The book I read was in your eyes

DISCLAIMER: This list, and the claims made by someone on behalf of the BBC may or may not be entirely accurate. But it was fun and has therefore spawned the following post.

A meme from Pezao:

The Big Read (apparently sponsored by the BBC) reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love. (I'm skipping this one. The only one I didn't love that I read is #43.)
4) Place an asterisk (*) by those you've seen a movie or stage performance of (added by Pezao). If there are multiple *, I've seen both a film and a stage adaptation. (added by me)
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

1. The Lord of the Rings**, J.R.R. 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 (I tried to read this in 9th grade and just couldn't get into it. I would like to try again, because I do loves me some 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 (I hated Scarlett O'Hara so much, I slapped the book. I'm not even kidding.)
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 (I'm so counting that I've seen Muppet Treasure Island)
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 (actually, this is my current book, as you can see on my sidebar)
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

You may notice I italicized everything I haven't read, except one. That's because I consider lists like this a challenge, and I would at some point, love to read all these books. When I was in high school and undergrad, I didn't read as voraciously as I did when I was a kid. I was just too busy, or so I thought. I didn't give up reading entirely, and I did miss it. When I graduated, I was so burned out that I only read a handful of books in the two years after.

Thanks to the 52 books - 52 weeks challenge from Eilonwy, I'm reading like I used to, 3 or 4 at a time. My goal this year is not to re-read anything, and I'm really trying not to start too many books at a time.

How am I doing? It's week 34 and I'm reading my 41st and 42nd books of the year. A lot of them have been audiobooks whilst I'm working, but that totally counts. You would think that my grad school schedule would not allow for so much outside reading, but I'm making time and reading at least a few chapters a night. I hope I'm not so burned out this time.

And no, I have no plans to read Midnight's Children. I acquired a copy four years ago, and tried to read it then. I got about halfway through and completely lost interest, and actually gave my copy to KT just last week.

Gosh I love books.