Proving the BBC Wrong Meme

[Holsety]

This was brought to my attention recently. I'm not sure what "year" this list off 100 favorite books (based on british taste?) was released by the BBC, but I know it's not the 2003 list.

Also, the 2003 list had Peake's gormenghast on it, while this does not. Big mistake. We should cull the population until all 100 books are read and loved by me because I have the best taste in books ever.

Anyway, here's how it goes:

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

And here's my list. Please go ahead and do your own, I like reading them.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X*
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible x+* (Old Testament, Old School. New Testament is probably a snoozefest).
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X+
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X* (read much of it, including all of his sonnet sequence which ROCKS)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
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 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X+
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck *
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X*
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X (book on tape)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell *
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 x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan*
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
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 x+*
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dicken X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X+*
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 SteinbeckX
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
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 X+*
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X???
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
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 - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell* (just b/c of cool name)
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo IshigurOOOO* (was missing an o)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X+
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
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 X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
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 X(reading now)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dah X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo*

X=35 (this is the same number I got for the 2003 list somehow)
+=7 (this is also the same number I got for the 2003 list somehow)
*=26 (i got 18 for the 2003 list...phew)

If you beat my score I will give you my WGDs.

I was probably overselective with my +'s. Both Shakespeare and Austen deserve one. But I'm too lazy to "fix" things now.

Also, if Marquez deserves to be on here, Borges does (Wolfe fans would love him, highly recommended).

[Avatar]

Read 56 of them.

--A

[Zahir]

I finished reading thirty.

[Brinn]

Read 9 of them.

[aliantha]

I have read 60! Plus several of Shakespeare's plays from #14. *Plus* I read "The Little Prince" in Spanish. Suddenly my geeky taste in reading is justified!

I agree with you, Holsety -- Borges should be on here. Possibly *before* Marquez.

[Holsety]

*Plus* I read "The Little Prince" in Spanish. Suddenly my geeky taste in reading is justified!

Very cool. I read it in French in my french class in High School, but that's not very exotic because that's the language it was written in to begin with.

I agree with you, Holsety -- Borges should be on here. Possibly *before* Marquez.

I should go ahead and admit I have never read Marquez. However, my roommate told me when he saw me reading Borges that I was "cooler than he thought I was" or something like that because Borges is a predecessor to Marquez or something like that (he is reading 100 Years of Solitude but I don't think his 100 years are up yet ). I'm not sure if it's simply that they're both South American authors or there's something more.

I've only read Borges' Collected Fictions but I thought it ROCKED. I mentioned the Wolfe thing as a gut instinct - there's something about the two authors which is very similar, and it's not just that their stories use a fantastic and sometimes confusing wealth of allusions. It is too soon for a reread to get more solid ideas though.

[I'm Murrin]

Any chance you'll share what the Xs, +s and *s stand for?

[matrixman]

Put me in as a member of the Borges fan club, too!

I have read 60!

Someone here (namely, you) has actually devoured more books than Av?? (On this list, anyway.)

I've read, um...11 of the books. Out of that I truly enjoyed only 8.

[Vraith]

Read 39 of them, been avoiding 38 of them on purpose.

[matrixman]

Read 39 of them, been avoiding 38 of them on purpose.

Good answer!

[andy h]

I've only read 15!

To be honest I generally avoid classic literature. Mainly because I like reading for enjoyment and not if it is hard work.

[SleeplessOne]

suprised that I've read 9 of them ... CS Lewis gets entries for the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the Chronicles of Narnia, whats up with that ?

suprised to see Lewis on the list at all to be honest, re-read the books (well, half of them) again a year or so ago and thought they were rubbish quite frankly - Phillip Pullman's effort was ok, but no classic in my eyes ...

[[Syl]]

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

To be fair, I didn't finish On the Road or Dracula, but I did read most of them. I read Little Women (I preferred Little Men), The Wind in the Willows, and The Secret Garden so long ago (ages 8, 9, and 7, respectively) that I hardly remember anything about them.

[Damelon]

I count 26.

Though, I don't know how Mitch Albom got on the list ahead of Hemmingway.

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - Many times
6 The Bible - parts, never cover to cover
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - x
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - x
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – don't like to read plays... have attended several of them
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - x several times
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -X a long time ago
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -X3, best close to a novel
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - x
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - started, never finished
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - x2
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - x for school, don't like Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -X3
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - X not worth the hype
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - X2
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - X -
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - Not Lolita, but I read his Pale Fire
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Call me Ishmael. - but not much past that
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - X
76 The Inferno - Dante - X - one of the all time great put down lines is in the Inferno - "to be rude to him was a courtesy"
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- X -many times, I've been reading the stories since I was ten.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - X
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X

[Vraith]

I've already posted, (read 39, avoiding 38 ) but now I'm wondering if I get any bonus points because I've read ALL of Shakespeare's works?
[25 years of theater makes demands on you...but don't worry, I never quote him while standing around in a tux and drinking champagne, I never call him "the Bard" and I say "MacBeth" outloud even in theaters.]

[Avatar]

I read Little Women (I preferred Little Men)...

I also preferred Little Men. Might be a guy thing...

--A

[Holsety]

Any chance you'll share what the Xs, +s and *s stand for?

Oops! Sorry about that. I copy and pasted but I guess I did it incorrectly.

Xs are books you've read.
+s are books you loved. (I was too sparing)
*s are books you want to read or will read again. I distributed these somewhat haphazardly (there are some books I never read before but the titles made me want to know more XD)

suprised that I've read 9 of them ... CS Lewis gets entries for the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the Chronicles of Narnia, whats up with that ?

suprised to see Lewis on the list at all to be honest, re-read the books (well, half of them) again a year or so ago and thought they were rubbish quite frankly - Phillip Pullman's effort was ok, but no classic in my eyes ...

Ya. In the 03 list they listed ALL of Rowling's books separately (free 7 points!) They also had several terry pratchett books (including Mort and Night Watch, which I happen to think are the best of his stuff that I've read). I'm personally with you on Lewis and Pullman - I find both of them have interesting worlds but I didn't "get a lot" out of either of them. But I read both when I was younger...

I read Little Women (I preferred Little Men), The Wind in the Willows, and The Secret Garden so long ago (ages 8, 9, and 7, respectively) that I hardly remember anything about them.

I think I read the Secret Garden but I'm not sure.

The '03 list had Stevenson's Treasure Island. This surprised me - Stevenson's poetry is some of the best I've read IMO, but I never knew he wrote that book (which I read as a kid and barely remember).

[aliantha]

I read "Treasure Island" too!

I spent a lot of my formative years reading the classics. Jane Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, etc. "Little Women" was my all-time favorite book until I read "Jane Eyre". I'd put "Jane Eyre" above "Pride and Prejudice", but I recognize I'm in the minority there. I didn't realize "Pride and Prejudice" was supposed to be funny until I reread it as an adult...

Both Borges and Marquez write magical realism, but Borges did it first. I read him in Spanish in college. I like his stuff better than Marquez's. Borges is more whimsical; Marquez can get pretty heavy-handed.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

i read six of 'em...

[stonemaybe]

29 and judging by the X's and previous comments, they're mostly the smae as everyone else has read!