I have a shelf below my night stand, full of books unread. The top of my nightstand, more books, read, unread and half-read. I have a box of books in my room that I have either read and forgotten I read them, or I haven't read yet. Several shelves in my
livingroom bookshelf, unread (lovely gifts from my lovely friend who recently moved away). Books on the floor, waiting to be read or re-shelved. I just requested three books from ILL and ordered three from
Better World Books. I have books. I read books. I want to read more books.
But have I read the books I should have read (according to the BBC, which reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books below)? I found
this meme on ZookBookNook and thought I'd give it a go to test my well-
readness. If you want to give it a try, just:
1) Look at the list and make those you have read bold.
2) Star (*) the ones you LOVE.
3) Italicize those you plan on reading.
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen *2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte4
Harry Potter series –
JK Rowling (I read the first two)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee*6 The Bible (I read some of it in Catholic school--obviously--and some in Western
Civ.)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte*8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell (I read it in 7
th grade and did not get it at all--may possibly have read only the first and last sentence of every paragraph)
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (I plan on reading something Dickens soon)
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott *12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller (I was in Washington DC the week we read this in AP English)
14
Complete Works of Shakespeare (King Lear, Julius Caesar, Othello)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien17 Birdsong – Sebastian
Faulks18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey
Niffenegger20 Middlemarch – George Eliot*21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh27
Crime and Punishment –
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (just couldn't do it)
28
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (again...painful)
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens33 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 Hosseini38 Captain
Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De
Berniere39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne*41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (worst. book. ever.)
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 (my sister just gave me a copy of this)
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood*49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian
McEwan51 Life of Pi –
Yann Martel*
2 Dune – Frank Herbert
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
Zafon57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark
Haddon60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck (just can't make myself like Steinbeck)
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (read half, was disturbed, will try again)
63 The Secret History – Donna
Tartt64 The Lovely Bones – Alice
Sebold65
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas*66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding*69 Midnight’s Children –
Salman Rushdie
70
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens72 Dracula – Bram Stoker73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett*74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill
Bryson75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur
Ransome78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William
Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS
Byatt81 A
Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens (I start it every December, but don't get very far)
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker*84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro* (finally just read it! I know...shameful)
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance –
Rohinton Mistry87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch
Albom89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid
Blyton91 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
Toole96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil
Shute97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory –
Roald Dahl100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Hmmm...only 28 that I've read all the way through (though much more respectable than 6)...and quite a few that I have no interest or intention of reading (and a number I've never heard of or should look into...add them to the list). How many have you read?