July 10, 2008

The Big Read.

An explanation, courtesy of Wikipedia (I love that place!):
The Big Read was a 2003 survey carried out by the BBC, with the goal of finding the "Nation's Best-loved Book" by way of a viewer vote via the Web, SMS, and telephone.

The Big Read figures that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books. How do you stack up?

How to Play:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 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
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman **Wildly overrated.
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 -- I hate this book
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 --Ah! Summer reading...
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
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 -- So weird.
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 -- I just really like the name of this book.
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 --this lady freaks me out. Wikipedia her.
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 --freaky.
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 Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo --yes! I finally did it!!!

I only got 36! Looks like I have some reading to do. Because I want to have at least 50.
Does it count if your dad read it to you?

I tag: Dad, Kari and James, Christi, and Jho.
You can do it in my comments section, you can. But you know you want to do it on your own blog--if you have one.

P.S. I know Kari and my dad are going to kick my arse on this one.

7 comments:

  1. Awesome, you tagged me! I was just leaving though, ill get back to it tonight. Although I'm rather miffed that Atlas Shrugged isn't on this list.

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  2. Have Read:
    Pride & Prejudice -Jane Austen
    To Kill a Mockingbird -Harper Lee
    The Bible
    Complete Works of Shakespeare
    The Great Gatsby -F Scott Fitzgerald
    Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -Douglas Adams
    Lion, Witch, Wardrobe -CS Lewis
    Animal Farm -George Orwell
    Da Vinci Code -Dan Brown
    Lord of the flies -william golding
    Charlotte's Web -EB White
    Heart of Darkness -Joseph Conrad
    Hamlet -William Shakespeare (shouldnt that be included in "complete works" above)
    Charlie & the chocolate factory -roald dahl

    Intend/Want to read:
    1984 -George Orwell
    On The Road -Jack Kerouac
    Dracula -Bram Stoker
    Watership Down -Richard Adams


    Wow, i suck lol.

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  3. So you're an Ayn Rand fan?
    Daniel and his father both like Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. My older brother described Atlas Shrugged as "capitalism on crack."

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  4. Haha, thats a pretty accurate description. I'm actually in the middle of the book right now (quite literally half-way) I "heard" that there is a big budget movie in production based on the book. Angelina Jolie as Dagny, I sincerely hope they make it a trilogy since the book is in 3 parts anyway, not to mention its ridiculously long and would never fit into a 2hr movie.

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  5. ha, I read only 6!!!! I think I win ;)

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  6. I put my list on my blog...seriously, don't bother with Of Mice and Men. It'll make you depressed for weeks. I couldn't believe your dad hasn't read the Bronte books! What is wrong with him?-- Kari

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