Because I can’t skip over a decent almost useful meme, here’s the most recent I have seen bouncing around my neck of the blog-o-sphere.   Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total.

How many have you read?  I have read, if I’m counting correctly,  55.

  1. [+ ] – The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
  2. [ x ] – Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
  3. [ x ] – His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
  4. [ ++ ] – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
  5. [ x ] – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
  6. [ x ] – To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
  7. [ x ] – Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
  8. [ x ] – Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
  9. [ + ] – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
  10. [  ] – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
  11. [ x  ] – Catch-22, Joseph Heller
  12. [   ] – Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
  13. [  ] – Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
  14. [  ] – Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
  15. [ x  ] – The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
  16. [ x ] – The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
  17. [ x ] – Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
  18. [ x ] – Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
  19. [  ] – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
  20. [  ] – War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
  21. [ x ] – Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
  22. [ x ] – Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
  23. [ x ] – Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
  24. [ x ] – Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
  25. [ x ] – The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
  26. [ x ] – Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
  27. [  ] – Middlemarch, George Eliot
  28. [  ] – A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
  29. [ x ] – The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  30. [ x ] – 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. [ x ] – The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
  34. [  ] – David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
  35. [ x ] – Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
  36. [ x ] – Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
  37. [  ] – A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
  38. [  ] – Persuasion, Jane Austen
  39. [ x ] – Dune, Frank Herbert
  40. [  ] – Emma, Jane Austen
  41. [ x ] – Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
  42. [ + ] – Watership Down, Richard Adams
  43. [ x ] – The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
  44. [ x ] – The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
  45. [  ] – Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
  46. [ x ] – Animal Farm, George Orwell
  47. [ x ] – A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
  48. [  ] – Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
  49. [  ] – Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
  50. [ x ] – The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
  51. [ x ] – The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
  52. [ x ] – Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
  53. [ x ] – The Stand, Stephen King
  54. [  ] – Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
  55. [  ] – A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
  56. [ x ] – The BFG, Roald Dahl
  57. [  ] – Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
  58. [ x ] – Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
  59. [ x ] – Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
  60. [ x ] – Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  61. [  ] – Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
  62. [ x ] – Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
  63. [ x ] – A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
  64. [  ] – The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
  65. [  ] – Mort, Terry Pratchett
  66. [ x ] – The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
  67. [  ] – The Magus, John Fowles
  68. [ x ] – Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
  69. [  ] – Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
  70. [ x ] – Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
  71. [  ] – Perfume, Patrick Süskind
  72. [  ] – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
  73. [ x ] – Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
  74. [  ] – Matilda, Roald Dahl
  75. [  ] – Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
  76. [  ] – The Secret History, Donna Tartt
  77. [  ] – The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
  78. [ x ] – 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. [ x ] – Holes, Louis Sachar
  84. [ x ] – Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
  85. [  ] – The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
  86. [  ] – Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
  87. [ x ] – Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  88. [  ] – Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
  89. [ x ] – Magician, Raymond E Feist
  90. [  ] – On The Road, Jack Kerouac
  91. [  ] – The Godfather, Mario Puzo
  92. [ x ] – The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
  93. [ x ] – 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. [ x ] – Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
  99. [ x ] – The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
  100. [  ] – Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

Hmm, there you go.  I’ve read quite a bit more than I thought, but consider this a rather skewed list.  It shows a number of similar books (such as Harry Potter being there for each book,  if you read one, you probably read them all).   likewise Terry Pratchett is listed a few times, though I agree he’s a great author, and likewise with Jane Austin novels.

Anne of The Gods are Bored, just wrote a post about her daughter needing to read from an even more erudite list from the Pen-Faulkner award for Fiction.   Reading that listing, I found I only have ever picked up ONE of those books, and never finished it because it was, as she also mentions, very deep and complex and absolutely not a gripping enteraining experience.  I can’t imagine making a grade-school student suffer through them, unless said student showed a literary aptitude, or it was presented in-class with discussion and group effort.  Yuck!

(I picked up “Snow Falling of Cedars“, which was a decent book, but out of my normal range of reading, so couldn’t get interested enough in it to finish.  I can see why it’s a ‘scholarly book though, and used by Literature classes for study)

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