How many of the BBC top 100 books have you read?

[Bluemooninmyeyes1]

I came across this list yesterday and I’m ashamed to say I’ve only read about 15 and most of them are the Roald Dhal books and Harry Potter I’ve obviously read more than 15 books in my life but they just don’t appear on this list! I’m making a conscious effort to read more classics this year.

How many have you read?

www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

Memours of a geisha is a brilliant book

The list is from 2003, does anyone know if there is another like this but more recent?

10 but I've read bits of some of the others and seen most of the movies.

Memours of a geisha is a brilliant book

Have to disagree. American bloke writing about a geisha who is rescued by a bloke.

Most of them actually, they are pretty well known books

Weird list. Mixture of classics, children’s classics and...very odd choices!

16! I read loads but most of that list is incredibly unappealing (so much fantasy and historical fiction!) to me and of the ones I hadn’t read I didn’t fancy any of them when I’ve been browsing in bookshops before.

About half. Agree with PP's, there's a lot of there I wouldn't touch. I thought Jacqueline Wilson was rubbish when my daughter was reading it, even she thought it was trash.

@LApprentiSorcier

Memours of a geisha is a brilliant book

Have to disagree. American bloke writing about a geisha who is rescued by a bloke.

I did like it, but Chinese Cinderalla is better.

55, but I read most of them a very long time ago and can't remember them well at all.

That list is from 2003 though, and has an awful lot of Terry Pratchett on it

You say that like it's a bad thing!

a half if you include Ulysses which I never finished while at uni

Like Proust and Rushdie I don't believe anyone has ever read James Joyce's masterpiece to the end. I recon someone claimed they were brilliant once and everyone just went along with it.

Started and given up on 6 of them including Lord of the Rings

Try again. As soon as you see the words 'Tom Bombadil' jump ahead by 40 pages.

45 BTW.

25. Some weird choices, and some equally weird omissions.

51, but agree, it is an odd list.

Nine.

This list irritates me so much. Because so many authors are repeated. I mean, I love a but of Harry Potter myself but does it need to make up a significant percentage of the list? Dickens, Dahl, Wilson are similar. It completely skews any real sense of variety and puts me in a bad mood every time. With the exception if Dicke s, who I hate, the multiple repeats work in my favour as I have read all the Tolkien, the Dahl etc but feels fake.

A list published now would look different. The classics might remain, but not those books that everyone was raving about in the late 90s/early 2000s and have now dropped off the popular radar.

Some books have been referenced on this thread that hadn't been published in 2003, e.g. Lily Alone so not surprising they're not on that list.

Actually no, 11.

35. What a very odd list. Two Jacqueline Wilson books, but no sign of The Handmaid's Tale or The Colour Purple? No Agatha Christie? Plenty of Dickens, but no Henry James. All the Harry Potter, but not a single Jilly Cooper 😂

But if you take off GCSE/A Level and Harry Potter then a lot less

Never mind. I read what I read. And can read well.

I loved the Clan of the Cave Bear

60 but this list is rather 'of its time', as has been mentioned.

40 but I’m not sure about that list... I loved Jaqueline Wilson when I was younger but I think she has more books on that list than Jane Austen does! She’s good but not that good

I've read 39 of them, BTW and I'm in my late 40s. Many of the children's books - Harry Potter, Jacqueline Wilson, were 'after my time' as a child, but I had read the Roald Dahls, so that bumped it up a bit. I do read children's books, but I find I only enjoy those I first read as a child. If I try to read new ones as an adult, it isn't the same.

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