The Book Meme

[oakenguy]

Tagged by elkster:

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
3) Tag others and pass it on.

Here's the list:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x )
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ( )
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible (X)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x )
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (X)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X) (Started it twice before I eventually plowed through it)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott ( )
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (X)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( )
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ( )
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (X)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ( )
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X )
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ( )
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (X)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ( )
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X )
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ( X)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ( )
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ( )
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X )
34 Emma - Jane Austen ( )
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ( )
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis ( X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ( )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ( ) (I think I got 2/3 through this one?)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne ( X)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving ( )
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ( ) (Does having it read out loud to me count?)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ( )
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (X)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X )
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( )
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( ) (I OWN this one. But Bad Things Happening to Animals is sooo triggering to me, I haven't read past the first couple of chapters)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (X)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ( ) (Gawrsh, the BBC *really* likes Austen)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ( )
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (X)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (X )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck ()
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (X)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( )
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (X)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (X) (Please, Mr. Melville, please spend six pages explaining how a whale can't possibly be a mammal. I have nothing better to do with my time.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ( )
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett ( )
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
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 (X)
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 ( )
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( ) (You have GOT to be kidding)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( ) (Umm...some of them?)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (X)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X )
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ( X)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (X) (Could not see what the fuss was all about, honestly)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ( )
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ( )


I'm dubious about any quiz that awards the Complete Works of Shakespeare the same point value as the Five People You Meet in Heaven, but...anyone who wants, please consider yourselves tagged.

Comments

[rantarn.livejournal.com]

I find it odd that the BBC thinks people will have only read 6 of these given that in school alone I was forced had the pleasure of reading at least 8 and the others I read because I wanted to.

[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

Exactly! It makes me wonder about the British school system. Or about which low-tiered intern in the bowels of the BBC is responsible for this.

[nmsunbear.livejournal.com]

Not in the mood to do the whole thing, but... 42.

Why have both Hamlet and the Complete Works? This mix strikes me as somewhat odd.

[fightguy.livejournal.com]

For the same reason that "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" is listed separately from "The Chronicles of Narnia": no one bothered to edit the silly thing before it was posted.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

I only had 16.
I'd have more if it counted partial reads...

[shadowravyn.livejournal.com]

I have problems with The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Don't get me wrong, I've read a LOT. But who's read Timon of Athens? Or Pericles? Why can't they list the "big" plays seperately? I mean, they have Hamlet listed, why not Othello, MacBeth, and 12th Night?

Ditto with the Harry Potter Series and His Dark Materials.

[anadandy.livejournal.com]

I'd have to agree - the only reason I read the complete works is because I was an English major and took at least three Shakespeare classes. Otherwise, I'm right with you on Timon of Athens.

And your icon is priceless.

[shadowravyn.livejournal.com]

I'm getting my MA in English, writing my thesis on (among others) Aaron from Titus, and TA with my advisor who teaches Shakespeare at Clark, and still haven't read Timon!

Wrote a paper on how Coriolanus is just one giant Oedipal complex from beginning to end, though. Why didn't Freud do all his psychoanalytic work on that play instead of Hamlet, huh? Oh right, cause he probably hasn't read it!

Rawr!

Your icon is also quite hilarious. I love that movie.

[katestine.livejournal.com]

Not only have I read >6 books on this list, I've read >6 books on this list twice.

Not, however, the complete works of Wm Shakespeare.

Also, they have double-count books and I hate how they include lists of books - I mean, surely reading 4 of the Harry Potter tomes counts for something, not to mention your example.

ETA: also, to further pick on the BBC, aren't most of these books popular? I hear there's quite a few people have read Harry Potter, or DaVinci Code, etc. They might as well make the comment that most people haven't read 6 books in their lives as create this list.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

It's really weird that they split up the tolkien books but not shakespear. Not even "the comedies" or some subset.

On another note, you should read the time traveler's wife. It's pretty good.

[eroika.livejournal.com]

Personally I don't get why the DaVinci Code is on there as I thought that was only average read at best.

Also everyone should love Austen ;-)

[blacktigr.livejournal.com]

Every now and then, I get into a "okay, I'll read a classic" phase. Reading Lolita on the Orange line was a little odd.

Next on my list is Watership Down. It was referenced in Inkheart, so I decided to throw it on my to-buy list. Of course, at the rate we are buying books these days (and the ones I get from the library), we're going to have to buy yet another bookshelf. That'll put our total at 15.

Normally, I tell people they have to read my favorite book, the Count of Monte Cristo, but of late I've realized that it's not for everyone. Jane Eyre was a great book for an unsophisticated reader. The gothic novel twist ending is great for the easily impressed.

If I had to pick a book on that list to tell you to never read, to avoid like the Black Plague? Tess. It's one of the worst books I've ever read, and that's saying something.

[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

Heh. I compared reading Middlemarch to slogging my way through a swimming pool full of oatmeal. Is Tess like that?

[elkster.livejournal.com]

43? I'm in awe!

[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

I have to confess, I went through a phase in my late teens where I thought it was a good idea to read Very Important Books, regardless of whether or not I liked or even understood them. Most of the thick books--Moby Dick, War and Peace, etc.--on my list date back to that time.

[elkster.livejournal.com]

Wow, I probably should be doing the same thing now that I have a little bit of time while I'm looking for a job.