I haven't done one of those Facebook lists in a while, and a couple friends filled this one out, so I thought I'd join in.  This list apparently comes from the BBC, who said that the average person has only read 6 of these.  Seems like a small number to me, but since the average American reads less than one book a year (or something like that - I saw a statistic once) maybe it is accurate.

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 (Tried, it was really boring when I was 9 or so)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (Thought about it, since people were banning it)
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 Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ÿ
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
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
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens (Another one I couldn't make through as a kid)
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (included by #33...)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA 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
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 (haven't quite read the whole series, I think we've read 7 or so)
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 (only in English)
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 (only a heavily abridged version)
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugoÿ

Posted by Jon Daley on November 25, 2010, 11:18 am | Read 4852 times
Category Reviews: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]
Comments

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (reading now)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (high school)
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (high school)
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (included by #33...)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell (later this school year)
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (high school)
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

Well, I am making progress.
S

Posted by dstb on November 28, 2010, 5:14 pm

But what is the list supposed to be? The most read books? The best books?
I mean, Harry Potter books are entertaining, but hardly good enough to be in a list like that.
The Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin are much better, in my opinion.

And in the same vein of The Little Prince (supposedly children stories but that are actually universal), everyone should read the Story Of A Seagull And The Cat Who Taught Her To Fly by Luis Sepúlveda.

By the way, I've read 10 of that list already, which is OK considering I'm 21 :)

Posted by AP² on November 29, 2010, 7:19 am

So it turns out the "most people have only 6 read" part is fake. And the original list from the bbc (in 2003) was created from user input based on favorite books. bbc list explanation

Posted by jondaley on November 29, 2010, 8:58 am

Link for "bbc list explanation" is not working. (or didn't work for me).
S

Posted by dstb on November 30, 2010, 8:19 am

Fixed. Thanks.
Posted by jondaley on November 30, 2010, 9:27 am

It makes more sense now that I know it was originally a list of people's favorite books. As a list of best books or books we should read to be considered educated it seemed a bit odd.

Posted by SursumCorda on December 2, 2010, 9:58 am
Add Comment
Add comment
E-mail me when comments occur on this article

culpable-adaptable