Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Above Average, baby!


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


What about you?


[This post is actually a tag I received on FaceBook.  If you'd like to play along and share your own list, you'll find full instructions here:

My FaceBook Note  (<-- I have this set for "everyone" to view, but if you aren't yet my Facebook friend, I'd love to connect over there.  Just send me a request and I'll happily add you!)


Here's the BBC's list.  All titles in boldface are ones I HAVE READ, and all titles in italics are ones I HAVE READ PART OF BUT NEVER FINISHED or READ AN EXCERPT:

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
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
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 Ishiguri
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
99.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


So I've read 36 out of the 100 books, and read some of 4 more.  Chew on that, BBC! LOL.


I'm packing today for our flight tonight to The Big Apple.  Thanksgiving in NYC, baby!  I hope those of  you who celebrate it have a blessed holiday and that everyone has a fantastic week!





32 comments:

Talli Roland said...

Of course you're above average! Was there ever any doubt? :)

I need to take a closer look at this - I'm not sure how many I've read!

Kelly Polark said...

That is awesome! I suck. I think I've only read 12 (at least that's twice the six!)

Summer Frey said...

Have fun in New York!! At least you'll be getting holiday-appropriate temps... *jealous*

Lindsay said...

Yay, I'm with Talli. I knew you'd be be above the average 6.

I shall add my "ha,suck on that BBC!" I've read 51 of the 100 books I knew my English Literature degree would pay off. lol.

Cherie Reich said...

I'm above average too! I've read 22 and started to read 11 of them. I sometimes feel bad for Charles Dickens. I can't seem to get into his novels. Then again, I haven't tried them recently. Maybe I should give them another go.

Sarah Ahiers said...

i'm at about 26, but i can't help but notice some are doubled up, like the complete works of Shakespeare and Hamlet, and Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Jessica Bell said...

ha! I've only read 25 of these :o) Thanks for playing along!

Lenny Lee said...

hi miss nicole! wow thats a pretty big list. for me its just only 3 i did myself but theres some mom read to us so maybe that could count. i printed that list and showed it to my brothers and my sister so with all 6 of us we got lots that got read but the winner for the most in our family is one of my brothers cause so far he read 57 of them! wow how cool is that. i hope you have lots of fun on your trip and have a really fun and happy thanksgiving.
...big hugs from lenny

Lola Sharp said...

Oh, you will be so close to me!! Next time you come up here let me know...I'll drive up and we can have drinks/meal. *pouts*

Have a safe journey and know that I'm thankful for you.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Love,
Lola

Mara McBain said...

11 for me and parts of 3 more! Yayyyy for above average! LOL

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Kristin Rae said...

I've read 15 of them, started to read several of them, I've read most of the Bible but not in order, and I own quite a few more on the list that I just haven't gotten to yet.

Jai Joshi said...

I've read 27 of the list and read half of about ten more. Just never got round to finishing them but I will eventually.

I think that when it comes to averaging things out, most people will probably have only read about six. That's sad.

Some of the books don't deserve to be on the list, though. I mean come on, Ulysses? No one's finished reading that book because it's crap. Even the judges who voted it the greatest book of the 20th century admmitted to not reading it all because it's freaking impossible to read.

Jai

Nicole Zoltack said...

I've read 30 of them. A couple I've read more than once.

LTM said...

just got this 3x on FB---I'm totally going to sit down and do it/send back. I'm thinking I've read at least half of these... does owning/attempting count? some I tried to read but... ergh~ :D <3

Lindsey Duncan said...

I don't think saying "Complete works of X" is really fair ... ;-) And the whole Harry Potter series? What you do if you've only read four? Bold half the word?

Okay, I'll stop being cantankerous now. Eyeballing it, I know I'm comfortably over six, but would have to work it out to figure out how many precisely.

Pat Tillett said...

I've read well over half of them, but it's been a long time. I've started over. I'm surprised at a few of the books that are on the list.
Many of the books listed are free on kindle, so I'm going to take advantage and read some of them again...

Anonymous said...

Damn, certainly interesting topic. Where will I find this RSS?

Jane Stone
cam finders

Matthew MacNish said...

This is so fun! I've read almost half these books. What does that make me?

A nerd, and proud of it!

Terry Stonecrop said...

I counted 46.

Have a great trip and a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I've read twenty-eight!

Gardner West, private eye said...

I've read Catcher in the Rye, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

I guess my tastes lean toward the trashier stuff.

Have a great holiday in the Big Apple!

j.m. neeb said...

If you get a chance, you should check out Kerouac's On the Road and Huxley's Brave New World. Both are definitely worth the read!

Joyce's Ulysses would be italicized for me. I've tried three times, but that book is my elusive white whale! Maybe I should try it once again...

Interesting list!

Jemi Fraser said...

Cool list - I've read 31 and parts of several more. Don't want to talk about the ones I hated and didn't finish :)

Vicki Rocho said...

Wow! I had to copy the list and mark it up for myself...I have read (at some point, though please don't quiz me on some of them) 34 of these and own an additional 25.

That was kinda cool!

Maria McKenzie said...

I've read 16. Too bad seeing the movies doesn't count. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Nicole, I named you as a Versatile Blogger today:).

Anonymous said...

Вот новейшие киноленты что я нашла в нете из рабочих

Anonymous said...

I was tagged on Facebook, too! I think I've gotten up to 30, give or take. I haven't checked it recently. But it is on my bucket list to read all 100. :)

LARCHMONT said...

That is a very good number. What a quirky list. I'm continually intrigued by the contemporary books that show up there--bodes very well for those authors. Glad you posted it again, for some reason I never get tired of checking out this list.

j.leigh.bailey said...

Well, I've read 20 of them completely and about 6 others that I've read part of. There are even a couple that I own, but have not read. Whew! Not a fabulous showing, but I like being above the average! :D

S.A. Larsenッ said...

Okay, so I stopped at #11, knowing that I've already read six of those first ones. I'll admit, though, that I've read most of them in my adulthood.

Erin Kuhns said...

First of all...Hi Nicole!! Been a long time! I have all but fallen off of the blog-planet. But I poke my head in from time to time!

Great post! I blushed as I counted only 14. And some of those were due to high school teachers threatening detention if I didn't read them...

Many of them are books I'd now like to read. Some of them--not so much.

Very inspiring numbers above, though!

Anonymous said...

I've read 34, and seen movies of some of the others! So, now I'm copying the list because there are books here I would love to read before I die. I'm so glad I came over to re-follow you and find it (I once followed you then a glitch in blogger forced me to do a new blog and I lost all followers. Trying to get back the ones I want to follow. I've missed coming here. So now you're back on my blog roll!! Hooray!!!
Ann Best, A Long Journey Home