BBC's List of 100 Books

A little while ago I ran across this list on my old friend Jeanna's blog.(No, Jeanna's not old. She is my age. But I have known her since 6th grade. That makes her my old friend;)

One of the radio stations was talking about the BBC's top 100 list of books to read. I thought it was interesting. The "BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here". I think that is pretty crazy. My official number is 37. But many of them are series of books, and I think should count as more;)

My favorites were:
All Jane Austen books
Jane Eyre
All Harry Potter books (what?)

It is fun to look back on these books and reflect on when it was that I read them. Many have been read while I was on bedrest with one of my babies. Many others were read on the computer while nursing my little ones. Many of the classics are online in their entirety, so I can rock and nurse my babies in front of the computer and read some of the classics.

Here is the list. Tell me how many you have read, I am curious. I'll make a note of when and where I read many of them:


** Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Computer nursing Brenley)
** The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (all of them. Should count as 3)
**Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (bedrest with Brenley)
** Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (first 3 or 4 on bedrest with Mitchell)
** To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (High School English class)
The Bible
**Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Bedrest with Abigail)
** Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (When I was 19. Just because)
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
** Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
** Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (read after watching the movie)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
** Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (read on a beach trip.Rachael borrowed it;)



Complete Works of Shakespeare
** Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (bedrest with Abigail)
** The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (bedrest with Mitchell)
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
** Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (preg with Abigail)
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
** Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell(bedrest with Kindyl, who was almost named Scarlett;)
**The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Humanities class at ASU)
** Bleak House - Charles Dickens (just for fun after watching it on BBC)
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
** Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (was curious after finding out author was a druggie;)
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
** David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (After watching it on BBC)
** Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (once as a child, once after I had children.)
** Emma - Jane Austen (Nursing Brenley)
** Persuasion - Jane Austen (nursing Brenley)
** The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
** The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown(just for fun, when it was all the rage. I admit it.)
** One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (on my cruise for our anniversary)
** A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (because Jimmy Eat World wrote a song about it.)
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
** Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (Once as a child, again when I had children)
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan
** Life of Pi - Yann Martel(When I flew alone to Utah for Clark's wedding)
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
** Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Nursing Brenley)
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
** A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
** Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
** Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas(While preg with Abigail)
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
** Dracula - Bram Stoker (While nursing Abigail)
**The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (As a child)
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - AS Byatt
** A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
** Charlotte’s Web - EB White (once as a child, once after I had children)
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
**Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl(once as a child, and once after I had children)
** Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (While nursing Brenley)

There are a few I think I may have read, but I don't remember for sure. I didn't count those. I know a disproportionate number were read while nursing Brenley. She was spoiled, and didn't take a pacifier, what can I say;) I was going through a classics phase. Some on the list I would like to read, some I have been meaning to.

Some I have read many times, like the Harry Potter books (every time a new movie or new book comes out. I am kind of a nerd like that) and all of the Jane Austen books. And Jane Eyre. etc.

Some I have loved. Some, not so much. But I love looking back on the time in my life that these books remind me of.

I love to read. These books are a part of my life. Don't worry, I will try not to neglect my children;)