I'm a Book Snob!

I have a friend who posted this as a Facebook note the other day. I don't really like this list because it seems to focus more on "national literary" than on the individual worthiness of each book. When I was an English major we defined national literacy as the literature people need to be familiar with because it is often referenced in their society. The best example is probably the Bible. Even if you're not religious chances are you are familiar with the most common Biblical motifs because they are everywhere. 


But enough of my rambling. Basically here is a list of books that someone deemed worthy of this list. I have highlighted the one's I've read. I don't agree with a lot of this list but I always find it interesting to see what books are considered important.

Have you read more than 6 of these books?  The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen    This is a good example of a book author that I do not find worthy of any list. Mark Twain said that a library without any work by Jane Austen would be a good library even if it had no other books in it. He really hated her work. If you're ever in need of a laugh I recommend Googling "Mark Twain Jane Austen" 

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - Surprisingly good!

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible- I haven't read the whole Bible, but I'm pretty sure most people haven't. I have read at least 12 books of the Bible from beginning to end though.

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 1984 - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials

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 

15 Rebecca

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife-- This is one that I don't understand why it made the list

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 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited -- Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment -- Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

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 Another one I don't find deserving of any list 

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

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

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - 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 (unfortunately)

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

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 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 - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (some of his short stories)

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 I'm reading this right now

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


Many of these have been on my "to read" list for a while. Now I have to get busy!!