Seriousness Have you read 6 of those 100?

YGG- · 09-25-2009, 07:00 AM

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: just tell us how many & maybe comment?
(I left my answers --too lazy to dump them)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - YES
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - YES
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -
TOTAL SO FAR: 2

6 The Bible -- YES
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - YES
8 1984 - George Orwell - YES
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -
TOTAL SO FAR: 4

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - YES
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
TOTAL SO FAR: 5

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien YES
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger YES
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
TOTAL SO FAR: 7

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -- YES
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald YES
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
TOTAL SO FAR:8

26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles - - - - - - -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky-
28 Grapes of Wrath YES
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - YES
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - YES
TOTAL SO FAR: 11

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -YES
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -
34 Emma - Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
TOTAL SO FAR: 12

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - yes
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -YES
TOTAL SO FAR: 13

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - YES
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -YES
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -yes
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
TOTAL SO FAR: 15

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 -yes
TOTAL SO FAR: 15

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -YES
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -YES
TOTAL SO FAR: 17

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -YES
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
TOTAL SO FAR: 18

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - YES
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -
TOTAL SO FAR: 19

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -yes
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -
TOTAL SO FAR: 19

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -YES
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -YES
TOTAL SO FAR: 21

76 The Inferno - Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession - AS Byatt -yes
TOTAL SO FAR: 21

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 -yes
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -YES
TOTAL SO FAR: 22

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -yes
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 -YES
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
TOTAL SO FAR: 23

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -YES
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams-
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -YES
TOTAL SO FAR: 25

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -YES
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - YES
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -YES
TOTAL SO FAR: 30
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) Being French I don't pay so much attention to all anglo-saxon titles (Who is Richard Adams?)
2) Having in the same list "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" & "Les Miserables" is...hm.

nomesque · 09-25-2009, 07:08 AM

Too lazy to recount, but I believe 46 or so. I did a blog post on it months ago...

Bilbo1967 · 09-25-2009, 07:24 AM

33 for me I think.

mtravellerh · 09-25-2009, 07:43 AM

I have read 52.

lilac_jive · 09-25-2009, 07:44 AM

Richard Adams, he wrote Watership Down which is basically a scary book about bunnies. I haven't read it yet.

Slite · 09-25-2009, 07:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lilac_jive

Richard Adams, he wrote Watership Down which is basically a scary book about bunnies. I haven't read it yet.

He also wrote Plaguedogs and Maia

kennyc · 09-25-2009, 08:00 AM

I'm embarrassed -- only about 15 of those (could be a few more, but I'm being conservative). And hey that is exactly why I bought my 505 a few weeks ago, to begin to catch up on my classics to-be-read list.

I find it funny that the two I recently read were not on the list - Of Human Bondage and Sons and Lovers

Verencat · 09-25-2009, 08:35 AM

38! And I'm working my way in the 1001 books to read list so I'm getting there.

Is Donna Tart a classic read?

lilac_jive · 09-25-2009, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Verencat

38! And I'm working my way in the 1001 books to read list so I'm getting there.

Is Donna Tart a classic read?

Not really, but it's supposed to be very very good. Kind of like how Life of Pi and Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime are classics now.

pdurrant · 09-25-2009, 08:39 AM

1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 25, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 46, 49, 54, 71, 73, 74, 81, 87, 89, 92, 99

Hmm... only 29

Quote:

Originally Posted by YGG-

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

rhadin · 09-25-2009, 08:40 AM

I've read only 19 on the list, but then I don't read a lot of popular fiction and virtually no popular current fiction. Most of my reading is nonfiction history and biography. What fiction I do read is largely scifi/fantasy.

The problem with lists like these -- and the lamentation that few will have read many on the list -- is that the list represents one person or group's view of what is worthwhile reading. Yes, Watership Down is a decent book, but I wouldn't cast in the same plane as Sherlock Holmes. The only thing remarkable about Ulysses, to my way of thinking, is that someone thought it worth reading at all.

How many of these same list makers have read, for example, any of Dashiell Hammett's novels or the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin? They cited Zola's Germinal, but not his J'Accuse, which is certainly a more important work. No mention of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt. Of course, some of the most important books in history are omitted, as well as some of the most important authors -- books and authors that truly impacted the world.

Lists of must read books are simply a way to say I read x books and you didn't, so shame on you! Consequently, I never feel embarassed that I read so few on a list. The beauty of literature is that there are no true must-read works.

HarryT · 09-25-2009, 09:17 AM

Why is "Tess of the d'Urbevilles" in the list twice? Why is "The Chronicles of Narnia" listed, and then "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" listed separated?

acidzebra · 09-25-2009, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by YGG-

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

I've read the majority of them but like Harry said, the list is a little sloppy (another example: complete works of Shakespeare and Hamlet later on). Also, do you have a link to the original article?

Also also, I think the good denizens of MobileRead don't really mesh well with this 'most people' when talking about reading habits

Ziguezon · 09-25-2009, 10:38 AM

36 and counting! Now that I finally have an ebook reader (my prs-505 arrived yesterday), I'll have easier access to more of those classics!

Nate the great · 09-25-2009, 10:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why is "Tess of the d'Urbevilles" in the list twice? Why is "The Chronicles of Narnia" listed, and then "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" listed separated?

That just jumps out at you, doesn't it? I noticed it too.

