100 books meme

[altivo]

Snitched from literary_equine:
The Big Read says that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicise those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE.
4. Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 and force books upon them ;-)


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 (several times, including the New Testament in Greek)
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 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
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 (Um, guys, this is part of #33)
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
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 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
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
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 (and this one is part of #14)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

List seems a bit patched together, frankly, and oddly uneven. (pun intended)

Comments

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

It's nice to see The Bible included with all the other works of fiction. ;)

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

Well, I don't view it as a work of fiction so much as a work of folk legend. Parts are historic, parts are literary, and parts are just made up for political reasons.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

*nods* It's a book of stories for me. There is some truth among them and they tend to often convey a moral lesson but as a whole should be viewed with skepticism and not counted as law.

I'll stop there, I was just trying to be silly with my original comment and I surely don't want this to take away from what is a great list of books....though to be honest you could not pay me enough to endure some of the classics I had to read for school.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

School tends to kill great books, which is a shame. Far better you should come upon them when you are ready and have the background and interest.

I should make my own list of "100 books every literate reader of English should know." I'd omit the French and Spanish authors listed among these. They are a separate issue entirely.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

School tends to kill great books, which is a shame.

And authors as well. After enduring Tom Sawyer and feeling only slightly better about Huckleberry Finn, I had a decided anti-Twain bias. Then in a reversal of things, I saw The Mysterious Stranger on TV and wondered where that had been hidden away. In the next several months I pretty much plowed through everything Twain that the local library had to offer, with three exceptions: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Life on the Mississippi. Even his published notes were interesting, and though inter-library loan I was able to read all three versions of Mysterious Stranger. I know I still haven't read everything he wrote, but I have much better appreciation of the author than school had attempted to, and failed to, impart.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Both Huck and Tom are chosen because they are supposedly easier to identify with for young readers. That may have been true in 1900, but todays urban and suburban kids have no more comprehension of Twain's childhood world than they have of Dickens and his mid-19th century England.

Mysterious Stranger is Twain's oddest work, and it stands apart from the rest, having nowhere to stand among them.

I think the author would be better introduced to school kids in the form of his short stories or novellas, such as The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg and, of course, The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. For a longer work, Pudd'nhead Wilson would do quite nicely, or even A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Thing is, when I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn I was living a rather rural life and they still didn't do much for me. Maybe it's temporal proximity as well.

I can certainly agree about The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg and Pudd'nhead Wilson. I'm not so sure about The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County but maybe it was just that I didn't care much for it or it seemed to be over-referenced. I ought to re-read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and see if the electric fence description makes any more sense now. I'd be tempted to add Political Economy but it might be rather difficult to get some past the title and into the humor. It would however be a good lesson in not judging by the cover or title.

I've encountered an interesting variant (rather than just a cheap rehash) of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in Eric Flint's 1632 series where a small West Virginia town gets flung across time and space and the effects it has on the new timeline.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, temporal connection is essential too. I'd say it's hard for kids who live in an era of fast food, automobiles, movies, and television to even grasp the reality of Tom's and Huck's world, and especially so now, when reading levels have declined so much in the past couple of decades. These are probably now college level works, if we go by the status quo rather than expectation.

I thought, and still think, that "The Notorious Jumping Frog" was hilarious. Most of my classmates back in the 60s who had the attention span to read it agreed, but I suppose we could substitute "The Ten Million Pound Note."

[schnee.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting meme - but I don't think I'll steal it, since it'd only reveal how little I've read, which would be rather embarassing. c.c

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, as a non-native speaker, I don't think we can expect you to have read most of these. Odd, isn't it, that there are a number of French titles and one Spanish, but I didn't spot any German on there?

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*checks* Hmmm, yeah, neither do I. Pity - there's a bunch of German authors that are actually good, like Tucholsky, Böll, Brecht and so on. I also liked Schiller's Räuber (one of the books we were forced to read in school, but in retrospect, it was a good one), although I'm not otherwise too keen on the "classic" authors (Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and so on).

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Tucholsky I don't know (sounds Russian?) But Böll and Brecht certainly are on the level of most of this list. I'd also add Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann as authors to whom the literate person should be exposed. I'm especially fond of Hesse, myself.

Goethe and Schiller are best left to the college student and above, I think.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Tucholsky. :)

Mmm, I'm not really a fan of Thomas Mann, myself. Not that I've read much that he wrote, of course - about the only thing I actually *finished* was "Tod in Venedig", a short story -, but...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I agree that Tod in Venedig is overrated, especially in gay circles. I think more of Der Zauberberg or Joseph und seine Brüder in this context, or maybe Doktor Faustus.

As for Hesse, I'm quite respectful of Steppenwolf and Siddhartha, but have never managed to finish Magister Ludi. ;p

I also must confess that while I can follow the gist of children's stories or the newspaper front page in German, I am not good enough to tackle either writer except in translation.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

I started reading Der Zauberberg, but didn't get very far, IIRC. But I don't really want to hold that against Mann; I imagine he's probably still a good author, even if he doesn't quite appeal to me, especially since that's something that can be said about many authors (which is one of the reasons why I didn't really read many of the books on the list).

Sometimes, I think that I've got a rather ambivalent relationship with books and reading in general. I certainly love to read, but most of the books that get praised just don't do anything for me, so when the latest Günther Grass or Martin Walser or so is hyped, I just roll my eyes and don't bother.

I do tell myself that you can't argue about taste, but still, when I see people who read a lot (like e_phemera) post about the books they read, I always feel a bit inadequate, even though I probably shouldn't. :|

Ah well.

In any case, your German's still quite good, then, I'd say - certainly better than that of many others. ^^

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Well, as a non-native speaker, I don't think we can expect you to have read most of these.

You can expect just a little, though. I'm certainly going to be working a few more of these in my schedule. It's just added incentive to get in touch with the American literary experience. Even a little F. Scott Fitzgerald can shed a few of the annoying European prejudices that are floating around.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I've decided to Americanize this list. As far as we've been able to determine, it started out as a list from the BBC or some group in the UK, and the titles were selected by popular vote (not the best way.) But it has been modified since then, and I suspect in some cases just by individuals who took something they didn't like off the list and put one of their own favorites in its place.

The list has a severe UK/Commonwealth bias. And... in spite of the claim above, it did not originate with the American "The Big Read" project.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

That explains all the Orwell and Brontë and Austen and Dickens and suchlike and the scarcity of Twain and Melville and Wharton and T.S. Eliot and so on.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Well, Melville is there. But omitting Twain is rather amazing. Likewise Hemingway, Bellow, and others. For that matter, given the transient popular nature of some of the titles listed, the absence of Jack London is astonishing. Given the British bias, where is Rudyard Kipling?

I'm thinking of doing a list with a lot of "any one of the following" items, where several titles by the same author are listed, and I think people should know at least one of them.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

And they have Shakespeare but they've forgotten old Kit Stabbed-In-The-Face Marlowe, just like everyone else. Bah, humbug.

But I'm very happy Donna Tartt is listed. She's a wonderful author in my honest opinion, and American to boot. And as far as Americans go, Faulkner, Ezra Pound and Sinclair Lewis (though suddenly I can't remember if he actually was American) might've been kinda nice.

I couldn't dare to hope anyone reads Poe anymore, though. The man was hilarious.

Never read any Salman Rushdie. Don't tell anyone, though. And half the time I can't make heads or tails out of James Joyce.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I suppose I should explain that my enthusiasm for American stuff comes out of the two years I wasted doing English philology. Mostly the image I got was that of a culture endlessly grappling with its own puritan legacy. But however shallow my pool was, I kinda learned to like the swim. I still have an outdated copy of American Poetry and Prose on my shelf.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

American literature is quite diverse. Moreso in my opinion than that of England, France, or Germany. (Though if you were to combine the directions in which writers from all over the British Commonwealth have gone, you would start to approximate the output of the US. You'd have to include Canada, Australia, South Africa and India, though.)

There's much to like, and something for nearly everyone, unlike this weird list. I've learned something about the origin and corruption of this particular list and will probably post more about it tomorrow.

[hrrunka]

from the BBC or some group in the UK

...as something to hitch a series of TV programmes on, yes. I remember it consuming a certain amount of the prime-time TV schecdule for several weeks. I assume the aim was to get people reading rather than watching TV, one way or another...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that appears to be the situation. We found a BBC web page with a very similar list, and a statement that the list was no longer being updated.

The differences between that list and the one here are notable though. It's evident that as the list was passed through the internet, people have removed titles to make room for their own pet novel in the list, which is why it is now pretty unfocused and incoherent.

The UK origin still explains the preponderance of British writers. While Jane Austen is still well-respected here in the US, I would only expect to see Pride and Prejudice and/or Sense and Sensibility on such a list generated here.

We (or, I should say, ruwhei) already located some American equivalent lists, so I'll not engage in the hubris of creating my own. I intend to post more about this later today.

What I am thinking seriously of doing though, standing on my "authority" as a professional librarian, is a list of perhaps the 50 most important furry/anthropomorphic novels (in my opinion, as I see them) which I will post here sometime in the next week or so for the same treatment that this list received. XD (Nominations will be considered, and I'll announce that in advance.)

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

The Big Read in question was a BBC initiative, yeah.

I think there are lots of people who've read Hamlet and LW&W without making it all the way through Shakespeare/CS Lewis, so it sort of makes sense to list them separately. "Have a point if you read the famous one, and another if you read the rest." But they should be listed consecutively, at least, or it just looks sloppy.

No comment on most of the titles listed, as I haven't read many of them (or had any desire to), except to say that a lot of them are the sort of books people feel they ought to have read, and they might've voted them up on that basis.

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Well, on a quick scan I've read about 25 of those (with a 80%+ overlap with your list) so I figure I'm in good shape at least by their standards.

But then, I an avid reader and child of an avid reader....

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's an odd list. I have trouble understanding why some of those things are on it, and why others (Hesse? Buck? Hemingway? Faulkner?) are omitted in favor of Harry Potter and Roald Dahl. Where's Mark Twain? Where's Jonathan Swift? ;p

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Not to mention Heinlein, Proust, Homer...

Yeah, 100 books isn't a long enough list, weird choices or not :)

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I think 100 is enough to develop a comprehensive representation of Western literature, and feature the very best accepted works. This list does neither. I may well try my hand at making something better.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Do it!

Better yet, a meta-meme: List 25 books which you think should appear on a list of books which you'd like to know whether people have read. Have your friends do the same, and compare your lists... :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That may be a better idea, though I now have in mind something quite different. It turns out that this list is indeed corrupted and that after it originated from a distinctly British-biased source. More about that later today.

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Now that would be interesting!

"Western Literature" can be a very charged phrase, though, and what one selects can certainly reflect one's bias towards a certain type of book. I really like zetawolf's suggestion of a cross-checked list.

Of course, we can't make everyone happy with such a thing; there's always going to be someone who thinks any given list doesn't have enough representation of left-handed sex-changed Zimbawean ornithologists.

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

That's me ^_^

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*snickers* Unless you count the various Narnia books as individual ones, this is all I've read:

Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Charlotte's Web - EB White

I'm mildly interested in Brave New World and Memoirs of a Geisha (having been deeply moved by the movie), but the rest hold no allure for me... in fact, I suspect Animal Farm would piss me off :/

Three I would suggest not on this list:
Grendel by John Gardner
The Giver by Lois Lowery
Mind Is A Myth by U.G. Krishnamurti

Re: That's me ^_^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree about The Giver. (If we are to include children's and teen titles, at least.)

For someone who wants to write, your reading exposure sounds a bit thin. I'd encourage you to read more of these.

Re: That's me ^_^

[bariki.livejournal.com]

Sound advice. Even reading books that you might not like helps to give you a grounding in literature that will otherwise leave you adrift upon a rather unfriendly sea of ignorance. ^)^

I hated The Lord of the Rings and had to force myself to the end of the book so that I could learn something about Tolkien's style and use of prose. Through that, I learned to dislike waffle and love the device of simple alliteration and humour. Tolkien would hate me. XD

Re: That's me ^_^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hate? I doubt it. But he'd probably consider you shallow.

Re: That's me ^_^

[bariki.livejournal.com]

Well, horses for courses. ^)^

Re: That's me ^_^

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

That maybe true, but I've realized the main thing I want to do is affect change- writing is more like a hobby, which means I'll probably never turn it into a serious money-making device ;) On some level, I'm very happy about that.

