I found this list on another website, Through a Glass, Darkly. The claim, which hasn't been verified by anyone, is that the National Endowement for the Arts (the Big Read people) believes that the average American has only read six books on this list. I've never claimed to be average, so let's just see which ones I've read. I put them in bold.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien-I've seen the movies
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte-I've started it
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (not entirely, so I won't claim it!)
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-Not all of them, but quite a few
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR 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-I've seen the movie
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-Started it
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-I've started it
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-I've started it
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-I've seen the movie
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
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
I'm greatly relieved that I've read more than 6...but only 28??? That was a bit shocking! The good news is that I've at least heard of most of them. It looks like I've got my future reading cut out for me.
5 comments:
Got me beat, only eighteen. If I were allowed to count seeing the movie I'd be able to add eight more (Gone With the Wind, War and Peace, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, Lion Witch and Wardrobe, Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, Count of Monte Cristo, Bridget Jones' Diary). Here's mine.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Dude! We totally read Alice in Wonderland in high school, so cross that sucker off your list.
Seriously? I have no recollection of reading Alice in Wonderland. At all. Sad.
Yep. We even made a board game out of it.
I don't claim to be a reader at ALL, but I have even read 9 of them (and I own two on the list which I haven't cracked open yet).
Claire, maybe you don't remember Alice in Wonderland because you drank the wrong bottle of juice and it wiped your memory clean.
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