Book Bragging Rights

, in Books

A friend of mine (Hi Liesl!) recently went through a list of the 100 greatest books and marked off the ones she had read . She then posted it to Facebook, obviously proud of her total (53 - impressive).

Here is the list - I have read the lighter shaded entries. My total was 26; I have tried to read 5 or 6 others without success, so they don't count.

How do you do?

  1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  2. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
    Excellent, but not sure if it is the second best book ever
  3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  4. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
    I am the only person in the English speaking world who has never read Harry Potter. I tried reading one once, but Couldn't get into it. I think I read too many similar books when I was a kid to enjoy it now. I like the movies though.
  5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  6. The Bible (some of it) by
  7. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
    Sucked
  8. Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
  9. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
    I hear good things about these books
  10. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  11. Little Women by Louisa M Alcott
  12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
  13. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
  14. Complete Works of Shakespeare by Shakespeare
    A mixed bag – the good parts are very good, the bad parts are awful (c.f. The Bible)
  15. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
  16. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
  17. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
  18. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
  19. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  20. Middlemarch by George Eliot
  21. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
    If it is as bad as the movie, I am steering well clear
  22. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
  23. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  24. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  26. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  27. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  28. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  29. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
    Probably the only book that is actually improved by sections of poetry
  30. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  31. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  32. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  33. Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
    Horribly dated now, will probably be forgotten soon
  34. Emma by Jane Austen
  35. Persuasion by Jane Austen
  36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis
    See Chronicles of Narnia
  37. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
  39. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
  40. Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
  41. Animal Farm by George Orwell
    Good antidote to #87's pro-pig propaganda
  42. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
  43. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
    Recommended by a coworker. Book sucked; coworker turned out to be a bit of a dick. Figures.
  45. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
  46. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
  47. Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
  48. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
    I actually own a copy of this somewhere, will read it sometime
  49. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
    I liked the bit where Piggy gets voted off the island
  50. Atonement by Ian McEwan
  51. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  52. Dune by Frank Herbert
    Interesting book but then I own the soundtrack to the movie which shows how little taste I have
  53. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
  54. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  55. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
  56. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  57. A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  58. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
  60. Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  61. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  62. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  63. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  64. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
  65. Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  66. On The Road by Jack Kerouac
  67. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
  68. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
  69. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
  70. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
    Never read the book, but I liked the film adaption: Star Trek II Wrath of Khan
  71. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
  72. Dracula by Bram Stoker
    Draining (actually it's pretty cool)
  73. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  74. Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
  75. Ulysses by James Joyce
  76. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  77. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
  78. Germinal by Emile Zola
  79. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
  80. Possession by AS Byatt
  81. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
    It may have been some sort of children's abridged version, I can't remember
  82. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
  83. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  84. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  85. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  86. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
  87. Charlotte's Web by EB White
    Four legs good, eight legs better
  88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Alborn
  89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    Stands up better than many much more recent stories. Inspired the TV series House, which is good. Also inspired CSI:Miami – not so good.
  90. The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
    Was read them by my mother, Enid Blyton has not aged well but glad to see this on the list and not those bloody Famous Five books.
  91. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
    Creepy but a little dull, like that guy from accounts receivable. You know the one.
  92. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupery
    The French can be charming when they want to be
  93. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
    I like his SciFi books, I should pick this up some time.
  94. Watership Down by Richard Adams
  95. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  96. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
  97. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  98. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
    Who kills somebody by dripping poison into their ears? Nobody; never happens!
  99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
  100. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo