2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien 4 Harry Potter series – 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl Twelve for me. A few of those I have at home and have never read. Better get to it!
I've read 24 of those, mostly as school assignments from way back when. But I am reading one on the list for fun right now. =)
About 5. There are a gaggle of others on the list I started to read but had to give up because they bored me to death. Now I may well be lacking in academic faculties, but there are a whole swathe of so called classics that I just found completely underwhelming. Orwell's 1984 is amongst my favourite books, however. Huxley's Brave New World I consider to be hugely over-rated and absolutely laughable in parts, like it was written by a thirteen year old.
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien 5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 6 The Bible 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (read it in fourth grade, with the exception of Romeo and Juliet, as I thought it was stupid) 18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (if one has read the Chronicles of Narnia series—it's the name of a series, not the title of an individual book, one has read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe) 37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas (one of my all-time favorite works of literature, and Edmond Dantès is one of my favorite fictional characters) 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (read all of the Sherlock Holmes books, as well as the Hercule Poirot books and Father Brown books. At one point I was very into detective stories.) 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare (again, the Complete Works of Shakespeare was already listed, so if you've read the Complete Works, you've read Hamlet.) 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl Of the 100 books listed, I've read forty. Most people have only read six? Some of those are required reading, are they not?
Some of these books are quite dull. 1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl Not bad, but not the list I'd make.
Reading this list back I can't actually believe how bad this list is. We should try and make our own list, that would be fun. We could make a better list than this one anyway.
Any random, mindless list, without any explanations given for the choices or overall criteria, is worthless and irrelevant. I would take a single interesting review of a book over a list with 1,000 books on it.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series – YES 5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 6 The Bible YES 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 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 – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger 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 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll YES 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy YES 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 YES 37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini YES 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne YES 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown YES 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery YES 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood YES 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding YES 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 bleep – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold 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 YES 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens YES 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 Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 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 YES 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 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 YES 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery YES 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 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 YES 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo YES (And yes, I've read it, not just seen the play or the film ) So that means 15...
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 bleep – Vladimir Nabokov 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks So 13. Of them, my favourite is bleep, which I assume is Lo-Li-Ta. I think Nabokov would probably laugh at the stupid automatic censorship.
32 In the process of *reading* Les Miserables, it's an audio book so out of 25 tracks, I'm on 22. I love Dune!
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien 5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare So, 16.
The fact that we read these kinds of book in class has always angered me. I love to read. Reading is fun. I've been reading since before I can remember...but for all the kids in my school, whose parents never read to them or asked them to read... For the kids who felt that reading was never something they could enjoy, the was only meant for a breed of intellectual completely separate from the lives that they led... Most of these are the books that taught them that was true. These are the kinds of book that an average high schooler wouldn't understand or enjoy. So they taught the kids around me what they had already suspected... Reading was work. Reading is not fun. Reading is for people who don't understand the common man but think they do. Most of these are beautiful, well written books that have changed minds and even history. But today, all I can think of when I see these books are all the kids around me saying: "Are you kidding? The test on the book? I didn't even read it. Reading is all bullshit." I really wish that for once, kids wouldn't just be taught to read. I wish they could be taught to love to read.
Well, I've read the following 52 of these. However, I'm not sure what this list is supposed to show. Are these books all supposed to be worthy? The most worthy books? Then why include The DaVinci Code? Geez. So many great classics left off the list, and many great authors as well. Modern as well as classic. I also think the American books on this list barely scratch the surface. I mean, where is Huckleberry Finn? I distrust this sort of 'survey, actually. I'd much rather read a specific list of what specific people have actually read in their lifetimes. More interesting, and might do justice to the HUGE range of books that actually exist. 1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series – 5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Reading is work at first. Like anything worth doing in life, it takes time and effort. Where did this entitled belief that everything should be easy and pleasant come from? I struggled like hell with reading when I was a kid, especially as a 5 year-old immigrant from Russia who couldn't speak a word of English, and was mocked for it by his classmates. It only became fun later. I learned to love reading only after becoming good at it. And that didn't occur until I had read dozens of books in full. How exactly do you propose to teach this love of reading?
Thanks for posting this! This was fun! I have read 37... I have read 1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien 5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Actually, that is the worst possible view to have as a teacher. Both studies and common sense show that children who enjoy school do better at it. If you give children something to read that they'll hate, it's very obvious that they won't enjoy it. Most of the people who do love to read are those who stuck with it despite the difficulty. This means that only a small portion of the population learns to like reading. From an education standpoint, that is AWFUL. I feel like people throw out 'life should be difficult!' as some mantra that reasons that if they had it hard, everyone else should have it hard too. Don't walk to school 3 miles in the snow every day if you can get a bus to take you there. While it might feel nice to congratulate yourself on your hard work (and you should be congratulated) that doesn't mean that making things difficult is the way to go. Think of it this way: Would you start off a child on calculus in middle school? It's hard, but that doesn't make it better for the child. I'd say: skip the Harper Lee and the War and Peace. Bring in Harry Potter, The Once and Future King, Alice in Wonderland, and the No Fear Shakespeare. Ease them into reading. Making things difficult and hateable isn't indicative of student's efforts. It's indicative of terrible teaching.
