BBC Top 100 Books

Okay so u may have seen the Facebook meme listing BBC's supposed top 100 books that they claim most people will have read no more than six of. Apparently, BBC never made this claim. Darn cuz i was feeling pretty good about myself--lol. So i thought it might be fun to say which of these classic and contemporary novels we've read. So here's the list from Facebook (not the actual BBC list, as this one contains more classics). I've put a star after the ones I've read.

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 Epectations - 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 *
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 Huley
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 - Aleandre 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-Eupery *
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 *

After reading through this list, it's not even the same one I saw on Facebook!! lol i guess people just keep changing it. Let's make our own top 100!! List the books on here that you've read or tell us what should have made the list that didn't. Happy reading!! Happy

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10 replies since 23rd November 2010 • Last reply 23rd November 2010

Reply #1:

madame bovary is the worst book ever!!!!

the vampire chronicles should be on that list....

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Reply #2:

I've read The Time Travellers Wife, Persuasion, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, The Secret History, The Lovely Bones, Dracula, The Secret Garden and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I've also had a few read to me as a child but I'm guessing that doesn't count. I'm surprised Frankenstein wasn't on there - that was one of the darkest but best reads I've read in a while. I'm also reading Emma at the moment so I can't tick that off fairly soon.

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Reply #3:

I've seen more of the movies than read the books, but I own most of them and have read a fair few.

I'm sorry to hear you are reading Emma Arty, that was one of her worst books. It took me forever to force myself through it. Persuasion is WAY better. No one ever pays attention to it either because it's such an understated romance.

I think The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is a crock. No one has read the complete works of William Shakespeare- you'd have to read all of his King Henry's and Richard's and no one read's those anymore. Not to mention is unfamiliar poetry that didn't end up in the sonnets. A lot of his works most people have never heard of like Titus Andronicus.

Oh Arty, if you liked Frankestein you should pick up a copy of The Monk. That's a great gothic novel. Wuthering Heights is pretty dark also but I wasn't a fan and The Phantom of the Opera is pretty dark and nothing like the musical.

I'm surprised Beowulf wasn't on that list or Dante's Inferno. Those were both two of my favorite reads.

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Reply #4:

I have read,

The Lord of the Rings,
Harry Potter series,
To Kill a Mockingbird ,
The Bible,
Little Women,
Catcher in the Rye,
Alice in Wonderland,
The Wind in the Willows,
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,
Winnie the Pooh,
The Da Vinci Code,
Anne of Green Gables,
The Lovely Bones,
The Secret Garden,
Charlotte’s Web,
Watership Down,
Hamlet,

I can't even begin to say how happy it made me to see that it wasn't Twilight on the list but Dracula! I agree with PinkWeeds that Dante's Inferno should be on there. Also a Clockwork Orange and The Diary of Anne Frank.

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Reply #5:

you are so right- especially the Diary of Anne Frank or Night is also a good one.

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Reply #6:

Happy Looking at the first 12-ish books in the list, you've read so many that I've haven't, but all the ones that you didn't I have (except for His Dark Materials, but I have attempted before I got bored). There are so many books on that list that I want to read, if I ever find the time.
Little Women is good. I think Jane Eyre may have been good, if we didn't analyze it to the point where I started dreaming about it for class. Wuthering Heights, in my opinion, seems like a cross of styles of Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen (from the 1 book I've read from both of them). Tess of the d'Urburvilles is REALLY good, but I saw the '08 BBC version of it before reading it. As much as I like Anne of Green Gables, I prefer Rilla of Ingleside. Everytime we study WW1 in class, I always have to reread it, or go to bed to the audiobook of it.
I agree with the Dracula/Twilight thing. And it has Harry Potter!

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Reply #7:

I have read:

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Animal Farm - George Orwell
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Ulysses - James Joyce
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl



I agree that Frankenstein, Beowulf, Dante's Inferno, and Diary of Anne Frank should be on there. I also think The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon should be on there.

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Reply #8:

Harry Potter series - JK Rowling*
The Bible *
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger *
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis *
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
Animal Farm - George Orwell *
Life of Pi - Yann Martel*
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens *

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Reply #9:

I've read about 35 of those on the list and own about 30 of the others (one day the balance of books that I own will go in favour of the ones I've actually read!)
There are many books on the list that I can't believe I will ever read - Harry Potter for sure (controversial I know!)

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Reply #10:

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes should be on that list!

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