The List

The Big Read Top 100

In 2003 the BBC put together a list of the top 100 reads as nominated by their audience (readers? subscribers?). This is The List that I’m working my way through for this blog. Why a list from across the pond and as dated as 2003? Check out my “About” page and my first post to find out how this craziness all got started.

I have linked the titles below to their related posts.

☑ indicates a book I’ve read.

Note: Some books are marked as read but have no related posts – these are books that I read prior to starting this blog, thus no related posts.

You can also follow my progress on Goodreads.

The List

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen ☑
   • What A Refreshing Scene to Read…
   • Pride and Prejudice a.k.a. WTF Lydia?
2. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte ☑
   • Jane Eyre
3. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee ☑
   • “Scuppernong is a kind of grape” and other such insights
   • To Kill A Mockingbird
4. The Bible ☑
5. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
6. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell ☑
7. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (the first one)☑
8. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens ☑
   • 8. Great Expectations (Spoiler Alert!)
9. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott ☑
   • Little Women, a.k.a. WTF Amy?
10. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
11. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
12. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
13. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
14. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
15. Middlemarch – George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)☑
    • Dorothea Doesn’t Care About Your Small Talk: Middlemarch Progress Update And Predictions
    • Middlemarch: Ducking Useless Fred Vincy
    • You Are My Basil Plant: Middlemarch and Audiobooks
16. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
17. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald ☑
18. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller ☑
    • Catch 22
    • This Is What Progress Looks Like
    • Catch 22: Update
    • Catch 22: a sprint to the finish!
    • Joseph Heller’s Handwritten Outline for Catch 22
19. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy ☑
    • From Russia with Love
    • Are You Still There?
20. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adam ☑
21. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
22. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
23. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll ☑
24. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
25. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy ☑
    • I got this.
    • Anna Karenina: HIMYM and Early Predictions
    • Anna vs. Textbooks
    • Dear Books: You’ve Changed, Man
26. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
27. Emma -Jane Austen ☑
    • Emma: I Bite My Thumb At You
28. Persuasion – Jane Austen
29. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
30. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
31. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
32. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
33. Animal Farm – George Orwell ☑
34. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown ☑
35. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
36. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
37. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
38. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery ☑
    • It Finally Happened
39. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
40. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood ☑
41. Lord of the Flies – William Golding ☑
42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
43. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
44. Dune – Frank Herbert ☑
    • Ditched the hobbits, bring on the…humans?
    • Dune: a ride down memory lane in a big yellow bus
    • My thoughts on “Dune” by Frank Herbert
    • 1984 was a weird time
45. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
46. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
47. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
48. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon ☑
    • The Shadow of the Wind
49. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens ☑
    • Rage, My Darling, Rage
50. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley ☑
51. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon ☑
52. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
53. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
54. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
55. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
56. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold ☑
57. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas ☑
    • Progress
    • Monte Cristo’s Relationship Status Is “It’s Complicated” For Literally Every Character
    • The Count of Monte Cristo: Am-Ah-Zing
58. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
59. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
60. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
61. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie ☑
    • Midnight’s Children: Believe The Hype
    • “I am the swallower of lives” And Other Gems in Midnight’s Children
62. Moby Dick – Herman Melville ☑
    • Why is Moby Dick a classic?
    • An old-school Dutch whaler could drink you under the table
    • Moby Dick: Completely and Utterly Overwhelming.
    • Why Moby Dick Is A Classic From Someone More Qualified And On A Roller Coaster
63. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
64. Dracula – Bram Stoker ☑
65. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett ☑
66. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
67. Ulysses – James Joyce
68. The Inferno – Dante
69. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
70. Germinal – Emile Zola
71. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
72. Possession – AS Byatt
73. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens ☑
74. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
75. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
76. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro ☑
77. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
78. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
79. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
80. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
81. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ☑
    • Eight Down, Four To Go
    • Fait Accopmli
82. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
83. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad ☑
84. Le Petit Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery ☑
    • Next on the list…
    • Le Petit Prince: What does the fox say?
85. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks ☑
86. Watership Down – Richard Adams ☑
    • “But you have no does!” and Other Thoughts on Watership Down
87. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
88. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
89. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
90. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl ☑
    • Why Am I [Not] Doing This
91. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo ☑
92. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings – JRR Tolkien ☑
    • TLOR = NSFD
    • back In The Saddle
    • A Portrait of Me Reading
    • LOTR: one down
93. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – JRR Tolkien ☑
    • The Two Towers
    • Tolkien, Round 2: The Two Towers (and a few notes on Allegiant)
    • Lord of the Rings videos (a.k.a. surfing YouTube instead of reading)
94. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – JRR Tolkien ☑
    • Middle Earth Home for Retired Heroes is somewhere I’d like to hang out (draft)
95. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien ☑
96. Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew – CS Lewis ☑
97. Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis ☑
98. Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy – CS Lewis ☑
99. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Return to Narnia – CS Lewis ☑
100. Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – CS Lewis ☑
101. Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair – CS Lewis ☑
102. Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle – CS Lewis ☑
103. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – JK Rowling ☑
104. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – JK Rowling ☑
105. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – JK Rowling ☑
106. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – JK Rowling ☑
107. Harry Potter and the Order of Pheonix – JK Rowling ☑
108. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – JK Rowling ☑
109. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling ☑
110. The Two Gentlemen of Verona – Shakespeare ☑
     • The Two Gentlemen of Verona: A Play Delivered in Memes, Gifs, and Images
111. The Taming of the Shrew – Shakespeare
112. The Comedy of Errors – Shakespeare ☑
113. Love’s Labor’s Lost – Shakespeare ☑
     • Why am I [not] doing this?
114. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare
115. The Merchant of Venice – Shakespeare ☑
116. The Merry Wives of Windsor – Shakespeare
117. Much Ado About Nothing – Shakespeare
118. As You Like It – Shakespeare
119. Twelfth Night – Shakespeare
120. The History of Troilus and Cressida – Shakespeare ☑
     • Brad Pitt Messes With My Creativity
     • Troilus and Cressida…and Brad Pitt
121. Measure for Measure – Shakespeare
122. All’s Well That Ends Well – Shakespeare
123. Pericles Prince of Tyre – Shakespeare
124. The Winter’s Tale – Shakespeare
125. The Tempest – Shakespeare☑
     • Okay, Tempest, You’re Up.
     • A Selective Reading of the Tempest
126. Henry VI Pt 1 – Shakespeare ☑
     • Henry VI Part 1 (1422 – 1444)
127. Henry VI Pt 2 – Shakespeare ☑
     • Henry VI Part Two & Three
128. Henry VI Pt 3 – Shakespeare ☑
     • Henry VI Part Two & Three
129. The Tragedy of King Richard III – Shakespeare ☑
130. The Tragedy of King Richard II – Shakespeare
131. The Life and Death of King John – Shakespeare
132. King Henry IV Pt 1 – Shakespeare ☑
     • Henry IV Part 1: Check
133. King Henry IV Pt 2 – Shakespeare ☑
     • Epilogue Is A Beautiful Word
134. The Life of King Henry V – Shakespeare
135. The Life of King Henry VIII – Shakespeare
136. Titus Andronicus – Shakespeare ☑
     • Titus Andronicus a.k.a. Murdery Bloody McMurder-Spree with Murder Pie
137. Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare ☑
138. The Tragedy of Julius Ceasar – Shakespeare ☑
     • Musing About Folly And Courage
     • Preach, Gretchen Weiners
     • Et tu, Brutus
139. The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark – Shakespeare ☑
140. The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice – Shakespeare ☑
141. The Life of Timon of Athens – Shakespeare
142. King Lear – Shakespeare ☑
143. Macbeth – Shakespeare ☑
144. Antony and Cleopatra – Shakespeare
145. The Tragedy of Coriolanus – Shakespeare

You can find the original list on the BBC website – but you will notice a few differences between their list and mine. Mainly, I’ve split out all of the series and complete works to be individual books, where as they are entered as one on the BBC Big Read Top 100 (e.g., the BBC list has “The Complete Works of Shakespeare” entered as one books) – hence why I have 145 books to the BBC’s 100.