*Print from Hesed Books and Gifts
I must begin by saying these kinds of lists bother me a little. Who's to say which books are "great"? I've also come to believe that people should just read what they like whether it's a literary classic or a young adult novel, or a comic book. Having said that, I decided to copy and paste this list and weigh in. I was inspired by Steph, a fellow teacher, who posted this to her blog. I thought it could be fun if the other book worms wanted to put their names (in a different color) next to the books they've read. If you want to participate, copy and paste it to your own blog, and link up here. OR, simply list your books in the comments.
From the BBC List of 100 Great Books:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen Courtney Kayla Bess Melisa
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Courtney Bess
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling Courtney (just the first 3) Kayla Melisa
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee Courtney Kayla Bess (I think I read this in high school) Melisa
6 The Bible Courtney Kayla Bess (parts)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte Bess
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell Courtney Kayla Bess
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Kayla Melisa
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott Courtney Melisa
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy Melisa
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller Courtney (only the first half!) Kayla Bess (Again, I think I read this in h/s)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Courtney (many of them) Kayla Bess (many)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien Melisa
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger Courtney Kayla Bess Melisa
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 Courtney Kayla Bess Melisa
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens Courtney
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy Bess
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky Bess
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck Kayla
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll Kayla Melisa
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame Kayla
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis Courtney Kayla
34 Emma - Jane Austen Courtney Kayla Bess Melisa
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen Bess
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Courtney Kayla
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini Kayla Melisa
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden Kayla Bess Melisa
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne Kayla Melisa
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell Courtney Kayla Bess
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown Kayla Melisa
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Courtney (half of it) Kayla Bess (half)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving Kayla
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery Courtney
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood Kayla
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding Courtney Bess
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 Courtney Bess
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon Kayla
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens Kayla
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley Courtney
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon Kayla
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Kayla Melisa
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Courtney Kayla Bess (Though it's hard for me to keep Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and to Kill a Mockingbird straight.)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Courtney Kayla Bess
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt Kayla
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold Courtney Kayla Melisa
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac Courtney (half) Kayla (half) Bess Melisa
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding Kayla Bess Melisa
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville Courtney Bess
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens Courtney Kayla
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett Kayla Melisa
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce Courtney Bess
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Courtney Kayla Bess Melisa
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 Kayla
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell Kayla
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker Courtney Kayla Bess
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 Courtney Kayla Bess Melisa
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom Kayla Melisa
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad Courtney Kayla Bess
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery Courtney Kayla Bess Melisa
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole Bess
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Courtney Kayla Bess
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl Courtney Kayla Bess Melisa
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
I definitely don't agree with all of this list. Some of it, but certainly not all of it. Maybe we should compile a top 20 best book list for our dear readers. Would we agree what would make the list?
ReplyDeleteThis thing about great books is necessarily very personal. But if I had to recommend 10 of this hundred to read they will be: 1,3,7,17,18,20,22,34,79 and 85.
ReplyDeleteI miss in the list some of my most loved books though, but if anyone is interested they are on my blog profile.
This is a strange list. For instance, why put Shakespeare on there and then Hamlet later? Also, the Bible isn't technically supposed to be fiction. :-) I'm so bad with the books I read in high school and early college. I have a bad memory and they all conflate into one novel where people work on a farm, there's a big, developmentally disabled man who accidentally kills a puppy, a black man is accused of raping a white woman, and there's a court scene and murder at the end.
ReplyDeletePet, I'll have to go check out your favorites too. I also like to try new novels, especially ones that come recommended.
ReplyDeleteHey, will one of you invite me to be a contributor so I can weigh in? (My invitation expired...)
ReplyDelete