This is making the rounds on facebook but I thought I would share it here. I enjoy reading and while I don’t have nearly as much time to read as I once did, it remains a favorite pastime and one for which I am indebted to my parents. They made reading a regular activity from my earliest days and all through my childhood we went as a family to the public library every other Friday evening after dinner.
Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES.
Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety
Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt.
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
- The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
- Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
- Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
- To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- The Bible
- Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
- Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
- His Dark Materials/The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman
- Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
- Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
- Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
- Complete Works of Shakespeare
- Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
- The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
- Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
- Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
- The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
- Middlemarch – George Eliot
- Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
- The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
- Bleak House – Charles Dickens
- War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
- The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
- Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
- Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
- Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
- Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
- David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
- Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
- Emma – Jane Austen
- Persuasion – Jane Austen
- The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
- The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
- Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
- Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
- Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
- Animal Farm – George Orwell
- The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
- One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
- The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
- Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
- Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- Lord of the Flies – William Golding
- Atonement – Ian McEwan
- Life of Pi – Yann Martel
- Dune – Frank Herbert
- Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
- Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
- A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
- The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
- Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
- Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
- Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
- The Secret History – Donna Tartt
- The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
- Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
- On The Road – Jack Kerouac
- Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
- Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
- Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
- Moby Dick – Herman Melville
- Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
- Dracula – Bram Stoker
- The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
- Ulysses – James Joyce
- The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
- Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
- Germinal – Emile Zola
- Vanity Fair – William Make
- Possession – AS Byatt
- A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
- Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
- The Color Purple – Alice Walker
- The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
- Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
- A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
- Charlotte’s Web – EB White
- The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
- Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
- The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
- The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
- Watership Down – Richard Adams
- A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
- A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
- The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
- Hamlet – William Shakespeare
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
- Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
So, what about you? What have you read? What would you like to read? What would you like to go back and read again? There are many I would like to go back and read and others I would love to read again.
christao408 
I don’t value what other people think I should read. Some of these book represent pop culture of their time. Some of these books are written in a rather disagreeable style. Let’s face Shakespeare is not an easy read. There are a number of Dickens’ books, but where is the Oscar Wilde classic or for that matter a single book by Ayn Rand. I am an avid reader, but most of these books would NOT appear on my list what makes me look intellectual.
You know, I read a lot as well. I have bookcases filled with books I’ve read. Hardly any of them appear of this list. According to the list, I’m just average. Not.
23.Love Sherlock Holmes!!!
I’ve read 58 of these books, probably due to my major (English lit). Wrote my thesis on 100 Years of Solitude. Mitch Albom’s books never fail to make me cry in public locations, haha.
I have read your list and I think you have good taste since it is the same as mine. I found Card – Ender’s Series to be of interest. If you being make sure you find the first in the series – it is one those you need to follow from the beginning. Thanks for sharing.
I personally have read about half of these. I was an English major in college so they were required. There are a lot of really good authors that do not appear on this list that I have also read.
No list is going to cover each individual’s reading preferences, of course, but it is interesting to go through a list and see where I stand in that list-maker’s selections. I’m happy to say I’ve read 43 of the books on this list, 4 of them twice, one in French (Le Petit Prince). Charlotte’s Web was a favorite of Chris and Jennifer’s as they began getting into chapter books as children. We read them together. There are 250 books on my reading list, so I have quite an eclectic interest when it comes to reading. Belonging to a book discussion group certainly stretches my choices as we encompass the choices of several people. Thanks for sharing this.
Does the movie version count? Surprisingly, I’ve read 14 on the list. A little embarrassing since my own brother and mother have read over half of the list but considering I only read during the summer, not bad.
i’ve read 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 25, 29, 33, 36, 42, 51, 52, 54, 57, 58, 59, 61, 65, 72, 87, 88, 97, 98, 99, and 100 (abridged – does that count?). i’m surprised that the bbc claims people will only read 6 of these; there are so many classics, many of which are taught in schools. i feel like i missed reading a lot of the classics, though. oh, and i think listing 33 and 36 is kind of cheating… the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe is part of the chronicles of narnia!
@kunhuo42 – Well, at least you didn’t ask if the musical counted! Ha ha… There are a lot I would like to go back and read again.@oldpartner – 14 is better than none!@jandsschultz – Glad you enjoyed it.@stebow – @everyday_yogi – @amygwen – Oh, the list certainly misses a lot of worthy books and contains many that are questionable.@Fatcat723 – Well, it is the BBC’s list (actually, The Guardian in London’s list) so I can’t take credit for it.@moolgishin – So when you need some sympathy you take his books to a public place and read them? =D@yang1815 – Have you watched the BBC mini-series called “Sherlock”?
@christao408 – Negatory. Good?
I’ve got 57 out of 100 read and I’ve started and failed to finish 4… sorry but War and Peace is off the list (3 strikes and you’re out). I would like to revisit some of these (Watership Down and The Three Musketeers especially). Of course I’m reviewing the HP series and I’ve read Sherlock Holmes a couple of times. The Chronicles of Narnia are once again going to be on the list in anticipation of seeing the next movie – Voyage of the Dawn Treader (I am in love with that Reepicheep mouse – swoon!)
i have not read most of them but have seen quite a few of them in films. from your list, i have read only 5 (one which i had to read back in high school), and 3 titles there which i own the books but not yet have the time to read. i own many books and devote an entire cabinet solely for them, unfortunately i buy and own more than i have the time to read them. yeah, i’m a slow reader.
curious, I always thought the lion the witch and the wardrobe was part of the narnia series. It’s listed separately