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I've seen this floating around, and was curious what my results would look like. Last year the BBC did a big project that ended in a list of the audience's 200 most favorite books. Here they are, bolded if I've read them, with random commentary.
(After doing about a quarter of them, I realize that I'm including spoilers for some. I don't feel too guilty about this, given the age of the media in question, but you've been warned.)
1. Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
Duh. My mythology.
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
I had to check to make sure, but I've only read Sense and Sensibility.
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
Definitely on my list. But no.
4. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Of course!
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
Yup. The first really good HP.
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
I don't understand the classic definition of horror. I just don't find it scary. My brain understands being eaten by a monster. I don't want it to happen, but it isn't horrific. Being trapped in a evil, faceless society that only exists because everyone around you chooses to live in it, that I find scary.
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Again, of course. Not my favorite from the series, to be honest. Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Magician's Nephew are the ones I read over and over again.
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
I rather liked it.
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Ick. Slow and depressing. And rather pointless.
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Loved it. Started my interest in Russian literature. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, I've yet to find anything quite as good.
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
Yes, yes and yes.
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
If Tolkien is my mythology, this is my Bible. Very deep and primal feelings. It just feels true.
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Eh. A very interesting setting, temporally. But sad, sad, sad. I know it still happens, but thank god we live in slightly more enlightened times.
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
Dude, I was raised on Roald Dahl. Kids need some creepiness in their literature.
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
I wish I had read it as a kid, like everyone said to.
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
Yummy yummy epic fiction. And get this -- I actually like the later books!
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
Zorn! Zorn! That's the only lapine I remember. A great book, as long as you aren't expecting fluffy happy carefree bunnies. Darwin's a bitch.
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Hated it, but that was 8th grade. It's in my queue to be reread with a more dispassionate eye.
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Read like half of it in French. Which means I understood very little of it.
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
Read it in highschool. Wasn't impressed.
53. The Stand, Stephen King
Disaster fiction! Yay! Until it gets all weird and religious and stops making sense, anyway. I never did understand why thoe heros needed to go make 'the stand' at the end, since god was just hanging around in that convenient machine there, waiting to jump out.
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
A disappointment after War and Peace. Two stories only vaguely connected, both rather disappointing. But I like using 'pulled a Karenina' to reference someone commiting suicide in that fashion.
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
Capturing nightmares. Giants that EAT PEOPLE. Psy-ops on the royal family!
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A good read, but slow.
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
pterry!
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
If I hear one more rumor about Gilliam directing an adapation, I'm going to explode. It makes so much sense! Why can't the universe just work properly for once and let it happen?
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
I own a book club edition of this. Also one of my favorites, after Pyramids. But I haven't been caught up in about 10 years.
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
I've got the conch, bitch, so shut the fuck up. I just wanted to say that. We used to joke about having someone make us a plush conch to use as a token at parties, but it never happened.
71. Perfume, Patrick Suskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
Started it once. It scares me, because my reading ethics dictate that I will eventually have to finish it.
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens.
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Here's a argument I have now and then. Is this a dystopia? It seems like it, but I can't prove it to my satisfaction.
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
I should really reread it. But I loved it in 9th grade.
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I haven't read it, but I've always loved the title.
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
Pretty fun book. I only read it because the enigmatic father in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel was reading it.
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
Disturbing book. Takes you way too far inside the head of a seriously disturbed kid, and then leaves you with a not particularly reassuring Trainspotting ending.
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Heehee, we went to see LXG and Dorian Gray showed up. And I was all like, 'what, is he going to confuse the enemies with his enigmatic sexuality?' And then that's basically what he did.
119. Shogun, James Clavell
Yum. Some questionable historical details, but yum. I'm a sucker for epics.
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
What the hell's a triffid?
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
More real horror. Shudder.
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
Not as explicitly creepy as a lot of his works, but the corporal punishment scene stuck with me. (And with Dahl, if you've read his autobiography.) And any book that encouraged poaching is good with me.
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
Excellent title.
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
Dude, WWI was messed up.
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Boy did I dislike reading this. What a drag. And Apocalypse Now was just as bad, I'm sorry.
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
I really rather liked this book. It just took me a lot of effort to finish it. I'm slowly learning how to do that, and I'm generally pleased with the results. But it might just be snobbery.
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches by Roald Dahl
170. Charlote's Web by E.B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Very, very different from what I expected. It's nothing like the movies. I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be, really. But is is emphatically unlike them. They went out of their way to make movies unlike the novel.
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
Definitely my favorite Umberto Eco book. I had already seen the movie, so reading it didn't affect me so much. But I cried with the library burned in the movie. Information should only accumulate. If it is destroyed, what chance of immortality do we have?
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Slightly cheating here, as I'm currently 187 out of 281 pages through it. But I'm really liking it and will finish it in a few days, so I don't feel too bad about it. Certainly an... unusual book. Beautiful prose, though.
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
I was reading this when I visited DC. My copy is seriously water-warped after standing in the rain for an hour waiting for tours of the capitol building to start. Not much to say about the book itself. The movie really is an excellent adaptation, in that very rare 'ignore most of the book and change lots of other stuff, but still manage to capture the exact feeling perfectly' kind of way.
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera.
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews
(After doing about a quarter of them, I realize that I'm including spoilers for some. I don't feel too guilty about this, given the age of the media in question, but you've been warned.)
1. Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
Duh. My mythology.
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
I had to check to make sure, but I've only read Sense and Sensibility.
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
Definitely on my list. But no.
4. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Of course!
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
Yup. The first really good HP.
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
I don't understand the classic definition of horror. I just don't find it scary. My brain understands being eaten by a monster. I don't want it to happen, but it isn't horrific. Being trapped in a evil, faceless society that only exists because everyone around you chooses to live in it, that I find scary.
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Again, of course. Not my favorite from the series, to be honest. Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Magician's Nephew are the ones I read over and over again.
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
I rather liked it.
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Ick. Slow and depressing. And rather pointless.
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Loved it. Started my interest in Russian literature. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, I've yet to find anything quite as good.
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
Yes, yes and yes.
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
If Tolkien is my mythology, this is my Bible. Very deep and primal feelings. It just feels true.
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Eh. A very interesting setting, temporally. But sad, sad, sad. I know it still happens, but thank god we live in slightly more enlightened times.
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
Dude, I was raised on Roald Dahl. Kids need some creepiness in their literature.
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
I wish I had read it as a kid, like everyone said to.
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
Yummy yummy epic fiction. And get this -- I actually like the later books!
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
Zorn! Zorn! That's the only lapine I remember. A great book, as long as you aren't expecting fluffy happy carefree bunnies. Darwin's a bitch.
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Hated it, but that was 8th grade. It's in my queue to be reread with a more dispassionate eye.
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Read like half of it in French. Which means I understood very little of it.
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
Read it in highschool. Wasn't impressed.
53. The Stand, Stephen King
Disaster fiction! Yay! Until it gets all weird and religious and stops making sense, anyway. I never did understand why thoe heros needed to go make 'the stand' at the end, since god was just hanging around in that convenient machine there, waiting to jump out.
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
A disappointment after War and Peace. Two stories only vaguely connected, both rather disappointing. But I like using 'pulled a Karenina' to reference someone commiting suicide in that fashion.
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
Capturing nightmares. Giants that EAT PEOPLE. Psy-ops on the royal family!
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A good read, but slow.
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
pterry!
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
If I hear one more rumor about Gilliam directing an adapation, I'm going to explode. It makes so much sense! Why can't the universe just work properly for once and let it happen?
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
I own a book club edition of this. Also one of my favorites, after Pyramids. But I haven't been caught up in about 10 years.
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
I've got the conch, bitch, so shut the fuck up. I just wanted to say that. We used to joke about having someone make us a plush conch to use as a token at parties, but it never happened.
71. Perfume, Patrick Suskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
Started it once. It scares me, because my reading ethics dictate that I will eventually have to finish it.
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens.
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Here's a argument I have now and then. Is this a dystopia? It seems like it, but I can't prove it to my satisfaction.
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
I should really reread it. But I loved it in 9th grade.
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I haven't read it, but I've always loved the title.
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
Pretty fun book. I only read it because the enigmatic father in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel was reading it.
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
Disturbing book. Takes you way too far inside the head of a seriously disturbed kid, and then leaves you with a not particularly reassuring Trainspotting ending.
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Heehee, we went to see LXG and Dorian Gray showed up. And I was all like, 'what, is he going to confuse the enemies with his enigmatic sexuality?' And then that's basically what he did.
119. Shogun, James Clavell
Yum. Some questionable historical details, but yum. I'm a sucker for epics.
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
What the hell's a triffid?
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
More real horror. Shudder.
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
Not as explicitly creepy as a lot of his works, but the corporal punishment scene stuck with me. (And with Dahl, if you've read his autobiography.) And any book that encouraged poaching is good with me.
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
Excellent title.
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
Dude, WWI was messed up.
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Boy did I dislike reading this. What a drag. And Apocalypse Now was just as bad, I'm sorry.
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
I really rather liked this book. It just took me a lot of effort to finish it. I'm slowly learning how to do that, and I'm generally pleased with the results. But it might just be snobbery.
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches by Roald Dahl
170. Charlote's Web by E.B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Very, very different from what I expected. It's nothing like the movies. I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be, really. But is is emphatically unlike them. They went out of their way to make movies unlike the novel.
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
Definitely my favorite Umberto Eco book. I had already seen the movie, so reading it didn't affect me so much. But I cried with the library burned in the movie. Information should only accumulate. If it is destroyed, what chance of immortality do we have?
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Slightly cheating here, as I'm currently 187 out of 281 pages through it. But I'm really liking it and will finish it in a few days, so I don't feel too bad about it. Certainly an... unusual book. Beautiful prose, though.
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
I was reading this when I visited DC. My copy is seriously water-warped after standing in the rain for an hour waiting for tours of the capitol building to start. Not much to say about the book itself. The movie really is an excellent adaptation, in that very rare 'ignore most of the book and change lots of other stuff, but still manage to capture the exact feeling perfectly' kind of way.
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera.
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews
no subject
Move His Dark Materials to the top of your list. You won't regret it.
Read all the Pratchett you can. It's all good.
I'm not going to tell you to reread Heart of Darkness, because it is a very sad book, but if you don't like it, just remember that it's mostly autobiographical. Conrad actually saw and experienced a lot of what he describes. If you really want to be blown away by history, read more about the Belgian Congo. King Leopold's Ghost is a good starting place, though the pictures are heartwrenching.
Dracula is nifty, and also not well adapted in any film I have seen. It's a book about modernism, and the great progress coming in the 20th century. I read it in 1998, when it was 100 years old, and it had a special 'millenium is coming' resonance, but I think it'd still be worth reading. It went well with War of the Worlds, as I recall.