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

Odd list.

The text was small, but NO black writers? Is there any?
Can see a 3-4 'Asian' writers, but it looks very culturally-derivative.

Is BJD really in top 100??

Yes if you were going to start a Must Read list you wouldn’t start there. I’ve read just over half of those - a decent mix of the classics and the best sellers. Like other posters I’m too old to have read Jacqueline Wilson and my DD wasn’t a big fan so I didn’t borrow them from her either.

I’m also of the generation before they started reading the classic mid-20th century American novels in English secondary schools, so while I’ve read Catcher in the Rye and Gatsby I haven’t read TKAM or Mice and Men.

The top ten is pretty solid. The top fifty is quite an interesting snapshot. The second fifty is just weird. I’d be interested to see them do it again and see which of the post-1980 books survived.

I think I have read half of them or so.

Does anyone have a better list?

@Pan2

Odd list.

The text was small, but NO black writers? Is there any?
Can see a 3-4 'Asian' writers, but it looks very culturally-derivative.

Is BJD really in top 100??

Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses is on there but I think that’s the only one. It’s just people listing their favourite book. And a lot of people haven’t read a novel since they finished GCSE English.

no sign of The Handmaid's Tale

It's a list based on what was popular in 2003. That was too long after The Handmaid's Tale was published for it to be a book loads of people were reading at that particular time, and obviously long before the American series brought the book to a new audience.

25. Horribly skewed to tolkien/potter/pratchett, if you font get on with that genre it's a bit if a dead loss

74. But I have a degree in English Lit!

Here’s Robert McCrum’s list: it’s personal and unlikely to contain any Terry Pratchett.
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list

ah thank you Find.

36

A lot of Jacqueline Wilson and Terry pratchett on there.

19. I read a lot. Currently reading the Count of Monte Cristo. A whopper of a book.

I love reading lists. Does anyone have anymore they can share?

This is interesting. It’s a list made up of other lists, and it’s pretty solid. If you read this lot I think you’d be definitively Well Read, but it would be a bit of a slog.
thegreatestbooks.org/

Very weird list! Some of my favourites on there - Rebecca, Cold Comfort Farm , I Capture the Castle, Katherine 😍
However I can’t really feel smug about having read all the Harry Potters, Pillars of the Earth (sexy Middle Ages people) and Clan of the Cave Bear (sexy cave people) I am not an intellectual reader 😂😂
36 if I’m being strict and only counting the ones I’ve read till the end.

That’s a very strange list - heavy on Pratchett who I’ve never read and Dickens who I only read at school.

I read, or rather now listen to, a lot of books and have about 35 of those covered.

84 - some on the list in childhood (a long time ago). But it's far from a list of "greats", and a fair few are "mediocre to poor".

I only read 27 of the Robert McCrum list.

And this is the BBC Greatest British Novels list, voted on by a panel of literary figures. Unlike McCrum and thegreatestbooks.org, women dominate the top ten.
My New Year’s resolution is to read more Woolf - I’ve read a couple of essays but not any of the novels.
www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151204-the-100-greatest-british-novels
I wonder where GRR Martin would be if you reran that Favourite books poll.

32. Not a Pratchett fan.

60 something on the first list better on Robert McCrums as haven't managed any Pratchett/Wilson/Archer etc

I love that Bridget Jones Diary is on there!
And Artemis Fowl- great books, didn’t think I’d see them on a BBC reading list though.

I've only read 3 of them. Despite reading at least 50 books a year.

26 but lots of bits of the children's books as I used to take turns when reading with DCs so they read a chapter then I read one to them. So that works for most of the Dahl, Wilson etc. Most of the children's books weren't written when I was the age to be reading them 😂

21 and most of those are kids books that I read to my children. None are books with any particular meaning for me.

[quote FindMeAHolidayPlz]Here’s Robert McCrum’s list: it’s personal and unlikely to contain any Terry Pratchett.
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list[/quote]
And 85 of these.