Tuesday 24 February 2009

(Not the) BBC Book Meme

This was sent to my by Leah (sewtobed) on Facebook but I thought it was worthy of posting in Blogdom too. There are so many of these types of memes doing the rounds but there are for American books or films. The fact that one has appeared using English literature made me actually want to do it.

So apparently, the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions (if you want to play): Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read once. Enter a number for the number of times you read something. Make sure you delete my X's! When you've finished, tag 10 people to do it too, and put your total at the bottom.

OK, fellow bookworms, let's fight dirty!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - X (lost count)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - X2
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - X4 at least
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - X6
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X4
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein - X (The best book I've read in years - Go on. Do it!)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - X
42 The Da Vinci Code - X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - X
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - X
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon
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 - X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - X 1/2 (started it twice but couldn't finish - too glum)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - X2
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
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 - X2
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X3
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - X3
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 - X2
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 Factoy - Roald Dahl - X6 at least
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My total: 40 Not too shabby. A damn sight better than 6 anyhoo! and I'm working on improving that total.

I am trying to read my way through many of the "modern classics" and current novels. Good old Richard and Judy. By my bed at the moment is 'Coastliners' by Joanna Harris and after that, when I've done a bit more training I have "The Gormenghast Trilogy" by Mervin Peake. Eek! Having watched The Golden Compass on DVD yesterday I now want to read all the Philip Pullman books too.

So there you have it. Give it a go and tell me how many you've read. :O)

ttfn
xx

Edited 25 Feb.

Apparently (thanks Bryanb) this is not actually from the BBC but from The Guardian. It's a list of 'Books You Can't Live Without'. The BBC did a list of the Nation's Favourite Books in 2003. For links to both check out Bryanb's comment and click on the links.
Pah! Facebook! They get everything wrong!

8 comments:

jennyflowerblue said...

31, I really miss reading. There's a few more on there I couldn't finish. I never used to give-up on a book now reading is such a luxury if I don't like it-I don't finish it!

BryanB said...

Just as a matter of interest, this is NOT from the BBC, it's actually a list published in the Guardian newspaper two years ago to mark World Book Day 2007 - the relevant links are on my LJ, http://bryangb.livejournal.com/39350.html

Why some liar is going about claiming it's the BBC Big Read Top 100 when it's quite clearly not is beyond me!

As they say "oop north", there's nowt so queer as folk. (-:

Swirlyarts said...

Oooooh cool - I'll do this on my blog and then let you know! I can't believe that people will have read only 6 on this list. Oh and by the way the Philip Pullman books are way better than the film (which is a bit crap when you've read the books!)

Gone to Earth said...

That's a HUGE list. I can't get through the day without reading something... perhaps we add a critique ie Like it, didn't like it....

Swirlyarts said...

Completed it now and it's over on my blog :) If you fancy a look that is!

Suzie Sews At DOTTY RED said...

i loved this... you well read girl... keep going

Miaou said...

Thanks for the heads up on this! I got sixty which was quite a surprise. I love reading but haven't done a lot recently.

LinenandRoses said...

I only got 19. Should be more especially as there are a lot on that list I'd like to read. Need to find more time for reading. I think I'm quite a slow reader too.