I saw this on Purplesque's blog (thanks Vijay for the introduction). It seems to be a meme going around the blogosphere rather than a list coming from the come from National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The NEA does have a program called "The Big Read".
The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest.
“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”
1) Bold: I have read.2) Underline: Books I love.
3) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The 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 – Phillip 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 . The Complete works of Shakespeare (Like Purplesque I've tried, and failed. Have seen many of them performed.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit --J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler's Wife
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 (one of the few Steinbeck's I haven't read)
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 Meaney - 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 Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
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
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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons
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 St. 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
I would also suggest:
Angel of Repose by Wallace Stegner
You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
Mountain Time by Ivan Doig
Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson
Tony Hillerman's mysteries (featuring Chee and Leaphorn)
Linda Barnes mysteries (featuring Boston PI Carlotta Carlyle)
Stephen White's mysteries (featuring psychologist Dr Alan Gregory)
Susuan Wittig Albert's mysteries (featuring China Bayles, owner of a herbal shop)
Would welcome any suggestions for myself or to give to my nieces and nephews (ages 2 yo to mid-30's).
8 comments:
I would recommend The Time Traveller's Wife, Life of Pi, and Midnight's children. Vikram Seth and Marquez are good if you have the patience to bear a little rambling in an otherwise good book.
For the younger nephews and nieces, The Dangerous book for Boys and The Dangerous book for girls.
Thanks for your recs..I now have my library list!
Thanks Enjay. I'll keep those in mind.
Of the books that I have read that you have not (because, really, who needs recommendations of books they've read?) -- for a grownup, I loved Life of Pi, The Kite Runner, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Lolita. For younger folks, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was great, and so was Charlotte's Web. If you liked Catcher in the Rye, you should also like Lord of the Flies.
Thanks, Dr David.
Have you read Jean Auel's series that starts with Clan of the Cave Bear? They are fascinating because of the detail about the uses, both medical and culinary, of a wide variety of plants, herbs, flowers, etc. They are also a great commentary on the honesty, or lack thereof, among people. Blessings, marlene
I'll keep those in mind. Thanks
To clarify..enjay is otherwise known as purplesque. Happy reading!
The Thief Lord is fabulous for all ages, perfectly appropriate for schoolaged kids. I read it twice.
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