100 Books

Lots of you will probably remember the BBC Big Read that happened way way back in 2003/4. The BBC set out to try and find the 'nation's best-loved novel', and asked people to nominate their favorite books. They then made a list of the top 100.

I find it really hard to believe that it's been a good 10 years, but ever since I stumbled across the list I've been keeping it at the back of my mind when I look for new books to read.

It reflects quite a few different tastes and its great for inspiration. I've kept a copy, and enjoy crossing off books and keeping track of how many I've read. 

Its a list I'll probably come back to again, but if you keep reading you can see my progress so far. If there are any on the list you've particularly enjoyed, let me know, and I might prioritise it on my to read pile. I still have long way to go, and I don't want it to dictate my reading, but maybe one day ill get somewhere close to 100.

Books in bold have been read :)

1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series, JK Rowling 

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

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 Traveler’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

30. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

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

37. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières

39. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne

41. Animal Farm, George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown

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, L. M. Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies, William Golding

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. Lolita, 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

69. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick, Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

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

82. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

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

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

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

100. Les Misérebles, Victor Hugo. 

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