The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation’s best-loved novel of all time. The year-long survey was the biggest single test of public reading taste to date,and culminated with several programmes hosted by celebrities, advocating their favorite books.
If my maths worked correctly (rarely does) I have read 59/100 61/100 books from this list & reviewed only few… What about you? Which ones do you think I should read next? Are there books here you think I should skip ?
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (currently reading) read in 2016
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 read in 2016
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald read: 15.06.2016.
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll
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 – A.A. 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 (not sure)
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 , read in August 2016
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 (not sure)
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Inferno – Dante
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 – E.B. 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 (not sure)
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks (not sure)
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
59 out of those is good going. I can only count 43 plus a few I’ve started but never yet managed to finish.
I’m struggling with Jane Austen’s book at the moment, not sure if I will manage to finish it.
Is that because you’ve seen it dramatised on TV. Many people are put off reading; they think the books “slow”. But I think you have to read Austen’s novels twice to appreciate them.
I haven’t seen any Austen tv or movie adaptations. I’m at chapter 8 of Pride and Prejudice…and it does somehow feel very slow. But I’m quite sure I will love it once I manage to read it :)
Let me know, won’t you.
I will
Jane Eyer, The Great Gasby (although I didn’t love it), Catch 22, and the Lovely Bones are definitely all worth reading. That’s a good list!
That’s interesting, haha what didn’t you like about Great Gatsby? 🙈 I’m curious to hear because sometimes you don’t see that bad (or the good) side of some book.
Oh man… I’ve only read a little over 10 of these. I’m not a huge fan of the classics though and other books you generally read in school I somehow didn’t have to.
I’ll definitely have to put more on my list though!
I hated reading books for school…which is why most of the Finnish classics are kind of unknown to me 🙈
Over analyzing them kills all the joy you might have had if you didn’t read them because of some course.
Classics are very often overrated :) I think one should read what one loves. In my case that would be fantasy, scifi and ya, but I guess I was very bored when I was younger so I managed to read some of these. If you haven’t read His Dark Materials, I would really recommend that one for you.
I agree with you! Reading for school took the joy out of reading for me.
I have read His Dark Materials and I absolutely loved it… probably time for a re-read soon! I’m also very into fantasy & sci-fi so, I probably won’t read much more on this list unless I push myself haha.
Not sure what’s the point in making poor kids read something like Inferno by Dante 😂 Glad you loved it! Should re-read it soon myself… Well haha some say it’s good to get out of your comfort zone (I guess yes if you have the time).
Reading what interests you at the moment is the best motivation to read :) Sometimes classics happen to be on the way of interests.
Very true :)
59 out of those is good going. I can only count 43 plus a few I’ve started but never yet managed to finish.
I’m struggling with Jane Austen’s book at the moment, not sure if I will manage to finish it.
Is that because you’ve seen it dramatised on TV. Many people are put off reading; they think the books “slow”. But I think you have to read Austen’s novels twice to appreciate them.
I haven’t seen any Austen tv or movie adaptations. I’m at chapter 8 of Pride and Prejudice…and it does somehow feel very slow. But I’m quite sure I will love it once I manage to read it :)
Let me know, won’t you.
I will
Great list, to which I also occasionally refer to. I read quite few novels these days as my interests lie elsewhere, however some of these classics carry around so much story even outside the book that it would be good to cross off one from this list every once in a while. For this summer for me it would be definitely Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
It is, I think it’s very important to read what you like, yet it’s just as important to read everything. All genres,both fiction & nonfiction because if you don’t, you’re stuck in something specific and I think it limits your thinking. Haha luckily a lifetime is a long time so 100 books from this list is do-able.
I’m in love with Les Misérables and the way Hugo writes his book. Hope you like it!
Jane Eyer, The Great Gasby (although I didn’t love it), Catch 22, and the Lovely Bones are definitely all worth reading. That’s a good list!
That’s interesting, haha what didn’t you like about Great Gatsby? 🙈 I’m curious to hear because sometimes you don’t see that bad (or the good) side of some book.
Oh man… I’ve only read a little over 10 of these. I’m not a huge fan of the classics though and other books you generally read in school I somehow didn’t have to.
I’ll definitely have to put more on my list though!
I hated reading books for school…which is why most of the Finnish classics are kind of unknown to me 🙈
Over analyzing them kills all the joy you might have had if you didn’t read them because of some course.
Classics are very often overrated :) I think one should read what one loves. In my case that would be fantasy, scifi and ya, but I guess I was very bored when I was younger so I managed to read some of these. If you haven’t read His Dark Materials, I would really recommend that one for you.
I agree with you! Reading for school took the joy out of reading for me.
I have read His Dark Materials and I absolutely loved it… probably time for a re-read soon! I’m also very into fantasy & sci-fi so, I probably won’t read much more on this list unless I push myself haha.
Not sure what’s the point in making poor kids read something like Inferno by Dante 😂 Glad you loved it! Should re-read it soon myself… Well haha some say it’s good to get out of your comfort zone (I guess yes if you have the time).
Reading what interests you at the moment is the best motivation to read :) Sometimes classics happen to be on the way of interests.
Very true :)
Wow, you’ve read a lot more of these than I have. I’ll have to work on catching up. ;) I would recommend the Kenneth Grahame though. It’s old fashioned, but a good story. :)
Thank you for the recommendation! I think I have read/watched Grahame’s Reluctant Dragon but I’m not sure about Wind in the Willows. I’m sure I will love it :)
Great list, to which I also occasionally refer to. I read quite few novels these days as my interests lie elsewhere, however some of these classics carry around so much story even outside the book that it would be good to cross off one from this list every once in a while. For this summer for me it would be definitely Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
It is, I think it’s very important to read what you like, yet it’s just as important to read everything. All genres,both fiction & nonfiction because if you don’t, you’re stuck in something specific and I think it limits your thinking. Haha luckily a lifetime is a long time so 100 books from this list is do-able.
I’m in love with Les Misérables and the way Hugo writes his book. Hope you like it!
Wow, you’ve read a lot more of these than I have. I’ll have to work on catching up. ;) I would recommend the Kenneth Grahame though. It’s old fashioned, but a good story. :)
Thank you for the recommendation! I think I have read/watched Grahame’s Reluctant Dragon but I’m not sure about Wind in the Willows. I’m sure I will love it :)
Wow, you’ve read a lot of these books! I’ve read only 20 but most of these are in my TBR… I’ll have to catch up with them some time :D
I’m a rapid reader 🙈 Hope you’ll find some time! Some of these are overrate but some are my all time favorite ones.
Wow, you’ve read a lot of these books! I’ve read only 20 but most of these are in my TBR… I’ll have to catch up with them some time :D
I’m a rapid reader 🙈 Hope you’ll find some time! Some of these are overrate but some are my all time favorite ones.
Oh I have to catch up!
Oh I have to catch up!