The Big Read: The Top 100

Okay, I'm borrowing this idea from a friend's blog, so, indulge me. It's an easy post, and fun, and ties in with our last conversation, and my goal to read more purposeful books. That goal was sparked by this list, so I thought I'd share it with you. Maybe you'd like to read some of these?

These are the top 100 books printed, and according to one website, most American adults (or the average Joe, anyway) has read 6 of the 100. Six. That's it.

So, here's my list. How do you compare? (I've read 34 of the 100, so far....)

KEY:
* = a book I've read
% = a book I plan to read
** (or more) = a book I LOVE
# = a book I HATE
? = a book I'm not sure if I've read or not


The Big Read – Top 100 Books
Pride & Prejudice -- Jane Austen
** The Lord of the Rings -- J. R. R. Tolkien
*Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte
**Harry Potter series -- J. K. Rowling
*****To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee

**The Bible

*Wuthering Heights -- Emily Bronte
*1984 -- George Orwell
His Dark Materials -- Philip Pullman
?Great Expectations -- Charles Dickens
**Little Women -- Louisa May Alcott

Tess of the D'Urbervilles -- Thomas Hardy

% Catch 22 -- Joseph Heller

*% Complete Works of Shakespeare -- (have read some, not all, but want to read the rest)

Rebecca -- Daphne du Maurier

*The Hobbit -- J. R. R. Tolkien

Birdsong -- Sebastian Faulks

%Catcher in the Rye -- J. D. Salinger

The Time Traveller's Wife -- Audrey Niffenegger

Middlemarch -- George Eliot

% Gone With the Wind -- Margaret Mitchell

% The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bleak House -- Charles Dickens

*War and Peace -- Leo Tolstoy

% The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams

Brideshead Revisited -- Evelyn Waugh

*Crime and Punishment -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

?Grapes of Wrath -- John Steinbeck

*Alice in Wonderland -- Lewis Carroll

The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame

%Anna Karenina -- Leo Tolstoy

%David Copperfield -- Charles Dickens

**Chronicles of Narnia -- C. S. Lewis

*Emma -- Jane Austen

Persuasion -- Jane Austen

*The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe -- C. S. Lewis

**The Kite Runner -- Khaled Hosseini

%Captain Corelli's Mandolin -- Louis de Bernieres

*Memoirs of a Geisha -- Arthur Golden

*Winnie the Pooh -- A. A. Milne

*Animal Farm -- George Orwell

*The Da Vinci Code -- Dan Brown

*One Hundred Years of Solitude -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Prayer for Owen Meaney -- John Irving

The Woman in White -- Wilkie Collins

*Anne of Green Gables -- L. M. Montgomery

Far From the Madding Crowd -- Thomas Hardy

The Handmaid's Tale -- Margaret Atwood

*# Lord of the Flies -- William Golding

Atonement -- Ian McEwan

Life of Pi -- Yann Martel

Dune -- Frank Herbert

Cold Comfort Farm -- Stella Gibbons

Sense and Sensibility -- Jane Austen

A Suitable Boy -- Vikram Seth

The Shadow of the Wind -- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

*A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens

Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley

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

Love in the Time of Cholera -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

%Of Mice and Men -- John Steinbeck

Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov

The Secret History -- Donna Tartt

The Lovely Bones -- Alice Sebold

%Count of Monte Cristo -- Alexandre Dumas

On the Road -- Jack Kerouac

Jude the Obscure -- Thomas Hardy

%Bridget Jones's Diary -- Helen Fielding

Midnight's Children -- Salman Rushdie

*Moby Dick -- Herman Melville

? Oliver Twist -- Charles Dickens

Dracula -- Bram Stoker

**The Secret Garden -- Frances Hodgson Burnett

Notes From a Small Island -- Bill Bryson

Ulysses -- James Joyce

The Bell Jar -- Sylvia Plath

Swallows and Amazons -- Arthur Ransome

Germinal -- Emile Zola

Vanity Fair -- William Makepeace Thackeray

Possession -- A. S. Byatt

*A Christmas Carol -- Charles Dickens

Cloud Atlas -- David Mitchell

The Color Purple -- Alice Walker

The Remains of the Day -- Kazuo Ishiguro

?Madame Bovary -- Gustave Flaubert

A Fine Balance -- Rohinton Mistry

*Charlotte's Web -- E. B. White

The Five People You Meet in Heaven -- Mitch Albom

*Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- Arthur Conan Doyle

The Faraway Tree Collection -- Enid Blyton

*# Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad

****The Little Prince -- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The Wasp Factory -- Iain Banks

Watership Down -- Richard Adams

A Confederacy of Dunces -- John Kennedy Toole

A town Like Alice -- Nevil Shute

The Three Musketeers -- Alexandre Dumas

*Hamlet -- William Shakespeare

**Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- Roald Dahl

**Les Miserables -- Victor Hugo