The Big Read, How Many Have YOU Read?

I was over "meeting" a new follower and I found this post on her blog and was intrigued by it. You know it's the teacher in me coming out. I know I say I only read history books now a days so I thought I'd do pretty poorly, but was still interested to see how well rounded of a reader I am. I did better than I thought, but I do wonder how they came up with this listing, a lot of the books are classics and while I liked reading Da Vinci Code, I don't think anyone would argue that it's in the same category as say Hamlet. This can't be a list of the 100 books written!

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?

Look at the list and color those you have read.

Italicize those you intend to read.

Remark on the books you LOVE.

The Book List:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien: LOVE these, on my all time favorites list and was obsessed by the movies
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte: another all time favorite book, even enjoy the sometime horrendous movie versions - do like the one with William Hurt by my fave is the Masterpiece Theater one.
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling: These were great and as soon as a new one came out I'd have to stop everything and read it through in a day! Are they the world's best literature, probably not but they did get millions of kids reading and I'm all for that!
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible: Have never read it the whole way through but have read major portions of it, I'm counting it, oddly all those shows on the History channel is what got me into it!
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell: assigned in high school
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott: Hasn't every little girl, read this followed by Little Men?
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare: I've read almost all of them so I am counting this one
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier: Discovered this one in high school and it's a frequent reread
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien: Read this years before the Lord of the Ring trilogy
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot .
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: But why did I bother?
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh.
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll: Really did enjoy this, a lot more sophisticated that people realize
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame: Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disney was a big hit with me when little because of this book, although it seemed a lot faster and exciting back then than it did when I went back as an adult.
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis: Not only have I read them, I have the delux illustrated hardbound edition.
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis: Actually my least favorite out of the bunch
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres: Wasn't this a movie with Penelope Cruz?
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden: facinated by geisha and that whole way of life
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne: Oh yes and now rediscovering it with our little one
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell4
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown: Interesting how he tied in bits of history and made it all very convincing, but really it's a FICTION people, a fun read but NOT history! It's a page turner, try the big illustrated version if your library has it, it's great to read it and see pictures of the works of art and places being mentioned at the same time.
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 -My favorite children's series, hands down. Loved each and every one, watched the Canadian production, and plan to visit P.E. Island.
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding: Forced to read in school, really didn't like it
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: Another high school read, made it through it because of the French Revolution tie in, a period that interest me. Not my favorite Dickens.
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: maybe I'll get to this one day
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold: I could not get past the premise
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas: Great
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac: How'd I manage to avoid this one
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding: Quite fun and light
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville- I can appreciate this book.
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker: Stoker was on to something, even though this kind of thing normally creeps me out, it also facinates me and keeps bringing me back to read it again and again
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett: Have read and enjoyed many, many, times and still have my childhood copy
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath: I feel like I should have had to read this, how I'd I manage to avoid getting this assigned in high school?
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola7
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt: Yes go out and read now if you haven't
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: Some find this slow but I really like it, but then again I also like slow British movies like the one based on the book, Howard's End, etc.
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert: Read part but didn't finish, can't remember why
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: Yes and my copy is all dog eared!
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
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.
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: And all his other brilliant books!
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

When I first read over the list quickly at the other blog, I thought I only had forty or so, but upon going over each and everyone, that makes 60 for me and the number's not likely to change any time soon unless the list is updated, so even if you take off the ones that I don't technically have like all of Shakespeare that is still more than half so I'm better read than I thought. I do have to give credit to Mrs. Collins and Mrs. Wagner who are partially responsible as they made me read several back in the day!

How about you? How many have you read? If I haven't read it and you think I should, convince me!