BBC's Book List

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


How do your reading habits stack up?


Instructions: Copy the list into a Note and put an ‘x‘ after those you have read, count ‘em up, compare tallies. This should be easy. Strutting and preening is optional.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (gah, I can’t get into it, but I own a copy)

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x times 3)

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x times 7)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x – my cat’s name is Scout, FFS. I loved this book)

6 The Bible (does 25 years of worshipping in a Christan church help? I've read most of it. I expect I skipped over all the begats, though)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (I know I should read it, and I own a copy, but I always think of the Monty Python skit, and then the idea is ruined)

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (I just joined a book club, and this is the first selection. I’m very excited)

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (x times 3)

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (the movie made me ball my eyes out. I’m never reading this book)

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x - took me 20 years, but I read it)

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x)

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (I am desperate to read this)

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (x)

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x)

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x times 4 Why don't I own these? Also, there's a fifth?)

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x)

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (x sort of. I’ve been about half-way through for about 15 years)

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen (ugh)

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (again, ugh)

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x – I loved this book, until I figured out it was a metaphor for Christianity)

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (x)

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (x - I am not insisting on getting my $40 back because I have the illustrated version, and it's gorgeous, even though the story is stupid)

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (I've never even heard of this book)

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x What Canadian girl has not read this?)

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (x)

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (on the shelf)

52 Dune - Frank Herbert (I haven't read this because I know I will love it, and there aren't enough hours in the day)

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (what is it with 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 (x This was a delightful little book)

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I want to read this, just because of the name)

61 Of Mice and Men- John Steinbeck (x)

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 (x)

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 (x)

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 (I own this. I don’t remember why I bought it)

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (on the shelf)

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (x Alice Walker’s novels are among the most horrifying I’ve ever read. But, her novels need to be read)

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (on the shelf)

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (now added to the book-shopping list)

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)

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 (I started it a long time ago, and then I divorced the person who owned the copy on the shelf. I need to replace it)

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Hmmm. 25. If had actually read the books I eventually mean to, the count would have been 40.

This is a strange and eclectic list. I can’t really sense a theme. Using my googlefu, it appears to be a survey. That makes more sense, even though the list in the link is not the same as what is posted here.

Thanks to Purpleniko and Knitting Daisies for the inspiration. I always like to think about books.