to read

I happened upon a blog the other day and remembered that I had copied down the BBC's list of the top one hundred books a while ago to see how I was faring on my reading.  I have a lot of books in my life but I would like to attempt to read all of the following some day.  I've already read quite a few.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen I read it in high school.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien I can't remember when I read but I read only The Fellowship of the Ring. I only got about 50-100 pages into The Two Towers.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte  High School 
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling I read the first 4 my junior year in college (2000-2001) and then pre-ordered every subsequent volume afterward.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee  Eighth grade.
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte I believe I own it but I have not read it.
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell  One of the few books I really enjoyed in high school.  Junior year I believe.
9. His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (Book 1), The Subtle Knife (Book 2), and The Amber Spyglass (Book 3) - Philip Pullman  At first this entry only said "His Dark Materials" I didn't realize that it wasn't a single book but rather the Golden Compass books.  I'm intrigued.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens High school again.  Sophomore year with that blasted woman who treated us like we were 5.  Blech.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott  Only about 10 times.  I started it the first time when I was about 9 or 10 and it took me 4 tries to get through the whole thing.  One of my all time favorites.
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy Junior year in high school.
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller  Also Junior year of high school but this is another one that I actually enjoyed
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier  I remember buying it at Book Stop.  I was probably in middle school at the time.
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger  I seem to recall this being summer reading for freshman year of high school.
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger  I love this one. I've read it twice.
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell  I first read it in middle school.  I've read it about 4 or 5 times.
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald  High school either Freshman or Junior year.
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 I'm pretty sure I have but I should probably again.
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame  I own it but I don't think I've read it.
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens I started it once while hanging out at a client's house with my mom.
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis  In 2010.  I don't know why I didn't read them sooner.
34. Emma- Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis See #33.
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini  More recently like '07 or '08.  Amazing
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden A summer in college I believe.
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown Within a year or so of it being published.
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez  I own it.  It's even in my living room on the shelf
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery I read all 9 books in elementary/middle school.
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood I think we bought this one recently.  I think Will already read it.
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding Eighth grade I believe.
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel Sometime post-college.
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 I borrowed this one from Tara a few years ago - nearly forgot that I read it.
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley Junior year high school in conjunction with 1984 another one that I actually rather enjoyed.
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon I borrowed this from Tara several years ago and very much enjoyed it.
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov My dear husband owns several versions of this book - ok, it might just be 2.
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  I've owned this book since like 2004 and haven't read it yet but I really intend to.
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett I got this from my Aunt Bea when I was about 8 and promptly read it.
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath  I think I did a report on this my Junior year of high school.
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome This apparently begins a whole 12-book series.
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 A long time ago... middle or high school.
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert Senior year high school and first year college.  Well, I don't know that I ever finished it so maybe I should read it again.
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry Good Lord this one was depressing.  Damn you Oprah and your book club.
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White I'm pretty sure I have but I'm not positive.
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom Depressing but in a good way if that's possible.
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  I just bought these for Will for Christmas.
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 Will has it and it's on our shelf
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 Senior year high school.
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

In some cases (like The Faraway Tree Collection, Sherlock Holmes), this particular list seems a bit British.  Not surprising since it's from the BBC.  In the future I may also include how I'm doing against Random House's Modern Library list which is the list that the blog mentioned above is using.  Right now I'm tired of cutting and pasting from Amazon.