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 which I read prior to starting this blog, thus no related posts.
You can also follow my progress on Goodreads.
The List
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen ☑
- Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte ☑
- To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee ☑
- The Bible ☑
- Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
- Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell ☑
- His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (the first one)☑
- Great Expectations – Charles Dickens ☑
- Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
- Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
- Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
- Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
- The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
- Middlemarch – George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)☑
- Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
- The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald ☑
- Catch 22 – Joseph Heller ☑
- War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy ☑
- The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adam ☑
- Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
- Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll ☑
- The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
- Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy ☑
- David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
- Emma -Jane Austen ☑
- Persuasion – Jane Austen
- The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
- Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
- Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
- Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
- Animal Farm – George Orwell ☑
- The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown ☑
- One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
- The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
- Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery ☑
- Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood ☑
- Lord of the Flies – William Golding ☑
- Atonement – Ian McEwan
- Life of Pi – Yann Martel
- Dune – Frank Herbert ☑
- Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
- Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
- A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
- The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens ☑
- Brave New World – Aldous Huxley ☑
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon ☑
- Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
- Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
- The Secret History – Donna Tartt
- The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold ☑
- Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas ☑
- On The Road – Jack Kerouac
- Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
- Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
- Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie ☑
- Moby Dick – Herman Melville ☑
- Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
- Dracula – Bram Stoker ☑
- The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett ☑
- Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
- Ulysses – James Joyce
- The Inferno – Dante
- Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
- Germinal – Emile Zola
- Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
- Possession – AS Byatt
- A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens ☑
- Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
- The Color Purple – Alice Walker
- The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro ☑
- Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
- A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
- Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
- The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ☑
- The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
- Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad ☑
- Le Petit Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery ☑
- The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks ☑
- Watership Down – Richard Adams (Currently Reading)
- A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
- A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
- The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl ☑
- Les Miserables – Victor Hugo ☑
- Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings – JRR Tolkien ☑
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – JRR Tolkien ☑
- Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – JRR Tolkien ☑
- The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien ☑
- Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew – CS Lewis ☑
- Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis ☑
- Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy – CS Lewis ☑
- Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Return to Narnia – CS Lewis ☑
- Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – CS Lewis ☑
- Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair – CS Lewis ☑
- Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle – CS Lewis ☑
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – JK Rowling ☑
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – JK Rowling ☑
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – JK Rowling ☑
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – JK Rowling ☑
- Harry Potter and the Order of Pheonix – JK Rowling ☑
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – JK Rowling ☑
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling ☑
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona – Shakespeare ☑
- The Taming of the Shrew – Shakespeare
- The Comedy of Errors – Shakespeare ☑
- Love’s Labor’s Lost – Shakespeare ☑
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare
- The Merchant of Venice – Shakespeare ☑
- The Merry Wives of Windsor – Shakespeare
- Much Ado About Nothing – Shakespeare
- As You Like It – Shakespeare
- Twelfth Night – Shakespeare
- The History of Troilus and Cressida – Shakespeare ☑
- Measure for Measure – Shakespeare
- All’s Well That Ends Well – Shakespeare
- Pericles Prince of Tyre – Shakespeare
- The Winter’s Tale – Shakespeare
- The Tempest – Shakespeare☑
- Henry VI Pt 1 – Shakespeare ☑
- Henry VI Pt 2 – Shakespeare ☑
- Henry VI Pt 3 – Shakespeare ☑
- The Tragedy of King Richard III – Shakespeare ☑
- The Tragedy of King Richard II – Shakespeare
- The Life and Death of King John – Shakespeare
- King Henry IV Pt 1 – Shakespeare ☑
- King Henry IV Pt 2 – Shakespeare ☑
- The Life of King Henry V – Shakespeare
- The Life of King Henry VIII – Shakespeare
- Titus Andronicus – Shakespeare ☑
- Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare ☑
- The Tragedy of Julius Ceasar – Shakespeare ☑
- The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark – Shakespeare ☑
- The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice – Shakespeare ☑
- The Life of Timon of Athens – Shakespeare
- King Lear – Shakespeare ☑
- Macbeth – Shakespeare ☑
- Antony and Cleopatra – Shakespeare
- The Tragedy of Coriolanus – Shakespeare
Here is a link to the original list: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml – You will notice a few differences between the two lists. Mainly I’ve split out all of the series and complete works to be individual lines, where as they are represented as one line on the BBC Big Read Top 100.
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