In an absence of any actual facts or arguments, make vague allusions to studies and re-assert that you're correct. Mind telling me specifically what you disagree with in the quoted portion, oh wise and mighty one? By the way, I have actually worked as a teacher before, and was very successful at it. Have you ever been a teacher? Nice strawman. This isn't even close to what I wrote. At what point do you conflate "reading is hard work at first" to "everyone hates reading at first"? The world is not binary. I didn't hate reading as a kid. But I wasn't a fan, either, and it WAS hard work, just like lifting weights, studying math, or anything else I grew to later love. And I feel like even more people don't bother reading what is being written, and would rather reply to a ridiculous strawman they made up. This cliche is relevant to reading how? Okay smart guy, I asked you a question at the end of my last post, which you ignored. My bet is you will continue to ignore it, because criticizing and making grandiose statements is easy, but writing anything constructive is hard. Here it is again; "I learned to love reading only after becoming good at it. And that didn't occur until I had read dozens of books in full. How exactly do you propose to teach this love of reading?" Oh, now "reading is difficult at first" becomes "making reading difficult and hateable"?! (not a word, by the way) I don't think you're a real good advocate for your position, since you apparently suffer from poor reading skills yourself.
However, that's a door that is locked from the inside. I don't think there is any way around it - kids won't learn to love reading unless they are shown the way, and even then it might not take. I drove my parents batty as a young boy because I was a reluctant reader. Looking back, I was extremely distractible (ADD? Maybe, but no one knew what it was back then) and I also had a visual-motor problem that I found very irritating (a weak muscle in my left eye not only caused unfocused vision, but also caused things to appear to be floating). Of course, I didn't understand then what made me reluctant to read, I just was. It wasn't until I was 13 and we moved to a new neighborhood that things began to change. I was alone all day and bored silly, and finally one evening my mother dragged me up to Levine's Stationary store and bought me a paperback copy of Tom Sawyer. I started reading it the next morning after she left for work and I finished it the same evening. To say a door had been opened would be an understatement. Assigned reading was always a chore before I started, but the thing being read always determined whether I read the book or the Cliff notes. At fourteen, we were assigned plays of Sophocles, and I actually enjoyed them (although the idea of a guy doing his mother was just a bit beyond the pale). Next came Great Expectations, Cliff note time. Of course, I when I reread it at age 40, I picked up all the understated humor that I had missed the first time. But then came To Kill a Mockingbird, still one of my favorite books of all time. Earlier this week, my wife and I stopped in at a local B&N. While there, I decided to check the "Summer reading" table to see what kids are being assigned to read these days. I was very pleased to see a lot of the titles I had assigned as a student - To Kill a Mockingbird, Old Man and the Sea, Little Women, Animal Farm, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, etc. Also saw new entries, like Barack Obama's book, and that's fine, too. The Catcher in the Rye was there, and to this day I don't get what everyone loved about that book. Maybe it's because I didn't read it until I was in my forties. Viva la difference. You're right, [MENTION=55557]NeonFraction[/MENTION]. Some kids won't get it. But as a one-time reluctant reader, I can tell you, if they don't want to read, if they don't open themselves up to it, you won't be able to make them. I don't think the books themselves discourage them. My bad experiences in reading didn't discourage me from reading, they just discouraged me from reading certain writers. (I was assigned Red Badge of Courage twice in high school and once in college, and never made it past page 40; I tried again in my 40s and gave up at page 25, and I will never understand what anyone sees in it).
I think while you have a very good point, I also believe that there's no harm in making it easier for kids.
Ah, there's the rub. There is no one, single way to "make it easier for kids". My son was diagnosed early on as "learning disabled". In fact, he was borderline IDD, with some attention deficits, very low muscle tone and visual-motor tracking problems. We kept him in public school special education for five years, and by the time he was 10, he had a mid-first grade reading level. At the time (mid-1990s) there was a huge war going on in education between traditional phonics and whole language, with whole armies throwing white-paper grenades at each other. We finally fought for and got a referral to a private school for him. The first parent-teacher night there, I met with his reading teacher, and the first question I asked him was whether he believed in phonics or whole language. "Let me ask you something," he said. "You have a tool belt at home?" I said that I did. "You don't just have one tool in that belt, do you? I mean, you have a hammer, some screwdrivers, a couple of pairs of pliers?" I nodded. "Same with teaching reading. Phonics is a tool. If the child learns with phonics, that's the tool I use. If whole language works, I use that. Whatever tool in the belt I need, I use." A year later, my son was reading on an eighth grade level. Our propensity to always try to make one size fit all combined with the tendency for educational trends to be based at least as much in ideology as in fact assures that a large percentage of kids learn in ways that not only don't make it easier, but actually make it harder. Earlier, you mentioned Harry Potter as being a better choice than Harper Lee. My nieces would agree with you, both having grown up mad for Harry Potter. I, on the other hand, found Lee, Hemingway and other classic writers to be completely engrossing, and would have been put off by Rowling (as indeed I was when I read, at my friends' enthusiastic recommendations, Tolkien). At the same time, if my school hadn't told me to read Lee, Hemingway and the others, I might never have thought to do so on my own.
13/100. I was forced to read most of them and (what I feel is a result of that) didn't really enjoy them.
