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sparkindarknessThe Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE, add an strikeout the books you read but didn't like.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 or less and make them read.
I’m also going to add a big agree to Zero_pixel_count’s caveat. FORCING someone to read a book is one of worst things you could ever do. Nothing kills love of the written word like being forced to read it (except maybe having to ANALYSE a text to DEATH). To this day I LOATHE poetry because my English teacher was so obsessed with poets in all their many guises. I also dislike the idea of classics - I’ve read too many that I couldn’t stand - the whole definition of what makes a classic a classic just seems rather snobbish and I’m sure many would have faded to obscurity if they hadn’t been called “classics.”
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien The horror! I admit to having hated Tolkien! I LOVED the films and I LOVED the story but as a writer he SUCKED IMO. He needed a good copy editor to take an axe to the books and remove all the unnecessary bumf. ESPECIALLY the singing
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte. For some reason the Brontes and Austin have always made me cringe. I have never wanted to read them an din trying have never got past page 2
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling I admit it. I liked them *shame*
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee This is my ultimate “huh?” book. It was a book. It wasn’t baaad - but why why why why do people rave on so about it?
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwel
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens I LOATHE Dickins. Which was a real shame because one of my English teachers rhapsodised about it. So great was his admiration for the great Dickens (and, I admit, I wanted to impressed him) and the number of people hailing them as classics that I endured Dickens book after Dickens book trying to see what I was missing. I loathed every last one without exception.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Not all of them, but enough - and yes I’ve always loved Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien Great story, bad author as above
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 And we continue my major hatred of all things Dickens. I LOATHE Dickens - he rambles obscenely, uses dozens of pointless words that could easily be described in a sentence or less and generally bores me stupid.
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
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
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame I can’t even remember why i don’t like this book but I do remember reading it once as a child and never touching it again - a major condemnation from my voracious book eating youth
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens DICKENS! HOW I HATE YE!
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis The early ones I loved, the later ones utterly failed to impress me. Once you got to/past Prince Caspian the series lost me
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Why is this listed twice?
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 - AA Milne Bored me silly as a child. Can’t kids expect some plot in their books?
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown YAWN. Why why why did the Catholic church give him so much free hype? Fools
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Read this in the original Spanish along with, err (drags up old translation skills) No-one Writes to the Colonel (El Coronel no Tiene Quien le Escribe) slooow slooow slooow books.
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 DICKENS!!!! *spit*
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' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens I can’t even watch the endless musicals of this.
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett *YAWWWWN*
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
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens DICKENS! EVERY YEAR I HAVE TO WATCH YOUR TRIPE!
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
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 I LOVED these books as a child. I have NO idea why.
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
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE, add an strikeout the books you read but didn't like.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 or less and make them read.
I’m also going to add a big agree to Zero_pixel_count’s caveat. FORCING someone to read a book is one of worst things you could ever do. Nothing kills love of the written word like being forced to read it (except maybe having to ANALYSE a text to DEATH). To this day I LOATHE poetry because my English teacher was so obsessed with poets in all their many guises. I also dislike the idea of classics - I’ve read too many that I couldn’t stand - the whole definition of what makes a classic a classic just seems rather snobbish and I’m sure many would have faded to obscurity if they hadn’t been called “classics.”
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte. For some reason the Brontes and Austin have always made me cringe. I have never wanted to read them an din trying have never got past page 2
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling I admit it. I liked them *shame*
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee This is my ultimate “huh?” book. It was a book. It wasn’t baaad - but why why why why do people rave on so about it?
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwel
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Not all of them, but enough - and yes I’ve always loved Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
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
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
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
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Why is this listed twice?
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
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
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' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
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
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
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 I LOVED these books as a child. I have NO idea why.
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
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo