BBC literacy thing

[Ⓐaron]

Bold the books you've read, italicise the ones you've seen film/tv/stage adaptations of. Then answer the questions.

Auntie Beeb thinks most people won't have read more than six of these. I've read thirty. I'm sure you guys won't disappoint either.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
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 (why is this on here twice?)
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 - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
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
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 Zafón
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - 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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile 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 Misérables — Victor Hugo

1. What author do you own the most books by? Haven't counted, but probably Terry Pratchett.

2. What book do you own the most copies of? Probably the Bible or some of Shakespeare's works, same as every other person in this country.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? A bit.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Does Evey Hammond count? I dunno.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)? Dunno. Small Gods maybe? I think I read it three times this year alone.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Probably Winnie-the-Pooh. Idk.

7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year? I can't think of anything, which either means that I haven't read anything bad or that I already forgot reading it.

8. What is the best book you've read in the past year? Probably Small Gods again.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? The idea of an anarchist forcing anyone to read books seems rather silly. But if I had to pick, probably something by Chomsky.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? Idk. The Dispossessed maybe?

11. What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Dunno, depends if they did a Starship Troopers kind of thing and completely changed the tone of the book (which I approved of in that case btw).

12. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character. I rarely/never remember my dreams.

13. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? Probably some kind of smut. Or maybe Dan Brown's first two Robert Langdon novels or something else along those lines.

14. What is the most difficult book you've ever read? Finnegans Wake easily, though I never finished it. Of the ones I finished, probably Gravity's Rainbow.

15. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? I don't think any of the ones I've seen are obscure

16. Do you prefer the French or the Russians? Probably the Russians if only because they gave us Bakunin and Tolstoy. Then again the French gave us Proudhon.

17. Roth or Updike? Never read either.

18. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Never read either.

19. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Nothing against any of them, but Shakespeare is probably the greatest English-language writer in history. Though Chaucer could probably have given him a run for his money if he'd lived to finish the Canterbury Tales.

20. Austen or Eliot? Never read Eliot.

21. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? There are a lot of them. I don't think I've ever read anything by Dickens longer than A Christmas Carol, for example.

22. What is your favorite novel? Dunno. The Dispossessed is pretty high on the list.

23. Play? Idk. King Lear? A Doll's House was rather nice too.

24. Poem? A few. The Masque of Anarchy and The Second Coming would have to be pretty high on the list.

25. Essay? On Civil Disobedience, probably. Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism is rather charming too.

26. Work of nonfiction? Probably something by Chomsky but I'll be damned if I can narrow it down to one work.

27. Who is your favorite writer? That's like asking me to pick a favourite musical artist, except I don't have something like last.fm to tell me who I read most. I should probably create a Goodreads page shouldn't I.

28. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? A lot of people really like Terry Goodkind and I find him to be execrable in every way that matters. But then a lot of people know he's crap too. I can't think of anyone universally respected who I think has no important redeeming qualities.

29. What is your desert island book? Probably Small Gods again.

30. And... what are you reading right now? Worth Dying For by Lee Child, one of many books I 'liberated' from the strip pile at work.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Bold the books you've read, italicise the ones you've seen film/tv/stage adaptations of. Then answer the questions.

Auntie Beeb thinks most people won't have read more than six of these. I've read thirty. I'm sure you guys won't disappoint either.

I drew a line through the ones I have neither read nor seen/listen to.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
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[/i]
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 (why is this on here twice?)
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 - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
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
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 Zafón
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - 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 (incredibly boring book but I struggled through it)
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (overrated)
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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell my favourite book ever.
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 Looked too sentimental
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 Misérables — Victor Hugo

1. What author do you own the most books by? Jane Austen

2. What book do you own the most copies of? A Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Didn't notice.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Tseng

5. What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)? One of Jane Austen's, I'm sure.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Hawaii by James Michener

7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year? The Secret Daughter

8. What is the best book you've read in the past year? I think it was a fanfiction by demonegg.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? If This is a Man, by Primo Levi.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? I don't really like seeing books made into movies.

11. What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Cloud Atlas.

12. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character. I never dream about books.

13. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? I have to read a lot of terribly earnest, formulaic young adult fiction.

14. What is the most difficult book you've ever read? The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. I'd get to the end of the page and realise I had no memory of what I'd just read.

15. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Pericles, prince of Tyre.

16. Do you prefer the French or the Russians? French.

17. Roth or Updike? I'd pass on both.

18. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Sedaris is so funny.

19. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? This is just a silly question. Surely a better one would be, Milton or Dan Brown?

20. Austen or Eliot? Austen. Although I love Elliot, there are chapters which can be a bit of a chore.

21. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? Never read War and Peace. I don't read many American novelists.

22. What is your favorite novel? One Hundred Years of Solitude

23. Play? Macbeth

24. Poem? Lullaby by W H Auden

25. Essay? Don't know.

26. Work of nonfiction? I can't think right now.

27. Who is your favorite writer? I think Alice Munro is a real writers' writer.

28. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Margaret Atwood.

29. What is your desert island book? Everything You Need to Become Fluent in Japanese

30. And... what are you reading right now? The Night Circus, the Romantic (Barbara Gowdy), various ongoing excellent fanfictions.

 

[HylianMogget]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
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 (why is this on here twice?) (I'm not sure if I read all of the Narnia books, but I know I read this one).
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 - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
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
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 Zafón
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - 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 (Gankutsuou counts as an adaptation, right? )
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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile 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 (I had to read this in French, not fun times)
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 Misérables — Victor Hugo

1. What author do you own the most books by? I don't know, either Philip K. Dick or Haruki Murakami, I think.

2. What book do you own the most copies of? Am I weird if I don't really have multiple copies of books?

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? No.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Dunno.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)? I'm not really sure. There are definitely books I've read multiple times and will read again, but nothing stands out to me as something I've read the most.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Probably either Harry Potter or The Golden Compass (I think I read it around that age). I think I was done with my Animorphs phase by then.

7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year? A Voyage to Arcturus was not my thing.

8. What is the best book you've read in the past year? Either The Tombs of Atuan or The Once and Future King.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? I dunno.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? Dunno, but I want to see Ender's Game as an anime directed by Hideaki Anno.

11. What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Dunno.

12. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character. Can't remember one.

13. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? Probably The Da Vinci Code.

14. What is the most difficult book you've ever read? I haven't read any of the books generally considered as difficult (thinking of Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, The Sound and the Fury, ect.).

15. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? Haven't seen any obscure ones.

16. Do you prefer the French or the Russians? Haven't read enough Russian lit to judge, but after taking enough French classes in college to double major I came to the unfortunate realization that I just don't like the majority of French literature.

17. Roth or Updike? Haven't read either.

18. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Haven't read either.

19. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Shakespeare.

20. Austen or Eliot? Austen.

21. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? Not sure what's most embarrassing, but I haven't read a lot of stuff (no Dickens, no Tolstoy).

22. What is your favorite novel? Ugh, this is too hard.

23. Play? King Lear.

24. Poem? It's embarrassing how little I know about poetry. Maybe that's my most embarrassing?

25. Essay? Dunno.

26. Work of nonfiction? Dunno.

27. Who is your favorite writer? This is too hard, too.

28. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Don't know.

29. What is your desert island book? Again, too hard. Yeah, I'm dodging the big questions.

30. And... what are you reading right now? I haven't been reading as much as I should be lately, so I'm sort of in between books. I started Dracula a while ago but got distracted by stuff, so I gotta go and finish that.

 

[Ryushikaze]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell- I don't think I've seen the movie version of this.
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 - Not fond of Mr. Hardy.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - Assuming that seeing any of the film adaptations counts for this, but I HAVE read the whole damn thing.
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 - Never saw or read the complete thing.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald- Hadn't even seen a filmed version until very recently.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - Don't think I read this one, actually.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - Read half of it. Quit.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky]/b]
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck- AFAIK, never saw a film version.
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- Specifically, I watched the OLD version, not the new one.
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (why is this on here twice?)
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 - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - Again, fuck off Mr. 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- Read more than just Dune, natch.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen- I think I've seen the BBC version of this.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X- Saw SOME version of this too.
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X - I don't think I ever actually read this, oddly.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - 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- If an Anime counts, add italics to this one.
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 X
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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile 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 Misérables — Victor Hugo

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
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(trying to read and then getting bored and stopping counts, right?)
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(I think I had to read this for English in 5th grade, but I'm not sure, but I'm underlining it anyway)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (why is this on here twice?)
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 - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
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(This is the same case as with Narnia, but with 8th grade)
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 Zafón
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - 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(I remember reading this for English once, but I don't remember if I chose to or had to. I'm underlining anyway)

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens(this one's interesting in that while I haven't had to read it for school, I've had to watch it for school.)
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 (Same case as a Christmas Carol)
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(Can't remember if i've had to read it for school, but I know I've had to watch it for school)
100 Les Misérables — Victor Hugo

1. What author do you own the most books by? No idea.

2. What book do you own the most copies of? The Bible probably.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Not really.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? What?

5. What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)? Probably Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I've read it like 3 times. Addendum: Now that i think about. I think it's actually Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as I've read that book probably at least 5 times.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? I don't remember.

7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year? I can't think of anything, which either means that I haven't read anything bad or that I already forgot reading it.

8. What is the best book you've read in the past year? Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? I dunno.

11. What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Not sure.

12. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character. I rarely/never remember my dreams.

13. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? I'm not an adult yet.

14. What is the most difficult book you've ever read? The Red Pony and The Grapes of Wrath. I was surprised when of Mice and Men was actually interesting and engaging, unlike those two snoozefests.

15. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? Shakespeare has obscure works?
16. Do you prefer the French or the Russians? Russians. They gave us Tetris and Soviet Russia jokes.

17. Roth or Updike? Never read either.

18. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Never read either.

19. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Nothing against any of them, but Shakespeare is probably the greatest English-language writer in history. Though Chaucer could probably have given him a run for his money if he'd lived to finish the Canterbury Tales.

20. Austen or Eliot? Never read either.

21. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? Define gap.

22. What is your favorite novel? Dunno.

23. Play? Not sure.

24. Poem? Not sure

25. Essay? Not sure.

26. Work of nonfiction? Wikipedia.

27. Who is your favorite writer? Dunno.

28. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Not sure.

29. What is your desert island book? I think Robinson Crusoe is the only desert island book I've read. That's what this question means, right?

30. And... what are you reading right now? The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury.

 

[Fangu]

I realized I had read 7 and almost fainted. I am not at all a bereaded person.
Also I've probably seen adoptions of about 3/4.
And therein lieth the question. DOES THAT MEAN YOU KNOW THE STORY
Big discussion which I love, media: re ways of telling stories etc. Did a paper on the subject at age 16 and got highest mark. WOO
Anyway - I read Lord of the Flies at age 12 and I just recently realized I'd picked up something from it, so -- good books last forever or something.

Oh and also my favourite book at age 10 was 'Rüdiger the little vampire'. I have no idea if he even made it to English but he had an older brother called Lumpi and a younger sister called Anna and I loved him to death.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (mostly)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
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 (school)
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 (school)
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 Bernieres
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 Márquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
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
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 Zafón
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - 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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile 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 Misérables — Victor Hugo

1. What author do you own the most books by? No idea.

2. What book do you own the most copies of? I don't.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Certainly not. Prepositions were the first topic that I ever failed an assignment about when I was in grade school, so they can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Love is never a secret.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life? Not a damn clue.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Lord of the Rings, Return of the King - because of the Appendices and how that helped playing D&D, and got me into worldbuilding.

7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year? I haven't.

8. What is the best book you've read in the past year? I keep almost finishing Lord of Light which is amazing, but I honestly barely ever read anything, and forget about books constantly.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? I dunno, Hellstrom's Hive?

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? No idea, tbqh.

11. What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Ditto.

12. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character. I don't believe I've ever had one. I very seldom dream, and they always take place in my own personal dreamscape when I do.

13. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? Define "low brow"...

14. What is the most difficult book you've ever read? Probably the Iliad or the Odyssey when I was a kid?

15. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? Taming of the Shrew? I don't know enough about Shakespeare to know if that qualifies, because I think most of his work is overglorified English-teacher fap material that I absolutely can't stand tbqh.

16. Do you prefer the French or the Russians? Russians.

17. Roth or Updike? No idea.

18. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Not a damn clue.

19. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Anyone who isn't Shakespeare.

20. Austen or Eliot? Who knows.

21. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? The fact that English classes' assigned reading tragically depressing horseshit books basically killed any motivation that I had to devotedly spend time reading like I did constantly as a kid, (Number the Stars, Bridge to Terabithia, etc.)

22. What is your favorite novel? Haven't a clue.

23. Play? No idea.

24. Poem? I probably have one, but don't know what it is off the top of my head.

25. Essay? It really depends on the topic of discussion, elsewise it's like comparing apples and fucking oranges.

26. Work of nonfiction? No goddamn idea.

27. Who is your favorite writer? Haven't a clue.

28. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Who knows.

29. What is your desert island book? See, I don't know that I'd have one at all. 'Round about the time that I turned 10, I started just doing world building for D&D and other large-scale scenarios in my mind all the time in my spare time, so I usually only read things when it's directly recommended by a friend as a, "You need to read this now." as I honestly never seek out books on my own at all. I pretty much live in the world-creating realm of my imagination when I would've been reading before (Thanks to Lord of the Rings/Chronicles of Narnia/Dune/etc. for getting me into that as a kid).

30. And... what are you reading right now? A metric shitload of ongoing comics (Uncanny X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cable & X-Force, Naruto, The Darkness, Saga, Adventure Time, Wolverine & the X-Men, Doctor Who, Ultimate Spider-man, All New X-Men, Batman Beyond, Samurai Jack, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. etc.) but that probably doesn't count, since it's more like an ongoing TV series, since they're incomplete, but progressing stories and they're not really "books" per se. I like constantly being able to be in the middle of the story and being able to talk about the developments as they happen rather than discussing books. Hell, I watch and analyze newly released movies on almost a weekly basis and discuss all SORTS of cinematographic idiosyncrasies about them, but I really just don't read books. Weird... :\




X

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

By the way, I think we should underline books/movies we've had to read/watch for an English class(or school in general, but English is usuallly the only class that makes you read books), as those statistics could prove quite interesting, even if no one else does it, I'm going to do it anyway.

 

[Clement Rage]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
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 (why is this on here twice?)
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 - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
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
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -About to read, though.
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 Zafón
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
[59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - 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 X
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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile 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 Misérables — Victor Hugo

1. What author do you own the most books by? Haven't counted, but probably Terry Pratchett.

2. What book do you own the most copies of? Gardens of the Moon,Stephen Erikson.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? No.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Um... nobody?

5. What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)? Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Can't remember, probably the Hobbit.


7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year?

8. What is the best book you've read in the past year? To Kill a Mockingbird

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? No opinion.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? Mistborn, Brandon Saunderson.


11. What book would you least like to see made into a movie? No opinion.

12. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character. N/A

13. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? Dunno.

14. What is the most difficult book you've ever read? A brief History of Time Stephen Hawking


15. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? Macbeth. Not very obscure.

16. Do you prefer the French or the Russians? No opinion.

17. Roth or Updike? No opinion

18. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? No opinion.

19. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? No opinion.

20. Austen or Eliot? No opinion.
.
21. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? Literary fiction.

22. What is your favorite novel? Too many. Count of Monte Cristo is a contender.

23. Play? Faust That ending, with the clock striking.

24. Poem? If, Rudyard Kipling

25. Essay? Can't remember the title, the one that suggested the Irish should eat their children by Jonathan Swift.

26. Work of nonfiction?

27. Who is your favorite writer? Too difficult, there's loads of brilliant ones.

28. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? George R R Martin. He is good, but come on guys, he's is not even close to the only guy who ever killed a character/wrote fantasy for adults/wrote women in fantasy novels/etc.

29. What is your desert island book? Complete Idiot's Guide to Surviving on Desert Islands

30. And... what are you reading right now? To Green Angel Tower: Storm, by Tad Wiliams[/QUOTE]

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

I watched Apocalypse Now(great film btw) last night, so I went ahead and italicized Heart of Darkness, as it's apparently based on that book. I also removed the underline for Of Mice and Men since we changed plans about reading it due to lack of time.

 

[Novus]

Where has this list been copied from?

 

[Ⓐaron]

I don't remember what site I got it from but the BBC's feature on it is here

 

[Octo]

Agg I want to do this but it's going to be a nightmare on this phone

 

[Novus]

That's the link I found but they're different lists.
I was presuming yours was an updated copy.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Oh, I didn't look beyond the first few entries. Mine might be older, too. I dunno.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I have a new most over-rated writer: Iain Banks.

I've now tried three Banks books, "The Wasp Factory", "Consider Phlebas" and "The Crow Road" and found them all to be meh. The "big twist" in The Wasp Factory was obvious from about the second or third chapter, so obvious that I didn't realise it was supposed to come as a surprise reveal until I talked to some other people. To me the novel felt self-indulgent, aiming for shock value. "Consider Phlebas" was a big bore. And I couldn't get into The Crow Road at all. I tried really hard with this writer because so many people I respect sing his praises, but I just didn't get anything out of reading his books.

 

[Octo]

Was the twist in ' The Wasp Factory' that it was really a Bee factory? :trollface:

I need to read more.

 

[Novus]

Found it, it's the top 100 from the 2007 World Book day.
The BBC list from 2003 goes over 200.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/01/news

I've read a lot of them, but not nearly enough. I've only just started Catcher in the Rye for instance.

 

[Octo]

Have to say my reaction to catcher in the rye was not dissimilar to Eric Cartmans

 

[Dawnbreaker]

I'm going to agree with Aaron about Terry Goodkind. I read four of his books and frankly he's pretty average. Below average, even. His world-building leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[Flintlock]

As well as having the Narnia Chronicles and TLTW&TW separately, I think it's illogical to have The Complete Works of Shakespeare and Hamlet separately. The Complete Works is not a book, it is many. I could make the same point about the other series on the list, like Harry Potter, but at least they tell one complete story, unlike Shakespeare's plays which are all distinct from one another.

Anyway, I'm going to be lazy and just do my list. To save space, I'll only post the books I've read. Underline means I've read some books in the series, but not all of them. I won't bother with adaptations.

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

11 books and three partially complete series. I'm reading A Prayer for Owen Meany at the moment, so I'll be able to add that to my list sooner or later.

This could be a good thread to talk about the pressure to read. Reading has become something of a backlash against the pervasiveness of the internet, I think. Nowadays, if you read fiction, you're cool. If you don't, you lack imagination. I hear so many people saying "I should read more" (14.4 million hits on Google for the phrase). Should you? Reading is great, but who has decided it's so great that it should divert time away from your other activities, which could be even better or more worthwhile?

I like books. I read a lot of non-fiction. And I can spend hours browsing long articles on Wikipedia. I read fascinating stories about the history of our world, or of the amazing properties of the universe we live in. I become completely immersed in subjects that fascinate me. Yet I feel like some people look down on me because I barely read fiction (I get through about one book every two years). I don't really care about what they think, but I think it's sad that people get judged like that.

Sorry for the rant.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Iain Banks died last year, btw, so he can't be an answer to #28. I haven't read him yet personally, but unpredictable stories were not a reason anyone gave for liking him; it's usually for the complex politics and the portrayal of a relatively utopian society in a realistic fashion.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

This could be a good thread to talk about the pressure to read...
I like books. I read a lot of non-fiction. And I can spend hours browsing long articles on Wikipedia. I read fascinating stories about the history of our world, or of the amazing properties of the universe we live in. I become completely immersed in subjects that fascinate me. Yet I feel like some people look down on me because I barely read fiction (I get through about one book every two years). I don't really care about what they think, but I think it's sad that people get judged like that.

Sorry for the rant.

In my considerable experience with readers, I've come to realise that some people (I mean some students) enjoy reading for pleasure and some students don't, and it is as simple as that. It has nothing to do with intelligence. In my experience, there isn't even any direct correlation between how much kids read and how well they write, which is totally counter-intuitive. Parents often ask me how to get their reluctant-reader kids interested in reading, and I say that if I knew the answer to that I'd be relaxing on the beach on my private Caribbean island. TBH I often wonder if the study of English literature entirely deserves its place at the core of our curriculum.

 

[Fangu]

In my experience, there isn't even any direct correlation between how much kids read and how well they write, which is totally counter-intuitive.

'How much kids read' as in 'how much fiction kids read', I assume?

I'm like Flint, I read a (fiction) book every three years, but I do read a lot of other stuff. I believe reading fiction is good for expanding your vocabulary, but when it comes to content and story - do you really have to read? Isn't watching a movie or a TV show just as well when it comes to expanding your understanding of universal ideas and characters?

I know I sound ignorant, and I am. I've realized lately that I've had a lot of ideas for my stories from the few books I have read. Like in chapter 9 of Ally: Life,

Spoiler

Gumalu's mask talking to Fran was inspired by 'Lord of the Flies'

. My point is that while reading fiction is nothing but good for your writing skills, I don't think you necessarily write that much better from reading shitloads. Reading takes patience, and a lot of time. I think one book every three years is a bit on the side of 'not nearly enough', but I'd never bother reading a book every week.

It's the same as in 'do you have to listen to a lot of music to become a good musician?' There's a pop star in Norway who's had a lot of success with her music, and she admits to almost never listen to other artists. Somehow I found that really refreshing - and inspiring.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Creative writing courses have a lot to answer for. I blame them for the fact that so many modern novels seem exactly the same as each other. I don't read much fiction any more because most of it is predictable and poorly written (god save me from ever having to read another novel written in the present tense). The last really, really good novel I read was "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel. Her technique is amazing.

If anyone is ever looking for a really fascinating non-fiction read, I recommend "Seeds of Change" by Eric Hobsbawm. It's a bit old now and may be out of print, but it's well-written and the subject matter is fascinating.

PS I have a feeling Wolf Hall was written in the present tense. But Mantel is such a good writer it didn't matter.