Saturday, March 21, 2009

Presumably Popular Reads

I have a feeling I've done something like this before, way back in 2006, but since time has passed since then and so has the number of books I've read increased, I'll do this one more time.


BBC believes the majority of people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

1) Look at the list and put an ‘X’ after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
3) Tag a few people you think would enjoy sharing similar information about their book interests.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x) Revisited at least once a year
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (x)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (x)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (x) Promised to make you laugh till you cry
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x) Absolute favourite
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 (x)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (x) the most painful book I ever read
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x) utterly and hopelessly depressing
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (x) one of the longest books ever
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (x) decades ago, can't remember the story though
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 (x)
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 (x)
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 (x)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (x) Curiously fascinating!
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 (x)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (x)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (x)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
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 (x)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchel
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 (X)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (x)
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 (x) except for two pages that were missing from the book
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (x)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read some books off the list (more than 6, definitely), planning to read more, of course, especially Goerge Orwell and more of Austen, and attempt Shakespeare's complete works. I'm also not really tagging anyone, so feel free to flick it off here to add into your own blogs if you want to
An observation I made revealed that out of the four of us who did this tag, none of us have read less than 6 books. BBC got it wrong, baby!

12 comments:

  1. I think they were averaging it out. So if you have 4 ppl like you who've read almost 50 books from the list, there are 400 like us who've read only 1 or 2 or maybe even none.

    So there you go about the 6...

    And ya, show off... :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Presumably, those who've read less than 6 wouldn't bother posting would they?
    Someone who's read more than 6 would be more likely to post the meme, than one who hasn't so you can't really draw any conclusions.

    #27 finally someone who agrees with me on that point, Ms Scissor alleges that it's one of her faves, how, how how

    #28 really? I thought #27 deserved that comment

    ReplyDelete
  3. My count is 30, though I don't remember most of them :P
    And I think the average blogger's average is WAY higher than any national average!

    ReplyDelete
  4. You've read so many more books than me!

    Hate you so much right now.

    (Not really ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rakesh: Of course they were averaging their sample out... and I was averaging my sample out... we're all show off at some point, don't we? :)

    Kartik: Probably not, actually... unless they've read none and can prove BBC wrong again! Hehehe...
    For #27... the story is pretty good, but long winded therefore I found it painful... and #28 is longer than #27, but more readable :) (in my opinion, at least)

    Suki: You've got a good point there! :)

    Travis: See, more than 6... :)

    Orhan: LOL! It happens to be a hobby, you know ;)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Well, what do you know, those BBC people are almost correct. I've read 5 of the books here :D Which really reminds me that I need to get some new books soon ...

    ReplyDelete
  7. If I counted correctly, I've got 38 on that list. There are a fair number I have no interest in ever reading, though, so I don't know that I plan to increase th enumber all that much.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yeah, I know what you mean... there are some that I don't think I'd like to read, but wouldn't mind if someone lent them to me :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yup, bloggers happen to be more well-read than the non-blogging average Joes. I have observed that people who write well as generally people who read a lot.

    @ Kartik: I never said Crime and Punishment is my fave. It isn't. I only said I have read other books apart from C and P by Dostoyevsky.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I can't say for sure, really... I think I know someone who writes marvelously but has not read much/is not really interested in fiction...

    Well, I heard this from another friend, but apparently writers in the old age were paid by the number of words written... a very possible explanation for the lengths of Anna Kerenina and Vanity Fair and (ahem) Crime and Punishment :)

    ReplyDelete

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