The Reading List

I like to think that I enjoy some fairly simple pleasures in life, such as:

  • Writing lists (with little thought as to whether I’ll ever actually complete the tasks on it  - not that it matters, you just write a new list!)
  • Reading books 
  • Procrastination (why do something today when there’s always some other time to do it!). 

Nevertheless, I still do like to try to keep things in perspective. Grand plans are great but sometimes I do like to be able to you know, actually achieve things, even though I generally follow the belief that if you keep your expectations low you’re less likely to experience bitter disappointment. Continuing in this vein, I thought that trying to work my way through the list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die was probably a little ambitious. 

I came across the BBC Top 100 Books to Read list and thought I’d try that. Compared to the Australian list published by Angus and Robertson, it’s clear that readers in the UK read better books than on the big island. I’ve put the books I’ve read in bold text. There’s some that I think I’ve finished but can’t remember the story so I’ve counted them as not read in the spirit of being honest with myself. 

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 


Additional worthy books (according to other lists):

  • A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
  • A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
  • Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Atonement – Ian McEwan
  • Charlotte’s Web – EB White
  • Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
  • Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
  • Dracula – Bram Stoker
  • Germinal – Emile Zola
  • Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
  • Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
  • Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
  • Life of Pi – Yann Martel
  • Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
  • Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
  • Moby Dick – Herman Melville
  • Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
  • Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
  • Possession – AS Byatt
  • Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
  • The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
  • The Color Purple – Alice Walker
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
  • The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
  • The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
  • The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
  • The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
  • The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
  • The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
  • The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
  • The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
  • The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  • The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
  • The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
  • The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
  • Vanity Fair – William Thackery