And The List They Want You To Read

... With my comments.



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I thoroughly dislike this book. I find it boring. That's my own qualm with it. I don't think it is vulgar, it doesn't anger me, it just bores me. But, to be a tad sexist, I think this is because I'm a guy. I don't know. Just not for me. But, on another note, I do find Austen a bit 'fairy' and not a very challenging writer. I know the Austen scholars in the world will hate me for saying that.) 
 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 
 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (I tried, I really did and I gave up.)
 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Agreed!)
 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (On my 'to read' list so for now, from what I've heard, I'm going to agree.)
 6 The Bible (To form an opinion, I hope.)
 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Most definitely agreed!)
 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (I do want to finish it but I tried and I failed.)
 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Again, on the 'to read.)
 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Boring. So boring I don't even remember what happens. Which makes me question whether I was drunk when I read it or I need to re-read it.) 
 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (This title screwed me over in a pub quiz once because of that I refuse to read.) 
 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (Heller's daughter didn't read the novel. Do I have to?) 
 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (That's a life task not a reading session.)
 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Going to read it before the film comes out.)
 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 
 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (I'm agreeing only because you should gather an opinion on it but I didn't like it.) 
 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (The book is much better than the film but spends a long time telling us unnecessary stuff. There's a 200 page section on her family which seemed a tad pointless. I respect the book and think the book was quite gritty - there's a lot of sex and a lot of true emotions and sexual desires and feelings. The best scene is a sex scene towards the end of the book. A very interesting concept.) 
 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (Ms. George's book 'The Lifted Veil' was a bit of a dive so I'm not going to return to her.) 
 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (The thing with books like this is that if I were to pick it up in a shop, unknown to me about its reputation, I wouldn't read it. I only want to read it because I should and people would see me as 'well read'. Is that a reason to read a book?) 
 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (Really don't want to read it.) 
 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 
 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Tried. Failed.) 
 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (I'm going to read this one day.) 
 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (But nobody enjoys it.) 
 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (Only to prepare your kids and get them to challenge what they read, if they're the 'gobble it up and believe it' kinda kid, keep them away. We'll all have little Lewis' running around that abandon the Susans out there.) 
 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 Bernieres 
 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 
 40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne (I agree. I haven't read any yet, they're on my Amazon wish list but I do agree.) 
 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (I will read it but I'm not loving the idea.) 
 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Agreed.) 
 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (He's been called the Dickens of our time so I guess he must be important.) 
 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (Tried. Gave up.) 
 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 
 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (I agree. Yes, I agree.) 
 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (I want to read McEwan but I've heard that some of his stuff is boring. Reviews do indeed crush your opinions, twist your mind you might say.) 
 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (On the 'to read' pile.) 
 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 
 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Do we really need more Austen?)
 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 
 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (We get it Charlie, you love the city, you hate the city.) 
 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 (I was forced to read this in GCSE so I'm thinking my opinion is tainted because of that experience. Steinbeck is important, so they say, but I'm not so sure, this summer will tell when I finish 'East of Eden.) 
 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (I have just ordered this for research.) 
 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt (I tried but I failed. Not for me. The writing style anyway.) 
 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (I really disliked it. I wouldn't bother.) 
 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 
 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (I'm going travelling for two weeks in America this summer. Is it a book I need on my person? Hmm.) 
 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (The best review on Rushdie's books is during the episode of 'Fresh Meat' - watch it, Vod speaks sense.) 
 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (How many pages can we have on a whale?) 
 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (Agreed.) 
 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (I have to read this for Gothic so I'm excited about that.) 
 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I was told to read it so I'm not going to.) 
 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
 75 Ulysses - James Joyce (God no. The idea saddens me.) 
 76 The Inferno - Dante (Nobody reads Dante for pleasure.) 
 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 (It's a favourite.) 
 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (I think this is an important novel - much like 'The Help' which I did enjoy so I will read this one day.) 
 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 
 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (On my 'to read' list.) 
 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
 87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White (A childhood favourite, at least that's what the kids that read it told me.) 
 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I tried reading Albom and found him a bit flimsy. I wouldn't bother.) 
 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 (I forgot this wonderful man on my list. Read everything of Dahl.) 
 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo