
LOL, I meant to write "post" not "psot"! (An embarrassing typo from a fellow English major!)
ReplyDeleteI have read at least 30 of these...I get fuzzy on which J.Austen and C.Dickens books I've read so I didn't count them.
ReplyDeleteMy 18 year old read Lord of the Flies recently and said it was so horrible that it ruined her life. She is prone to being a tad bit dramatic especially about her opinions on reading material. We always enjoy her fiery opinions on such things.
There are a few on this list that I would not read like The Lovely Bones. I just can't read that story. However, I like this list and I think I copy it to use to remind me of books I would like to read.
Are you going to post about your favorites this year? I would be interested in hearing your list and opinions.
~Leslie
I don't set reading goals, I just read all the time. Fitness goals make more sense because I don't naturally try to achieve fitness. I gobble up books and I'm always ready for an interesting author.
ReplyDeleteOh dear! It sounds like I'm going to have to post my thoughts on the books I read this year. I will try. Sometimes I feel so illiterate though, I'm not sure I'll be able to put my thoughts into words.
ReplyDeleteLord of the Flies really is a nasty book, I don't think it ruined my life though :o).
Pom Pom, I have to set some fitness goals too. BIG TIME!! Wonder if I can learn to read and work out at the same time?
that is some book list I remember seeing that on facebook...! I am reading the Ghost Map about the outbreak of Cholera that happened in London. It is really good it tells you all about what it was like to be living in London in the 1800s it is so interesting I just love History ....I did this list on facebook You have seen our library on my blog I think I have almost all these books and I have read most of them. I was actually surprised at how many I have read. :) Good Luck working through your list and Happy Reading :) Maybe we should do some book swapping :) Love Heather
ReplyDeleteAlways find this fun: 33 was my count, with many more started and not finished. If I can't get into a book after a few chapters, I'll usually put it down. THere are too many other great books out there to read something that bores or disturbs you!! :) Well, I have to say I LOVE Tolkien's books, but if you thought the battles were long in the movie, then stay away! lol!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you had a wonderful Christmas...
ReplyDeleteand I have to say I still can't believe you are going to have three more children soon?! I don't know about the reading time then ;)
I haven't read or heard of some of these books, I should try and see how many I'd get. I do read now , now that I have more time, but not really these so called "classics" , sometimes more memoir or poetry .
I don't set reading goals, but do have a list of books I'd like to read. I find it odd that this list has both The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe AND The Chronicles of Narnia. LOL I adore The Chronicles of Narnia (Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my fave, so I was thrilled about the movie that just came out earlier this month). To be honest, most of the books on this list just don't appeal to me. I loathed The Wind in the Willows. I read it as a homeschool read aloud a couple of years ago and found it sheer torture to get through. My kiddo liked it though. One book I'd like to be brave enough to read in the coming year is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I recently watched the latest film version with Ben Barnes and Colin Firth and am having a difficult time recovering from the experience. I'm a huge Ben Barnes fan, and while he was fabulous in the lead role, I'm not accustomed to seeing him in that type part. It truly spooked me, but I think I can manage to get through the book.
ReplyDeleteBTW - I've read 10 of the books on the list.
ReplyDeleteThat is some list indeed! Many of these books my boy has read but not me! OOoops! My favorite on the list is "To Kill a Mockingbird." I love that story. Oh, but my all time favorite is the bible! Can't get enough of that one. :)
ReplyDeleteDeborah,
ReplyDeleteYou are so funny! I feel the same way about Lord of the Rings and I am so in the minority in my family. I feel so out of place and am afraid to voice what you just did...I feel empowered know and will just admit it!
One year my sweet daddy set the goal that he would read a book a year and he did! He was so proud of himself. He and I used to share books and talk about them. As a matter of fact the very last book he read before he went home to be with Jesus was a John Gresham book. The girls and I visited them during our spring break and he had just read the book and passed it to me. Every day he would ask me about what I had read and we would talk about it. He did just a few weeks after that spring break on April 10, 1999. You have brought back sweet memories for me today and have inspired me to make my own list!
Thank you, sweet friend!
hugs
~a
Lots of good ones, even my favorite book is on there...the Great Gatsby! I dream of being Daisy, well not really, but maybe for a moment:O)
ReplyDeleteMy husband was an English major too :O)
that's fascinating!! I love to read, too, and I haven't read that many on that list either. I'm so looking forward to more time to read in the coming months!
ReplyDeleteI've read about 75 of the books on the list. You really need to read Lord of the Rings. Of course, I am a huge fan of both the books and the movies, so perhaps I am not the one from whom to take advice. I read the entire series at least 5 times when I was in 5th grade. A few others you should read are, IMHO (of course), The Great Gatsby (best book of all time), Prayer for Owen Meany (in fact, anything by John Irving. Cider House Rules is equally good), The Color Purple, The Lovely Bones, Lolita, Love in the Time of Cholera, Life of Pi. Forget finishing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and instead read James and the Giant Peach (my favorite Dahl book). Amazing, out of this world "children's books" that every adult should read but are not on this list...The Miraculous Journey of Edward Toulane and Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo (forgo the Despereaux animated movie; it is wretched). I know of no other children's writer who captures the richness and beauty of the English language like Kate DiCamillo in these two books. I wept in front of a group of my 4th grade students reading her books, and I've never had kids respond to literature the way my students respond to her works. Happy reading!
ReplyDeletePete's cousin had this list as well, and I had read a lot of them, but also just CANNOT get through LOTR. It is way too wordy and boring. I was also surprised at a lot of books that weren't on the list. I think I might try to read a few of the classics mentioned that embarrassingly I've never read, like Moby Dick and Oliver Twist. I've read small excerpts, but never the entire books.
ReplyDeletei am so horrible at posting comments ... but just to let you know my humble opinion ... the time traveller's wife was just ok.
ReplyDeletemaybe we can wax poetic over a hot beverage really really soon?
i only work at the bookstore wednesday and friday now, leaving me to prep for clients the rest of the time AT HOME!
call me or i'll call you.
k