The internet meme about 100 books everyone should read, put together by BBC audiences and of which supposedly an average person (in the UK?) would have read 6, actually includes a list from a different source. Actually, this is the list the BBC came up with, though the BBC never made the claim about people having read 6 of them.
I have read all the books on the other list. Here's how I do on the real BBC list:
Book | Author | Read? |
1 The Lord of the Rings | JRR Tolkien | |
2 Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | |
3 His Dark Materials | Philip Pullman | |
4 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | |
5 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | JK Rowling | |
6 To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | |
7 Winnie the Pooh | AA Milne | |
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | |
9 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | CS Lewis | |
10 Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë | |
11 Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | |
12 Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | |
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 | |
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 | |
25 The Hobbit | JRR Tolkien | |
26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles | Thomas Hardy | |
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 García Márquez | |
33 The Pillars Of The Earth | Ken Follett | |
34 David Copperfield | Charles Dickens | |
35 Charlie And The Chocolate Factory | Roald Dahl | |
36 Treasure Island | Robert Louis Stevenson | |
37 A Town Like Alice | Nevil Shute | |
38 Persuasion | Jane Austen | |
39 Dune | Frank Herbert | |
40 Emma | Jane Austen | |
41 Anne Of Green Gables | LM Montgomery | |
42 Watership Down | Richard Adams | |
43 The Great Gatsby | F Scott Fitzgerald | |
44 The Count Of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | |
45 Brideshead Revisited | Evelyn Waugh | |
46 Animal Farm | George Orwell | |
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 | |
53 The Stand | Stephen King | |
54 Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy | |
55 A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth | |
56 The BFG | Roald Dahl | |
57 Swallows And Amazons | Arthur Ransome | |
58 Black Beauty | Anna Sewell | |
59 Artemis Fowl | Eoin Colfer | |
60 Crime And Punishment | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | |
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 | |
66 The Magic Faraway Tree | Enid Blyton | |
67 The Magus | John Fowles | |
68 Good Omens | Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman | |
69 Guards! Guards! | Terry Pratchett | |
70 Lord Of The Flies | William Golding | |
71 Perfume | Patrick Süskind | |
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 |
|
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 | |
88 Cold Comfort Farm | Stella Gibbons | |
89 Magician | Raymond E Feist | |
90 On The Road | Jack Kerouac | |
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 García Márquez | |
98 Girls In Love | Jacqueline Wilson | |
99 The Princess Diaries | Meg Cabot | |
100 Midnight's Children | Salman Rushdie |
I have read 99 of them.