The Book Challenge 2011 – The BBC Booklist

One of the many reasons I don’t post to my blog more often is that I spend much of my free time reading. I carry a book almost everywhere I go even if I know I most likely won’t get a chance to read it. Yes, I will arrive at the preschool/kindergarten three minutes early and try to read as many pages of one of my current books as possible. In any given month I tend to read 10-30 books. I’m working my way through a 1,001 popular books to read challenge that was first created in 2008 or 2009 and has now been expanded to 1242 books.

Here is a slightly more reasonable list for “normal” people. Oh, and please, always pass along your recommendations for books to read on to me. We all know that the 47 unread books on my nightstand are just not enough!

After going through this list it is clear that I need to add more classics to my reading list. The fact that I own over twenty books on this list that I have yet to read makes me sad.

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
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
*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 Meany – 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 Inferno – Dante
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
*99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
First Round:
Read: 33