How many of these books have you read??

[bronco]

But how come slaughterhouse 5 is not on that list, it is one of my favourite books?

It's a BBC list. Slaughterhouse 5 is banned over here due to it being set during the fictional bombing of Dresden.

Interesting, that I did not know.

[vCLaW]

I'm sceptical as to whether that list is actually anything to do with the BBC. Its rather different from their Big Read top 100 list, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml
Its also inconsistent as to how it groups some series of books together, but not others. And it has some books listed individually, as well as the complete series, eg Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe / Chronicles of Narnia.
I also don't know where they got the statistic that most people have only read 6 out of 100 of the books.

I think its just another internet meme, with a list someone has made up.

[mabli]

I'm sceptical as to whether that list is actually anything to do with the BBC. Its rather different from their Big Read top 100 list, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml
Its also inconsistent as to how it groups some series of books together, but not others. And it has some books listed individually, as well as the complete series, eg Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe / Chronicles of Narnia.
I also don't know where they got the statistic that most people have only read 6 out of 100 of the books.

I think its just another internet meme, with a list someone has made up.

agreed, if you've read the complete works of shakespeare you will have Hamlet, so you score two points... not sure if that matters though tbh I suppose its just has few tweaks from BBC Big Read

[mabli]

I read every Dickens before I realised his dipiction of women is beyond appalling.

Would you care to explain? I've read a number of his books. It was a long time ago, but I can only recall his women characters being minor and background characters.

exactly, minor characters who are either sickeningly sweet and get to marry the hero who has loads of adventures, comic like Mrs Gamp, bad but become good and die like Nancy or just plain bad so get what they deserve... two diminsional and crap

10 partialy such as Bible,

In the U.S. it is a sarcastic joke among the secular and a point of shame among many Christian fundamentalists that many of the latter group have not read the Bible at all.[/quote]
its a great work of fiction imo with some nice moral tales in the new testament and some sex and intrigue in the Old

[beforewisdom]

its a great work of fiction imo with some nice moral tales in the new testament and some sex and intrigue in the Old

I guess I have too many beliefs to let myself enjoy religious texts as stories, the way I do with Greek myths. I have this trouble even with religious texts from religions I was never exposed to. I keep thinking
"What a load of [horse shit | bull crap | bollucks | calliewallop | tosh ] "

[james79]

What is this list based on? Is it the 100 most popular books in the UK?

I have fully read 23:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
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
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

[benzilla]

I've read 18 of those, probably 4 or 5 for school.

[Konstantin]

6 The Bible (only half the old Testament)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (brilliant!)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

14 and a bit then. Some were as part of an English course.

[beforewisdom]

I have come to no longer take literature professors for granted. Earlier this year during "Banned Book Week" I tried reading "Tropic Of Cancer" by Henry Miller. There were so many time and art bound references I missed about 60% of what was going on.

[mabli]

its a great work of fiction imo with some nice moral tales in the new testament and some sex and intrigue in the Old

I guess I have too many beliefs to let myself enjoy religious texts as stories, the way I do with Greek myths. I have this trouble even with religious texts from religions I was never exposed to. I keep thinking
"What a load of [horse shit | bull crap | bollucks | calliewallop | tosh ] "

Im an atheist

However, when my daughter was a tiny toddler I included some religious based fables in the tales Id tell her as we walked up into the hills together. They were nicer morals than some traditional fairy tales that concentrate on beautiful people getting rich and girls getting married. She really liked the tale about casting the first stone, and I had to retell it again and again. One day she said "so what happend to this guy Jesus" I said "oh he was a really kind and good man, the state was threatend by him and he was killed..." then I patched in some details of folk over the ages who'd had similar things happen.

She thought about it for a while and said "you know Im not always good dont you?"

Was very funny, the story of Jesus is fine to tell kids if you include the bit where he rises to heaven (which Im not going to do) otherwise it acts as a warning not to do good, we stuck to Budhist tales and stories I made up myself from then on

[JohnBarleycorn]

I've read 53 of them.....

Interestingly, no Kafka..........

And unless I am mistaken, Don Quixote is not mentioned. Although its not one of my favourites, or even in my top fifty, a recent survey of 'experts' rated it as the most important book ever written ! The foundation of the modern novel and more important than Shakespeare, apparently.

[penguin]

I spend part of my day with my eyes glued to a literary work of fiction, have done all my reading life. Apparently the BBC believes most folk will have only read 6 of the 100 books listed below... how many have you read?

We went that list some time ago, I got something like ~20.

[xGoofyx]

I read:

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (86 pages when I was 14. maybe I should try again?)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

[Clem Snide]

But how come slaughterhouse 5 is not on that list, it is one of my favourite books?

It's a BBC list. Slaughterhouse 5 is banned over here due to it being set during the fictional bombing of Dresden.

Interesting, that I did not know.

UBERLOL.

[Linnéa76]

I counted to 32. Seems like about half of them were Jane Austen..