Seriously thoughtful Have you read 6 of those 100?

[wayspooled]

55 of 'em.

I love the idea of a top 100 recommended books but "in my opinion" - the only way I see a list like this being compiled is to have everyone name their 100 books - or at the very least 50. Otherwise all you're going to get is 30 popular books and hundreds of 1 and 2 vote books. If people name their own 100 or up to 100, then you are in for a lot of work tallying it up - but I think it would be more accurate and satisfying.

[pshrynk]

32 of them. Some may have been the duplicates, however.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by wayspooled

55 of 'em.

I love the idea of a top 100 recommended books but "in my opinion" - the only way I see a list like this being compiled is to have everyone name their 100 books - or at the very least 50. Otherwise all you're going to get is 30 popular books and hundreds of 1 and 2 vote books. If people name their own 100 or up to 100, then you are in for a lot of work tallying it up - but I think it would be more accurate and satisfying.

Good point there.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by wayspooled

55 of 'em.

I love the idea of a top 100 recommended books but "in my opinion" - the only way I see a list like this being compiled is to have everyone name their 100 books - or at the very least 50. Otherwise all you're going to get is 30 popular books and hundreds of 1 and 2 vote books. If people name their own 100 or up to 100, then you are in for a lot of work tallying it up - but I think it would be more accurate and satisfying.

wayspooled, I think that, in theory, you are correct, that would be a way of approaching this that would almost certainly lead to a truer result.

However, I doubt that more than a handful of people would have the time to compile and post a top 100 list.

The thread I promised to start is now up and running here.

[wayspooled]

Well, I meant they should list "up to" 100 books they think should be "recommended to everyone" but of course not everyone has 100, even I don't have 100 I'd feel comfortable recommending to anyone - at 55 years old.

No, I totally applaud the effort of you guys and I think any result you come out with will be a big addition to the community

[Sydney's Mom]

Here is my list. I don't think it will grow, as my reading tastes have changed to more popular stuff.

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 -- YES
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger


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 -

26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles - - - - - - -

28 Grapes of Wrath YES
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 -



37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein -

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 -

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 -

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -




57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -


67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -


71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

75 Ulysses - James Joyce


76 The Inferno - Dante -

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -



81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -


87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams-
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I think I counted 63. But I only remember a handful - most were read in high school and college. Kind of a strange list - Bridget Jones's Diary?

[kennyc]

Yeah, I'm almost more interested in where the list came from than in the results.

[KarenH]

There's only 14 that I'm sure I've read, but another 10 or so that I'm not sure about - either I started and didn't finish, or may have read something by the author but don't remember if it's the one on the list or not.

[jes1]

I read about 30 of them all the way through, but read some portion of quite a few of the others. I don't really agree that some them are "essential". Of course, some of the ones I don't think are essential are among the ones I enjoyed the most.

[Laine]

I've read 59 but some were 45 years or so ago so I don't remember much.
Some I'd never read again. Some I like.
We did Portrait of the Artist as a Young man at school so I tried Ulysses and didn't get far. (Didn't count it.)

It seems like a lot I read when young - teens, early 20s and a lot in the last 10 years and not so much midlife. Too busy living a life?

I don't feel specially clever for reading this many. I read 2 books a day after I went home from primary school. I lived in a very small village. I was never sporty. TV was limited and my mother was strict about what we watched. Then I went to an all female teachers college in Hertford.

I think people growing up now will read less of future lists due to all the alternatives they have. We didn't have mobileread so we read instead of discussing our reading.

[Requiem]

69 of them for me, but that was counting the duplicaes of Hamlet, Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, etc... so maybe 65 or 66.

Some were good, others were meh.

[Daithi]

A measely 23, but several are on my to read list.

[PieOPah]

I've read 14 from the list, but then I'm not sure if that's an accurate count.

Does the Harry Potter Books count as 7?
Does Dark Materials count as 3?

In my list of 14, I have counted the collections as 1, but then it isn't really a top 100 if you have collections in there!!!

There are also a few that I can't remember whether or not I have read so haven't counted them.

There are also quite a lot which are sitting on my 'to be read' list...

[DMCantor]

I count 54, but there are a couple of duplicates in there -- complete works of shakespeare as well as hamlet, for example.

I have a couple of recommendations for books on the list that you didn't mark "Yes:"

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

These are very different, but each quite wonderful in its way.

[ficbot]

40 for me. But Shakespeare and Narnia were listed twice in varying forms. Not a bad list overall, though. I would have scored way higher if I had ever gotten into Austen.