Ben Mines Posted April 2, 2009 Share Posted April 2, 2009 I see. ..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seiichi Posted April 2, 2009 Share Posted April 2, 2009 Does anyone have the link to the BBC article in which this list appeared? I fail to see what criteria were used. How could anyone put The Da Vinci Code and Ulysses on the same list?! War and Peace and Bridget Jones' Diary?! Also, number 14 is the Complete Works of Shakespeare and 98 Hamlet. My post explaining the poll can be found here. This wasn't a BBC poll. The BBC poll was The Big Read, which has its own microsite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talisman Posted April 3, 2009 Share Posted April 3, 2009 This has been doing the rounds on the various writing sites I am a member of since last summer, when I mentioned it on my own blog. I understood that the list came originally from the US Big Reads Survey, hence the fact that so many US titles feature dominantly. My own list, which I have copied from the aforementioned blog, is below: 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 - JR Tolkien 17) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 18) Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 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 Hitchhiker'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's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33) (Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis) 34) Emma - Jane Austen 35) Persuasion - Jane Austen 36) (The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis) 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 42) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 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) MISSING 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 78) Germinal - Emile Zola 79) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 80) Possession - A. S. 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 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 99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo The one thing that struck me about my own list is how many of the books I have seen as films rather than actually reading them. The relatively small number that I have read can perhaps be explained in part by the fact that most of them are works of fiction. As a non fiction writer I naturally gravitate more towards other works of non fiction, as this for the most part is where I do my own research. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - TBR stack 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling I've read only the last one, the first 6 are in the stack. TBR 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible - 7Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - TBR stack 8 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppy Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 Knowing your love of animals Pont, I think you would enjoy Watership Down, although keep the hanky handy. And The Wind in the Willows is absolutely delightful if you want to revisit childhood ....I read it for the first time as an adult. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 Knowing your love of animals Pont, I think you would enjoy Watership Down, although keep the hanky handy. And The Wind in the Willows is absolutely delightful if you want to revisit childhood ....I read it for the first time as an adult. I remember Dogmatix saying it was her very favorite too, Watership Down I mean....I don't know though, while I know it would be excellent, I am one that cries when I hear the opening music to Lassie. I think I have a copy around here. /sigh/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppy Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Awwww ...in that case Pont, maybe not It's a long time since I read it, but I think I cried too, and I don't cry all that easily. Wind in the Willows should be OK though, it's funny and delightful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 I'm definitely going after Wind in the Willows poppy, thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karen1 Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 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 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicola Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 I've been slowly but surely making my way through this list as recommended by one of my colleagues Here goes (I'll just add the ones I've read instead of the entire list) 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 - (bits of it) 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kala_way Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 48. There are a few that I've read some of and then put them down because I really didn't like them, and a few I think I read a long time ago but don't remember them well enough to say 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 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MissWhitlock Posted April 12, 2009 Share Posted April 12, 2009 I'm pretty sure I haven't read much of these but we'll see.. 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 - only some chapters/books whatever you call em 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mac Posted April 12, 2009 Share Posted April 12, 2009 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 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobgoblin Posted April 12, 2009 Share Posted April 12, 2009 Just the 21. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leah86 Posted April 12, 2009 Share Posted April 12, 2009 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 1984 - 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 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 Hitchhiker’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 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen- 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 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 - 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - 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 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 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 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 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo 14 books in total from the list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DLG Posted April 12, 2009 Share Posted April 12, 2009 14 for me. Although, I think with some I've read bits to my children. Has anyone read all the bible? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kala_way Posted April 13, 2009 Share Posted April 13, 2009 Has anyone read all the bible? Yep, I have. When I was a teenager I read through a One Year Bible. It separates the whole thing into small sections, a couple paragraphs of the boring stuff and a paragraph of interesting stuff everyday to get you through it in a year. I've read through the New Testament many times, but books like Chronicles and Kings are quite a slog! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucybird Posted April 13, 2009 Share Posted April 13, 2009 I've known people who've read the whole Bible Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DLG Posted April 14, 2009 Share Posted April 14, 2009 I've read a lot of the New Testament, but not much of the Old. Maybe I should try.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kell Posted April 14, 2009 Share Posted April 14, 2009 I prefer the Old Testament, story-wise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anubhuti24 Posted April 22, 2009 Share Posted April 22, 2009 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 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atticjnr Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 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 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andaira Posted April 26, 2009 Share Posted April 26, 2009 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 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Readwine Posted May 7, 2009 Share Posted May 7, 2009 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 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DayDream Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 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 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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