A looong time ago (August last year -_-) I was quite fascinated with a list in a blog post by Verena, that was about 100 books – supposedly published by the BBC. You can find that list anywhere … sombody copied it from a site, that copied the list from another site, that copied the list from another site, that copied the list from another site, that…I think you get it. And all claimed that the BBC had claimed the average adult hasn’t read more than 6 out of this 100 books.

I was taken aback by the fact, that some of the books actually consist of several books like the Harry Potter series or *holy shit, Batman* the complete works of Shakespeare. Additionally out of those series selected books were named again, e.g. Hamlet by Shakespeare or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Lewis. So I did a little bit of research and found out that this list was published by The Guardian. I wasn’t able to find proof about the „6 out of 10“ claim and wonder who made that up…and why? *lol*

In the end I really found a BBC Top 100 list back from 2003 – and as I want to be special and niggling (and there are more books on that list I’ve actually read *cough*) I’ll go with that one. As it isn’t a „books you should’ve read“- but a „what people (at least in the UK)  love to read“-list I wonder what this blog post will reveal about me…but let’s go:

bold – read and finished
italic – read but unfinished
+ – love that book/series
– – didn’t like that book/series

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (+)
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (-)
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (+)
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling (+)
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne (+)
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling (+)
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling (+)
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling (+)
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer (-)
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (+)
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy (-)
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist (+)
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel (+)
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett (+)
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

So that makes 16 finished and 7 unfinished out of 100…not very good, I think. Maybe I shoud have stuck to that other list

picture: photocase.com