Now that we have some time, I'm hoping to get back to reading. A friend sent me this list of the top 100 books according to BBC, I think it's a couple of years old though. But just looking at it, I realized how little I've read of them :( How many have you guys read and/or your favourites?

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 Zifon
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 - X
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 Factoy - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I HATE Great Gatsby. Just sayin'

Also...it looks like Hamlet is there twice..." #14: complete works of Shakespeare" and "#98 Hamlet".

How have you not read Lord of the Flies? I thought that was standard you have to read it in high school stuff

Edit: Yea I hated Great Gatsby

Originally Posted by nerual

I HATE Great Gatsby. Just sayin'

Also...it looks like Hamlet is there twice..." #14: complete works of Shakespeare" and "#98 Hamlet".

Haha really?! It was pretty good . Yeah, I saw that, but I guess Hamlet is just that important that it must be separated from the rest of his works? I copied this by the way, didn't type it

Originally Posted by crazyfree

How have you not read Lord of the Flies? I thought that was standard you have to read it in high school stuff

Oh no, I've read it, Grade 9. I think I read 15 of these or so :/.

41. I may have miscounted, so +/- 2.

I'll probably take a more detailed count later on, but from just looking at them it seems like I've read most of them. The ones I haven't read I haven't even heard of =/

Originally Posted by ~*Sara*~

Haha really?! It was pretty good . Yeah, I saw that, but I guess Hamlet is just that important that it must be separated from the rest of his works? I copied this by the way, didn't type it



Oh no, I've read it, Grade 9. I think I read 15 of these or so :/.

Oh my bad. I though the italicized ones were the ones you had read. nvm lol

Originally Posted by crazyfree

Oh my bad. I though the italicized ones were the ones you had read. nvm lol

Haha oh no. I just had some trouble with the formatting after copying and pasting, so I had to edit

Originally Posted by I Haven't Read...

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
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

Actually, I've read way less than I though- 62/100, if you count Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read the most famous plays and the sonnets, but there's still a lot I haven't read).

Obviously there are a lot of good books up there, but The Remains of the Day was one of my favourites. I'd definitely recommend it as a place to start. I'll actually be discussing another book by the same author (Never Let Me Go) in January for a book club I'm in

LOTOR and Harry Potter? Seriously?

:/

i think u can skip #6

Originally Posted by RyanC

LOTOR and Harry Potter? Seriously?

:/

LotR is understandable. Harry Potter...not so much

Originally Posted by Mahratta

LotR is understandable. Harry Potter...not so much

BOOKMARKED

Also, why the hate for Harry Potter? It has had so much influence on getting people to start reading, surely that alone coupled with the fact that it was a great story deserves a high spot on the list.

Originally Posted by ikantsepll

BOOKMARKED

Also, why the hate for Harry Potter? It has had so much influence on getting people to start reading, surely that alone coupled with the fact that it was a great story deserves a high spot on the list.

Haha glad you liked it! Exactly, it was definitely one of the first books that got me into reading early on, from a kid's point of view. That's why I would consider it "important" to have read at one point in time.

I've only read about 12 of the books on the list and another 2-3 are on my "to read" list, but I'm a fan of sci-fi and dystopian fiction so my tastes are weird (though this lists really should have at least 1 work by H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury, preferably "The Time Machine" and "Farenheit 451").