BBC Book List

Instead of writing about TV shows or something, I'm going to write about books.  The only TV I've been watching has been episodes of Las Vegas and Mythbusters.  Both are really fun shows to watch.  And they'll deserve some writin' after I finish with them.  But I haven't, so here's one of those "copy this into your Facebook notes and fill in your own answers" things - because I can.

"Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!"

Looking at this list, I'm a bit skeptical about the 6 out of 100.  They tend to be classics, so a fair number are read in school.  At least that's my first impression.  As to the tagging, that's just bloody annoying.



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - Nope, though I am curious as to what the story is actually about.  I'll probably just watch one of the movies instead of reading it.

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - Yes.  I like it enough it may get it's own blog post in the future.  Or not, because I'm lazy.  1/2

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - Nope.

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Yes.  Why is this on the list?  This seems to be a list of 'classics'.  Harry Potter is not a classic.  2/4

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Yep.  Didn't really like it.  3/5

6 The Bible - How many people actually read the entire Bible?

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Yes.  Sort of a 'meh' book.  4/7

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - Yep.  5/8

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - No, but I really want to read it.

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - I almost checked this out of the library four days ago.

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Nope.

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - I've never heard of this book before.

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - Yep.  6/13  Already at the magic six books.

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - All of them?  My god.

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - Another one that I haven't heard of.

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yes.  7/16

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - Another one that I haven't heard of.

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - I've actually never read this.  Another one that I want to read.

19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - Nope.

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - Nope.

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Nope.  I didn't realize this was a book.

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Yep.  Didn't like this one either.  8/22

23 -------------------------- There was no 23 in the note I copied.

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - Nope.

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - Yep.  9/24

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Nope.

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - Nope.  But another one I kind of want to read.

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Caroll - You mean Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?  Yes.  And I've read Through The Looking-Glass as well.  10/28

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Nope.

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - Nope.

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - Nope.  Almost picked this one up in the library as well.

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - Yep.  11/32

34 Emma -Jane Austen - Nope.

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - Nope.

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis - Wait.  This was already included in number 33.  List Fail.

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - Nope.  I actually do not want to read this.

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - Nope.

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Nope.

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne - Nope.

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - Yep.  12/39

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Why is this on here?  I regret ever reading it.  13/40

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Nope.

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - Nope.

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - Nope.

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - Nope.

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - Nope.

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - Nope.

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - Nope.  But I want to read it.

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - Nope.

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - Nope.  Not interested in reading this one either.

52 Dune - Frank Herbert - Yep.  And the next two or three books in the series as well.  14/50

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - Nope.

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - Nope.

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - Nope.

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - Nope.

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - Nope.  Kind of want to read this.

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Yep.  15/56

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - Nope.

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Nope.

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - Yep.  16/59

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - Nope.

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - Nope.

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - Nope.

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - Nope.

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - Nope.

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - Nope.

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding - Nope.

69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - Nope.

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Nope.

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - Nope.

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - Yep.  17/70

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - Nope.

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - Nope.

75 Ulysses - James Joyce - Nope.

76 The Inferno - Dante - Yep.  Why are they only including the first third of the comedy?  I've read all of the Comedy.  18/74

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - Nope.

78 Germinal - Emile Zola - Nope.

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - Nope.

80 Possession - AS Byatt - Nope.

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -I don't think I've ever read the book.  It makes me sad when I realize this.

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - Nope.

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - Nope.

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - Nope.

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - Nope.

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - Nope.

87 Charlotte's Web - E.B. White - Yep.  19/85

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - Nope.

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Yep.  Don't know why they picked those 12 stories.  20/87

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - Nope.

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - Nope.  But sitting in my room to be read at this moment.

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - Nope.

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - Nope.

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - Nope.  Kind of want to read this.

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - Nope.

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - Yep.  21/95

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - They already included this with the complete work of Shakespeare (#14).  22/96

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - Yep.  23/97

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - Yep.  Never seen the musical though.  24/98


It'd write more, but stuff started happening while I was writing this.

[edit]

The main enjoyment I get out of book lists like this is finding more books that I want to read.  Nevermind that I already have something like eight books checked out of the library right now.  Also, here's the BBC Book List that this chain letter is kind of based on - http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml.  Offhand I think the actual BBC list has more books that I want to read than this one.  This one throws in a bunch of American High School books, and I've either read them, or just don't want to read them.

These lists of 'Books/Movies/etc that you need to read/watch/etc' are interesting because it shows what sort of person wrote the list.  Which can be fun if they have similar tastes because it makes you feel good that you can check off so many items on the list.  That's probably why this particular list is popular on things like Facebook as all the college and high school kids have read a lot of these books for school.  If such a list is written by someone with dissimilar tastes, it can be eye opening to see what things are popular in different genres.  Especially if you can find a list biased towards a genre that you are interested in getting into.  Or maybe the list will pique your interest in a certain genre enough that you'll actually look into one of the items on the list.

at Monday, November 22, 2010