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The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)




1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte * Not a big Bronte fan here
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible Probaly most of it at Sunday School. Have I mentioned how much I hated Sunday School?
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte * See above
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens A Level English has much to answer for. Including a lifelong aversion to Dickens.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy * See Great Expectations. I hate Hardy too.
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
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 * See Great Expectations
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens * Argghhhhhhhh Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Prefer the telly version but am fond of the written.
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh * Nothing could be allowed to disrupt the pretty that was the telly version
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck See A Level English comments
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens * Dickens. Nuff Said.
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 This despite me reading the ending on the tube back from work and so blubbing all the way home.
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne Am I a really bad person if I prefer the cartoon? And Tigger is so much better than Pooh!
41. Animal Farm - George Orwel
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown * Read the original when it was Holy Blood, Holy Grail
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez But for re-reading * owing to being most over-rated pile of crap ever which is odd as I love Love in the Time of Cholera
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving All the fault of ex-boy.
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy * Shudders*
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood Shudders again for plot reasons all too plausibility
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding And Lost - I'm still waiting for them to go all Piggy on Hurley...
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
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens * Hate, hate, hate.
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley Dude, where's my soma.
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez So much love.
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck. Have I mentioned that I really don't like 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 Read it, lived it.
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy * WTF is there so much Thomas Books To Slash Your Wrists to on this list?
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding Been there, done it.
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens. Twitches
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker I'm a vamp fan. Of course I've read a seminal text.
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce Probably works best after ten pints of Guinness. Unfortunately I hate Guinness.
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 It is on the pending pile. Okay, its been on the pending pile for years so its odds are not good.
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens Die, Dickens, Die!!!!!!!!!
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 - Enid Blyton St Calires, Mallory Towers and Famous Five all the way, baby.
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 RE-read so many times and it still makes me cry.
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 Still better than either terrible film.
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo