The Big Read

When I first came here I had a lot of spare time on my hands.  Now that I have private classes Monday through Thursday I don't have as much time, but there's always the weekends.  I'm an avid reader and The first few months here I read books like it was my job.  I bought The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde in Florence and had it finished in two days.  I got a kindle for Christmas and I bought a new book last week and had it finished in a matter of days too.  My favorite classes were always History and English and, unlike many students who only looked at cliffnotes or sparknotes, I actually read the books that were assigned except for one, Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  That book was so hard to read and I missed a major part of the plot (thanks sparknotes), but everything else I read.  I did read Anna Karenina while I was here and I'm pretty proud of that one.  It's super long and I had tried to read it once before.  Yesterday I stumbled upon a list made by the BBC in 2003 (kind of old now, but oh well) of the top 100 books to read.  Apparently they think that the average person will read only six of them.  I can proudly say that I have read 21 of them (some of them several times like the Harry Potter series, To Kill a Mockingbird, Crime and Punishement) and right now I'm attempting to read War and Peace although that's another epicly long book like Anna Karenina.  I've heard that Ulysses is the hardest book to read and some books I know what happens in the end and they're kind of depressing (although that didn't stop me from reading Anna Karenina).  I know Wuthering Heights is supposed to be one of those books you have to read, but I know what happens in the end and it's pretty depressing.  I've seen Pride and Prejudice the movie, which, ok, it may not be the same as the book, but I have other things I'd rather read first.  Besides, where is Sense and Sensibility on this list by Jane Austen?  I have read that one and they put some of her other books before that.  Another example:  Love in the Time of Cholera.  I saw that recently here and the ending is depressing too.  In my opinion there's way too much Dickens on this list (have any of you read Great Expectations?  It will forever be in my memory as the much disliked book of freshman year of high school), but at least Lord of the Rings is number one, even though in this case the movies are better!

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien [x]
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling [x]
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee [x]
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell [x]
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë [x]
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [x]
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy [attempting to read now]
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling [x]
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling [x]
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling [x]
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien [x]
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy [attempted and failed]
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving [x]
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck [x]
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen [x]
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen [x]
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald [x]
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell [x]
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy [x]
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer [x]
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [x]
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding [x]
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar [x]
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie