This supposed “BBC Book list” has apparently no source, but whatever. I would star most of the list below that I’ve read (except Memoirs of a Geisha and The Three Musketeers), but there is something special about Austen. I spent my teen devouring her books and while going through other people’s bold lists, it makes me sad to see that a lot of people (in fact, from the ones I saw, most people) have not read Pride and Prejudice. I’ve read all of Austen’s books, including her unfinished stories and then when I got through them all, I felt a little glum. I wonder if any modern authors have taken up the mantle to finish her unfinished stories stories.
My other favourites from this list are Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Monkingbird. Lee only wrote one book in her life, but what a book. I want to be her and write that one great book. It’s a dream.
If the BBC actually created this list with a mixture of classics, popular novels and teen novels, I’m sure they would have included some Stephen King, so I suspect this list is not all that legit. Not to mention that there are some questionable ones included (in a sense that it must be restricted to 100 novels) and some truly great books which did not make the list. Also, if there’s going to be a few Thomas Hardy books listed, I would have added his Mayor of Casterbridge novel - for me, this is his best work. I like that Watership Down is on the list. It’s just a fine, easy to read, feel good novel that I highly recommend for everyone.
There is just so many great books to read. If you like to read writing that almost resembles poetry, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind is a good one to try.
Instructions:
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Star the ones you loved.*
3) Italicize those you plan on reading. — I’m not even going to bother with this.
001 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
002 The Lord of the Rings- JRR Tolkien
003 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
004 Harry Potter series- JK Rowling
005 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
006 The Bible
007 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte —- I tried 5 times to read this. I don’t know why, but I just can’t read it.
008 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
009 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
010 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
011 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
012 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
013 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
014 Complete Works of Shakespeare (How about the incomplete works of Shakespeare?)
015 Rebecca- Daphne Du Maurier
016 The Hobbit- JRR Tolkien
017 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
018 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
019 The Time Traveller’s Wife- Audrey Niffenegger
020 Middlemarch – George Eliot
021 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
022 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
023 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
024 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
025 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
026 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
027 Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
028 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
029 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
030 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
031 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
032 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
033 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
034 Emma – Jane Austen
035 Persuasion - Jane Austen
036 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
037 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
038 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
039 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
040 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
041 Animal Farm – George Orwell
042 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
043 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
044 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
045 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
046 Anne of Green Gables- LM Montgomery
047 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
048 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
049 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
050 Atonement – Ian McEwan
051 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
052 Dune – Frank Herbert
053 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons I made it halfway through.
054 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
055 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
056 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
057 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
058 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
059 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
060 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
061 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
062 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
063 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
064 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
065 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
066 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
067 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
068 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
069 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
070 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
071 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
072 Dracula – Bram Stoker
073 The Secret Garden- Frances Hodgson Burnett
074 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
075 Ulysses – James Joyce
076 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
077 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
078 Germinal – Emile Zola
079 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
080 Possession- AS Byatt I have this book, somewhere.
081 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
082 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
083 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
084 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
085 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
086 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
087 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
088 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
089 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
090 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
091 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
092 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
093 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
094 Watership Down – Richard Adams
095 A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole
096 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
097 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
098 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
099 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