Re: That's me ^_^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Writing is one of the traditional ways of affecting change, of course. ;D

Producing change in society or culture also generally requires a good understanding of what is already there, and why it is there. That's how you figure out where to push to make the levers tilt. Reading is the number one source of that information.

Re: That's... wait *raises hand*

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in people because of how sensitive I am to them, Alt. Not society or the enviroment or making money. I'm clear it's a selfish thing, not for the "good will of my fellow man" or any other justifications. I'm clear on my reasons- which I suspect differ from yours or anyone else's- I want to be clear on that. If it benefits others, how nice... but it makes no difference to me. Often, this creates a gap between me and people who would assume it's for the good of the many, without looking into their own reason for wanting change.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in reading a list you came up with. It would be a far more cohesive list than this one, I'm sure. I'm not saying that any of the books on it are unworthy of being read, far from it. But they just don't belong on the same list of 100 titles. And the omissions that you and others have noted are pretty glaring.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, ruwhei tracked down some more information including two more appropriate lists. I'll be posting about that in a little while.

Rather than make yet another list of general literature, I think what I'll do is make a list of what I consider the most important furry books. ;D We'll find out who has read those.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip to ruwhei's list -- those look pretty good and consistent with their criteria. I was trying to track down more information over lunch (till my manager came over and got me distracted into loading software that I needed). The thing that's tripping me up is that line at the top of the list, "The Big Read says that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed." They WHO have printed? It makes me wonder if this is actually one particular commercial firm's list of top books, but I haven't tried to figure out whether the books are from the same firm or group of firms.

All the Big Reads I found on the Web so far are either the BBC's list from five years ago, or a program here in the U.S. where the idea is for everyone to read one particular book at the same time. The BBC list is similar in spots to this one, but not exactly the same.

Mind, I believe these are at least "good" books to have read. It bothers me that the criteria for inclusion on the list aren't stated -- even if it was "I'm Jim Smith, and I like these 100 books," that would satisfy me. But even more of a bother is, here's yet another Internet thing where the original source has been chopped off. Gods, that bothers me a whole lot. You have no idea. Oh, wait, maybe you do, being involved in the business of organizing information. Anyway, I'm prone to going on wild goose chases trying to track sources down, when I probably ought to be typesetting books instead.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, it's all confused. There have been multiple "Big Read" projects in the US and UK, and I can at least say that this list didn't originate with the US version. It appears to have come from the BBC. And that statement about who has only read so much appears to have been mangled. I suspect it should be:

"The Big Read [project] says that the average adult has read only 6 of the top 100 books [on this list] they have printed."

And that may well be true. In fact, I'd wager in the US the number is even lower, and even if we count books assigned for reading in school (which are rarely actually read, but only skimmed at best.)

I almost didn't do it because of that terminology "top 100". I hate lists of the "top" anything, because just as you point out, they rarely tell you what makes these items the "top" ones as opposed to some others. There are dozens of books in the bookstore that list the "top 100 cities" or the "top 100 colleges" or "top 100 hospitals" or other such nonsense, as if they were piled up in a stack. It's the usual vague yup-speak. I've dealt with reference questions like that too. "What is the top corporation in the US?" Well, "top" in what? Layoffs? Criminal prosecutions of the management? Lawsuits filed against them? Lawsuits filed by them? Amount donated to corrupt politicians? Amount skimmed off the retirement pension fund and diverted to other uses? But when you point out that it depends on what measurement is being used, all you get is a blank look. "Well, you know, the TOP one," is all the answer you're likely to get, as if it were some absolute concept. ;p

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

*nods* And they probably only want to know what the #1 company on the Fortune 500 list was, not that they care to know why it's there. (I like your list of "Top in what?" :)

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm down for about a quarter of these. I'm surprised at a couple that you haven't read, particularly Madame Bovary for some reason. I agree that the list seems almost random in some places. What's up with Bridget Jones's Diary? There's much more interesting contemporary British fiction than that. How about something by Iris Murdoch?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It is nearly random, in a way. More about that later today, now that I know more about its origin. It does indeed have a strong British bias, and has been befuddled by mixing popular sentiment with the opinions of critics.

In general, French literature doesn't do it for me. It's much too weighted down with social convention and stricture, without sufficient self awareness to poke holes in such foolishness. That's why I like Austen, because she does poke those holes constantly.

Even then, I rather prefer George Eliot over Austen.