(To anyone who'd like to do it!)
Here's how it works:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE (mine are in red).
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.
1 Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen - I really liked this book!
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 - I LOVED this book, even in middle school.
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte-good but sad
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman-not bad, but dark for sure
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - I have always loved this book. Read it the first time as a teen...
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - Not even interested.
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 - High School English -I really liked this book.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - not a favorite
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams-DUMB
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky- AP English, didn't like it.
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck- high school and I do remember liking it.
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 - LOVE LOVE LOVE the whole series. Loved them as a kid and love them now.
34 Emma - Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - See above
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 - See #5
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - I just loved this book for the entertainment factor. I didn't read if for any fact since it is fiction. Cool book.
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 - very cute book!
47 Far From The Maddening Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - disturbing book that I had to read in middle school.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert-I actually read this in middle school because I saw the movie and really liked it. When I look back now, weird. I'm not so much of a science fiction fan.
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 - I
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-kinda sad story but I liked it.
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - Amazing story, I loved every second of it! Love the movie too.
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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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 - always been a favorite
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom-interesting concept or view.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
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 - Love the play.....haven't read it though. I also loved the movie.
So there you have it. What have you read? If my opinion counted, I would add the books....
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Giving Tree - Shel Silverstein
Anything by Max Lucado
A wrinkle in time - Madeline L'engle
(those are all I can think of right now. What would your list include?)
