I love to read. I always have. When I was younger, I would crawl into the bottom shelf the linen closet next to my bedroom with a flashlight and read to my hearts content. (I'm sure this was to avoid any chores I was supposed to be doing.) Actually, I would read everywhere: Inside, outside, in my room, in the car, at the kitchen table, at school, on the computer etc... Once, when I was in Elementary School I was supposed to be listening to my teacher talk at the front of the classroom, but instead I had a book under my desk that I was reading whenever I thought I could get away with it. My teacher caught me and told me to put it away. I wasn't in trouble until I started arguing that anything I was reading in the book was definitely making me smarter than anything she could be teaching me. (oops.)
I also love to read ANYTHING. I'm a bit of a weirdo because of the variety of books I like. Of course I love the classics like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. I'm a sucker for LDS romance novels. I enjoy reading history, and went through a phase last year where I couldn't get enough of the French Revolution. My favorite author writes Science Fiction almost exclusively. I read newspapers and magazines and even the fine print on the bottom of advertisements. If you like to read, I am confident that we can find a book in common that we love - no matter what your favorite genre is. I love them all.
I wish I could really explain how much I love to read. I am so grateful that David likes to read, because some of my favorite times spent with him are reading together on the couch/floor/porch. It becomes a problem sometimes, because many times when we should go out and be social with other people, we opt to stay home and read books. I'll be honest though, I have read more in the past 6 months than I have in the past 5 years. Homework really puts a damper on reading for fun.
So, one of my friends just posted this on Facebook. Apparently the BBC came out with this book list of classics that everyone should read. They say that the average person has only read six of these books. I have read 25. I feel pretty good about that. There are several books on this list that are on my personal "To Read" list. (Specifically Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell - It is next up on my list.) I don't think that I will ever read all of these books, but I would like to read many of them.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Graham
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
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
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
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
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
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
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
61 Of Mice and Men - John 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
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
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 Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
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 - E.B. 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
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 (contained within the complete works)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
After going through this list, I feel like it is very poorly thought out. How do you think that they compiled this list of books? It seems like such a random assortment, but without even representation. I love Jane Austen, but to have 4 of her books on the top 100? And next to Whinny the Pooh? Also, they have The Chronicles of Narnia, AND The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Umm.. those are the same thing. Besides, who is the BBC to say who should read what books. They only have British/European/English authors anyway... they are missing all sorts of great books. Like Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Sidenote: Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy was quite possibly the saddest book I have ever read. Ever.
Hmm... Maybe I will write my very own list of books that everyone should read. (Enders Game would definitely be on it.) The hard part is mixing old classics with pop-culture must-reads. How can you say "this book is among the top 100 books ever written" when it hasn't had to stand the test of time. I don't think that its really possible. So instead, I am going to write a list of books that I love/have read. It will be my very own version of the "Official List that Everyone in the Whole World should Read" but will lean more towards "Books that I would recommend to anyone because I loved them that much." (Or maybe even "I didn't like this book because it made me cry the entire time and the ending was the saddest possible ending the author could have ever imagined but I think I am a better person for it and so I am including it on this list.") I guess we will just have to see what the list develops into.
Here we go:
1. The Ender/Ender's Shadow Series by Orson Scott Card. Seriously, my all time favorite. Especially when you get into the Shadow Series. A-mazing.
2. The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy. I love everything about this book. It is also my favorite play. Percy Blakeney is right up there with Mr. Darcy. And speaking of...
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. A classic - definitely belongs on this list.
4. The Screwtape Letters - C. S. Lewis. I read this when I first got to college and loved it, it gave me so much insight into my actions and how to become a better person.
5. The Harry Potter Series - J.K Rowling. These books create a whole new world of magic and adventure. I love everything about them and think that everyone should read them.
Well... There you go... the first five books on my list. I think that I will continue to add to it as I think of books that need to be added to it. What books do YOU think should belong to this list?
7 comments:
I've read 19 books on this list. I agree about the randomness of the list. Five People You Meet in Heaven and Hamlet? I really don't know how they picked it. And, two of the worst books I've ever read are on this list, Lord of the Flies and Brave New World. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. Sometimes the "classics" (hear my sarcasm)are not good books at all.
I will have to think about what my list would include. Maybe I'll extend this discussion over to my blog.
You want to read 1984. You are very brave. 1984 is the only book that I ever wanted to throw at the wall and rip apart. I couldn't even finish it. (I was reading it for my English class and a little bit for fun.)
I thought that the book list was random too. I would like to know how they came up with that list. You should add Anne of Green Gables to your book list. If you get the chance you should read the whole series. I like them better then the movies.
I agree with Melissa above, 1984 was a bit funky. Course, I had to read it for AP English in high school, so that probably changed my perspective on whether I like it or not. Maybe if I checked it out now, when I'm older and my life views are different, I would like it more. Who knows. It's a "classic", so at least you can cross it off the list!
Oh, and I've read 20 of the books. I don't really believe the BBC compiled this list. It wouldn't have so many holes in it if they really researched and put it together. The BBC is thorough.
Shantel, Steve is obsessed with this post! He took over the mouse on the computer and scrolled over them very slowly. He has read 15 on the list. He's also only interested in reading another 18 and only 6 of those are books he says he actually intends on reading. He wanted to tell you that he TOTALLY agrees with your list of books that people should read! But he would add the complete Chronicles of Narnia Series, Freakonomics, and The Count of Monte Cristo. We love you guys and can't wait to see you again.
Sue says:I would include the Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Hard reads if you're sensitive about bad things being done to people but full of history which a lot of people don't know. Some people want to forget or deny what happened in World War 11. I might think of some other books later. I think I've read about 15 on the list. I agree with Wendy. Lord of the Flies? I know it's suppose to be a classic but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone either.
Yeah, there's a lot of good books missing from this list and some not so good ones on the list. I've read 20 of those books, and there are 11 that are on my list to read. One of which I have checked out from the library right now. To your list I would add The Hiding Place, and some others, I'm sure, but I can't think of them right now.
Shantel! I made a list of 100 books I want to read too! Well, I only made it to 82 so thanks for some great additions to my list!
Oh by the way, I love your "Disclaimer"/case of needtobevalidated... I am the same way! :)
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