I saw this on Mother Reader, and I'm such a sucker for a list, I had to play. The list is from a while ago (spring of 2007), but I doubt the rankings have changed much. As explained in The Guardian, 2000 people were asked to name ten books they couldn't live without; these are the top 100. I'll bold those I've read; I actually did a version of the survey myself, so while I'm at it I'll note any overlap. And, like Mother Reader, I'll mark those I really love with an asterisk. And by "really love," I mean, have read more than once and expect to read again, and look forward to reading again. I re-read so much, professionally, that I lose my love sometimes, or I start to flirt with other books. So the asterisks here are used relatively sparingly, for books that I cannot imagine never reading again, with pleasure. For example, to take one at almost random, I like The Woman in White a lot, but I think if I never got to read it again I'd be ok with that. Not so Alice in Wonderland. (This is why I switched from specializing in Victorian lit to specializing in children's lit, by the way.)
1 Pride and Prejudice* Jane Austen (I listed Persuasion instead, though if I could cheat and have all six of her novels bound as one, I'd choose them all)
2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre* Charlotte Bronte (also on my list at #4)
4 Harry Potter series* JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6 The Bible (also on my list, though I can't claim to have read the whole thing)
7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
=8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
=8 His Dark Materials* Philip Pullman (also on my list at #8)
10 Great Expectations* 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 William Shakespeare (I'm pretty sure there are one or two I've missed, but I'm close)
15 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks (OK, so if you're counting, I got to #17 before there was one I hadn't read)
18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch* George Eliot (on my list at #6)
21 Gone With The Wind* Margaret Mitchell (I know, it's embarrassing, but there it is...
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 (is it possible that I've never read this? There was a period when everyone I know was reading it, so I probably at least opened it, but I have zero recollection of it, really.)
26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh (I love funny Waugh, but never read got into the whole Brideshead thing...)
27 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland* Lewis Carroll (on my list at #5)
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 (on my list at #1, though now that I think about it I'm not sure my list was ranked...)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin Louis de Bernières
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 (this is the first one on the list that I have no intention of ever reading; I may not get to the others, but I'm not ruling them out.)
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 (and can I just say that Dune followed by Cold Comfort Farm is my favorite juxtaposition on this list?)
54 Sense and Sensibility* Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon (this is the first one I haven't even heard of!)
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
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 (another one that I've probably at least tried to read...)
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-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
97 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
100 Les Misérables Victor Hugo
OK, so I have read 75 out of the 100, a perfectly respectable percentage. I'm terrible on French literature, though, aren't I? Maybe that's what I'll remedy on my next sabbatical...
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