09-25-2009, 07:00 AM	#1
YGG- Dry fruit Posts: 1,157 Karma: 1047086 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Paris, France Device: Bookeen Opus + HTC Desire HD	Have you read 6 of those 100? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Instructions: just tell us how many & maybe comment? (I left my answers --too lazy to dump them) 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - YES 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - YES 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - TOTAL SO FAR: 2 6 The Bible -- YES 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - YES 8 1984 - George Orwell - YES 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - TOTAL SO FAR: 4 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - YES 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - TOTAL SO FAR: 5 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien YES 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger YES 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - TOTAL SO FAR: 7 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -- YES 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald YES 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - TOTAL SO FAR:8 26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles - - - - - - - 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky- 28 Grapes of Wrath YES 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - YES 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - YES TOTAL SO FAR: 11 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -YES 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - 34 Emma - Jane Austen - 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - TOTAL SO FAR: 12 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein - 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - yes 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -YES TOTAL SO FAR: 13 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - YES 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -YES 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -yes 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - TOTAL SO FAR: 15 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 -yes TOTAL SO FAR: 15 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - 52 Dune - Frank Herbert -YES 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -YES TOTAL SO FAR: 17 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -YES 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - TOTAL SO FAR: 18 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - YES 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - TOTAL SO FAR: 19 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -yes 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - TOTAL SO FAR: 19 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -YES 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - 75 Ulysses - James Joyce -YES TOTAL SO FAR: 21 76 The Inferno - Dante - 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - 78 Germinal - Emile Zola - 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - 80 Possession - AS Byatt -yes TOTAL SO FAR: 21 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 -yes 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -YES TOTAL SO FAR: 22 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -yes 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 -YES 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - TOTAL SO FAR: 23 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -YES 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams- 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -YES TOTAL SO FAR: 25 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -YES 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - YES 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -YES TOTAL SO FAR: 30 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Being French I don't pay so much attention to all anglo-saxon titles (Who is Richard Adams?) 2) Having in the same list "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" & "Les Miserables" is...hm.

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09-25-2009, 07:08 AM	#2
nomesque Snooty Bestselling Author Posts: 1,485 Karma: 1000000 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Ipswich, QLD, Australia Device: PRS-650	Too lazy to recount, but I believe 46 or so. I did a blog post on it months ago...

09-25-2009, 07:24 AM	#3
Bilbo1967 Not scared! Posts: 13,424 Karma: 81011643 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Midlands, UK Device: Kindle Paperwhite 10, Huawei M5 10	33 for me I think.

09-25-2009, 07:43 AM	#4
mtravellerh book creator Posts: 9,635 Karma: 3856660 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Luxembourg Device: PB360°	I have read 52.

09-25-2009, 07:44 AM	#5
lilac_jive Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,870 Karma: 27376 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Pennsylvania Device: PRS-505	Richard Adams, he wrote Watership Down which is basically a scary book about bunnies. I haven't read it yet.

09-25-2009, 08:00 AM	#7
kennyc The Dank Side of the Moon Posts: 35,872 Karma: 118716293 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Denver, CO Device: Kindle2; Kindle Fire	I'm embarrassed -- only about 15 of those (could be a few more, but I'm being conservative). And hey that is exactly why I bought my 505 a few weeks ago, to begin to catch up on my classics to-be-read list. I find it funny that the two I recently read were not on the list - Of Human Bondage and Sons and Lovers

09-25-2009, 08:35 AM	#8
Verencat Wizard Posts: 2,615 Karma: 96491 Join Date: May 2009 Location: Montreal, Qc Device: xxx	38! And I'm working my way in the 1001 books to read list so I'm getting there. Is Donna Tart a classic read?

09-25-2009, 08:40 AM	#11
rhadin Literacy = Understanding Posts: 4,833 Karma: 59674358 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: The World of Books Device: Nook, Nook Tablet	I've read only 19 on the list, but then I don't read a lot of popular fiction and virtually no popular current fiction. Most of my reading is nonfiction history and biography. What fiction I do read is largely scifi/fantasy. The problem with lists like these -- and the lamentation that few will have read many on the list -- is that the list represents one person or group's view of what is worthwhile reading. Yes, Watership Down is a decent book, but I wouldn't cast in the same plane as Sherlock Holmes. The only thing remarkable about Ulysses, to my way of thinking, is that someone thought it worth reading at all. How many of these same list makers have read, for example, any of Dashiell Hammett's novels or the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin? They cited Zola's Germinal, but not his J'Accuse, which is certainly a more important work. No mention of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt. Of course, some of the most important books in history are omitted, as well as some of the most important authors -- books and authors that truly impacted the world. Lists of must read books are simply a way to say I read x books and you didn't, so shame on you! Consequently, I never feel embarassed that I read so few on a list. The beauty of literature is that there are no true must-read works.

09-25-2009, 09:17 AM	#12
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Why is "Tess of the d'Urbevilles" in the list twice? Why is "The Chronicles of Narnia" listed, and then "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" listed separated?

09-25-2009, 10:38 AM	#14
Ziguezon Ogg Vorbis Posts: 145 Karma: 292661 Join Date: Jan 2009 Device: Sony PRS-505	36 and counting! Now that I finally have an ebook reader (my prs-505 arrived yesterday), I'll have easier access to more of those classics!

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