book list

So a friend of mine (hi nancee) posted this list of 100 "classic" books that supposedly the average person has only read 6 of. I got to 28. How many have you read? (I'm especially interested in how many you have read, Janette, and you too Kassie, my english majoring sisters). I do think that Jane Austen shows up too many times. Surprisingly, I haven't read any of her books.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (loved it!)

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (great easy read)

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (one of my favorite h.s. required reading, love the movie too)

6. The Bible (the majority of it)

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (h.s. requirement, don’t remember much other than big brother)

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (read when 12-13 and loved it)

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (h.s. requirement, don’t remember much)

14. Complete work of Shakespere (have read many, but not his complete works)

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (great book)

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (started reading on my own once, couldn’t get by the swearing)

19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (read in middle school I think, too much description for my liking)

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (h.s. requirement, didn’t hate it, don't remember much though)

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (very funny)

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (h.s. requirement, didn’t love it, but didn’t hate it either, had a great teacher that made it interesting)

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (read it once)

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (just read it recently, found it tough to get through)

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (h.s. requirement, remember feeling sorry for the girl)

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (have read them all multiple times and love the series)

34. Emma - Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (have read it multiple times, love it, need to read it to the kids)

40. Animal Farm - George Orwell (read in 8th grade! Way too early to get much out of it, am thinking about reading it again sometime)

41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (liked it, but a bit creepy at times)

42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (I’ve seen all the movies does that count?)

46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

49. Atonement - Ian McEwan

50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

51. Dune - Frank Herbert (started to once, but too long & didn’t catch my interest right away)

52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

67. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fiedling

68. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdi

69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (we read Billy Bud instead, don't recommend it, even my teacher didn't like it)

70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

71. Dracula - Bram Stoker

72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (one of my childhood favorites)

73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

74. Ulysses - James Joyce (my h.s. teacher had us read another Joyce book intead, can't remember the name though)

75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

77. Germinal - Emile Zola

78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

79. Possession - AS Byatt

80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

86. Charlotte’s Web - EB White (another childhood favorite)

87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (h.s. requirement, very violent as I remember)

91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

93. Watership Down - Richard Adams (another we read in 8th grade, too much went over my head, just remember the rabbits)

94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (another great kid book, my kids loved it)

98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

(The last two were missing, so my friend made some up)

99. Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

100. Twilight series - Stephanie Myers (just finished reading them all, not too bad, the main character is a bit too whiney/needy for my liking though)