I've found this article somewhere in "blog-world" and thought it might be interesting to post it here.

If it has been discussed before please forgive me and get rid of this topic.

*** Here is a list put forth by the National Endowment for the Arts in the US. It lists the top 100 books, and asks how many you’ve actually read.
The Big Read [which is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture] reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

Bloggers say you should....

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1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Underline those you intend to read.

3) Italicize the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.

4) 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

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It's difficult to edit such a long list, but if anybody is willing to do it ...

Here is the list (with MY bolds - have read - and underlines - intend/wish to. I left out the third category)


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 - haven't read them ALL and I'm trying to
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 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
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
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 - 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 Factory
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Thanks for reading!

P.S. The list is random, not in order of importance - so we are not discussing which book should have been listed the 1st or 17th, OK?

Done, there are 7 books that I have yet to read.
Did you realise that 98 is unnecessary if you have 14?

I have read 5 of them. (That isn't very much.)

Although #36 shouldn't really count because of #33

All except 4.(56,63,82,93) Nice List Mada.

There are 8 books on this list that I haven't read, and a few of them are books I have no intention of reading. However, I really need to get cracking on the others.

#42 is a book I will regret having read for the rest of my life, but like all of my colleagues, I felt forced into it.

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 Durbervilles - 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 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
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
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 - 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 Factory
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I so agree about #42, Ianfranco. So predictable.I wish I had never bothered with it.

I'm pretty red-faced . I've read, actually read, only 31 books on that list . I would have thought my tally might have been a bit higher than that. Guess not.
Also, I never did get beyond page 25 or 30 of "The DaVinci Code" (not because it was dreadful, at that point anyway, but because I was having pesky eyesight problems at the time and put it aside). I've been meaning to try to pick it up again, now, for quite a while. I'm thinking that maybe I should just skip it altogether and forever ?

I have read 39 of those mentioned... maybe I should concentrate on being more well read. If I could just pony up the time to do that- say between 2 and 4 am?

I've only read 13...Don't feel bad.

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Also, I never did get beyond page 25 or 30 of "The DaVinci Code" (not because it was dreadful, at that point anyway, but because I was having pesky eyesight problems at the time and put it aside). I've been meaning to try to pick it up again, now, for quite a while. I'm thinking that maybe I should just skip it altogether and forever ?

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Gats, dear if you can steel yourself to finish it I would appreciate your opinion. Some people think I am crazy for loathing it.

You're not crazy, ren. You're discerning.

Gats, I occasionally communicate with a Chicago Tribune columnist named Mary Schmich. (She also does the writing for the "Brenda Starr" comic strip, if anyone's a fan.) Some time ago, she proposed forming a club for people who hadn't read "The Da Vinci Code."

I begged to be allowed to join, even though I HAD read it, under protest. I told her that my sole function would be to reassure the other club members that they weren't missing a thing. She said I could be the vice-president.

So: I'm here to tell you that you're not missing a thing.

I've only read 40 of them, and I teach English lit! LOL!

I've read 55, though I am counting a few where I have read more than half but couldn't finish, like "A Suitable Boy".

And what about the Bible? Have I sat down and read it from cover to cover? No. However, one way or another I have read or had read to me huge swatches of it. I'm sure I've got the New Testament covered, but probably only about half of the Old. Still, I'm counting it.

My own score is:

Read 35
Intend to read 25
No intention of reading 40

I have read 40 of those books, but have no real intention of reading many (if any) or the remaining 60. I still consider myself well-read, just perhaps my taste in lit. is perhaps not 'mainstream'.

I have an English degree, so there are several authors I had to read and won't again; T Hardy, G Eliot, J Joyce.
And I had to read Harry Potter to my son as a bedtime story...all of them.

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the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

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I've read 56 so I guess that's not a bad effort.

There are some there, however, I just couldn't get into - like "Moby Dick" and "Lord of the Rings". Regular readers will recall that I have mentioned on more than one occasion how much I loathed "Lord of Flies", having been forced to read it at school. In fact, I think most of the ones I have read from this list were books I had to read for school.

We also must realise this list is the conviction of a relatively few people. Some of the most fascinating books ever written are nowhere to be found on said list...Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ..Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle...All Quiet on the Western Front...The Martian Chronicles...the list drones on forever. Considering the wealth of fine books ever written, this list was a but a sample of the delights out there waiting to be read.

It is not a list of 100 books - several of the items are series of books (& as other people have pointed out a couple of items include a book that is listed individualy).
Do I count Harry Potter as I have read them all except the last 1 (I am not interested enough to pay full price) but have got the others from various sources.

Do you have a source on where this list came from? I can't find a list put out by the NEA, and there's a few books on there that I have trouble believing would actually be on such a list.

Interesting, Lieberkuhn. "The Big Read" is definitely a NEA initiative, but the list I find on their website is quite different. Smaller, for one thing.
"Bless Me, Ultima" Rudolfo Anaya
"My Antonia" Willa Cather
"A Lesson Before Dying" Ernest J Gaines
"A Farewell to Arms" Ernest Hemingway
"To Kill a Mockingbird" Harper Lee
"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" Carson McCullers
"The Grapes of Wrath" John Steinbeck
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" Leo Tolstoy
"Fahrenheit 451" Ray Bradbury
"The Great Gatsby" F Scott Fitzgerald
"The Maltese Falcon" Dashiel Hammett
"Their Eyes Were Watching God" Zora Neale Hurston
"The Call of the Wild" Jack London
"The Shawl" Cynthia Ozick
"The Joy Luck Club" Amy Tan
"The Age of Innocence" Edith Wharton

"Washington Square" Henry Irving
"A Wizard of Earthsea" Ursula K LeGuin
"The Thief and the Dogs" Naguib Mahfouz
"Housekeeping" Marilynne Robinson
"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" Mark Twain
"Old School" Tobias Wolff

Considerably more American in focus, as you would expect from the NEA. OF this batch, I've read 12 out of the 21.

Did some more looking - Denni's list looks a lot more like the BBC Big Read list, where the books were nominated by listeners.

There is another list which was issued by the BBC in 2003, and voted on by the British public. There are several differences between this list and the one Mada gave. Here is the British one for anyone who's interested in comparing them.

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


I have read 80 of the books on the US list, but only 75 of the books on the BBC list. Several of Terry Pratchett's books appear on the list, and all the Harry Potters are listed seperately.

Eeek. Each new list makes me feel even more poorly read ...