by Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) ..
Member since:
November 14, 2006

Are You A Reader? (BBC List)

August 08, 2009 02:42 PM EDT (Updated: August 08, 2009 02:43 PM EDT)
views: 197 | comments: 43

 

 

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?



[x] Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[x] The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
[ ] Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[x] Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[x] To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[x] The Bible
[x] Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[x] Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[ ] His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[x]Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
[x] Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
[ ] Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[x] Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[ ] Complete Works of Shakespeare
[ ] Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[x] The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[ ] Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
[x] Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[x] The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[ ] Middlemarch - George Eliot
[ ] Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[x] The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[x ] Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[x ] War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[x] The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[x] Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[ ] Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[x] Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[ ] The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
[ ] Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[ ] David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[ ] Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[ ] Emma - Jane Austen
[ ] Persuasion - Jane Austen
[ ] The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
[ ] The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[ ] Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[x] Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[x] Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
[x] Animal Farm - George Orwell
[X] The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[ ] One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[ ] A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
[x] The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[ ] Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[ ] Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[x] The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[x] Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[ ] Atonement - Ian McEwan
[ ] Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[x] Dune - Frank Herbert
[ ] Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[x] Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[x] A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth  ( This is a great book, read it, now.)
[ ] The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[x] A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[ ] Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[ ] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[x ] Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[ ] Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[ ] Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[ ] The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[ ] The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[x] Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[x] On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[ ] Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[ ] Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[ ] Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[ ] Moby Dick - Herman Melville
[ ] Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[ ] Dracula - Bram Stoker
[x] The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[ ] Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[ ] Ulysses - James Joyce
[x] The Inferno – Dante
[ ] Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[ ] Germinal - Emile Zola
[ ] Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[ ] Possession - AS Byatt
[x] A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[ ] Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[ ] The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[ ] The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[ ] Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[ ] A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
[x] Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[x] The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[ ] Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[ ] The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
[x] Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[ ] The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[ ] The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[x] Watership Down - Richard Adams
[ ] A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[ ] A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[ ] The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[x] Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[x] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[x] Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

 



If you would like to post your own, Copy this, look at the list and put an 'x' next to those you have read. Tag other book nerds.

 

You can learn a lot about people by the books they've read...so I've heard. :)~

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Comments: 43

Paul M. Aug 8, 2009, 2:52pm EDT
Ha, I've read 22, though some were long ago when I was a kid so I barely remember them. But seriously, Mitch Albom? Yeah, that's right up there with Shakespeare. Ugh. BTW, really shouldn't Lord of the Rings count as 3? So that would make my total 24.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 8, 2009, 3:17pm EDT
I haven't read many of them since I was a kid either. I mean, what adult reads Winnie the Pooh?

I've read 43 of them, does this make me a Wiley Coyote super genius or just a bored soul with nothing better to do than read? :)~

Mitch Albom has become rather popular, I'm guessing some put him right up there with... the various Authors of the Bible. Frightening but technically debatable.

Lord of the Rings should count as 3, maybe they are listing a Readers Digest condensed version? Is there a Readers Digest condensed version? Ugg.
Paula T. Aug 8, 2009, 3:16pm EDT
There are only 12 I have NOT read. I wonder why the BBC lists Hamlet separately from the Complete Works?
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 8, 2009, 3:18pm EDT
I wondered that too Paula, and The Hobbit separate from the Lord of the Rings, wasn't "The Hobbit" part of the LotR series? I'm not up on my LotR trivia! Help!
Paula T. Aug 8, 2009, 3:50pm EDT
The Hobbit, while involving characters also found in The Lord of the Rings, is a stand-alone novel, not a part of the trilogy. The Lord of the Rings consists of three books specifically relating the saga of Frodo Baggins (the nephew of the protagonist of The Hobbit) and his quest concerning the destruction of the Ring of Power. The Hobbit is the story of Bilbo Baggins' adventure that resulted in him earlier coming into possession of that same ring.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 8, 2009, 5:10pm EDT
Ah Yes! Bilbo...I'd forgotten about good ole Bilbo:) Thanks!
Carrie C. Aug 8, 2009, 3:38pm EDT
I was surprised. I have only read 76 of them. Mostly I have not read the newer ones. Others are old favorites and I have several editions/ translations of them.

One of the English professors at school gave me his list of 1,000 books a person should read before they are 90. I have read about the same percentage of that list, too.

I better get started reading.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 8, 2009, 5:11pm EDT
I need to get started reading too, something other than SCI-FI and Military SCI-FI at any rate.

But I love my space wars so!
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 8, 2009, 5:12pm EDT
I wonder, do you still have that list of 1000 books? I would love to check it out.
Carrie C. Aug 8, 2009, 11:55pm EDT
I have it somewhere. When I find it, I will put it on here. Of course, 1,000 books is a LONG list. I have his permission to pass it on to anyone interested.

Right now everything is in turmoil. We are gerting ready for another greatgrandbaby -- a boy this time.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 6:09am EDT
Very cool Carrie! I hope I will have read a decent percentage of them:)

Congratulations on your new grandson! I can't wait to have grandkids someday:)
Paula T. Aug 8, 2009, 3:55pm EDT
I also wondered at why Chronicles of Narnia is listed separately from Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. I thought that Lion was part of the Chronicles.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 8, 2009, 5:19pm EDT
I think they're listed separately because "The lion the witch and the wardrobe" was a book published on it's own as the first in the series of books (later) known as "The Chronicles of Narnia". Maybe lol
The other books aren't that well known by name. Well, except for "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader " maybe?

Ugg.. I need to do some research.

I
CyberGwen ! Aug 8, 2009, 4:57pm EDT
I have read all but some of the newer ones. That sure is a weird list though.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 8, 2009, 5:25pm EDT
It is an odd list, but it's got "Bleak House" and "A suitable Boy" on it which in my opinion are two of the best works of fiction ever.
Enjoyable fiction at least. :)~

Dantes' Inferno was not enjoyable. Ugg..it was a long, boring, mind numbing, chore, and I admit it. I admit it!!!
CyberGwen ! Aug 8, 2009, 5:31pm EDT
You want mind numbing, try Ulysses. That one killed me. I am adding A Suitable Boy to my wish list, so if it is bad, you know who I am going to come look for!

I see that you read War and Peace too. That took me a while. I usually only read one book at a time, but on that one I cheated!
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 6:11am EDT
oh boy..I hope "A Suitable Boy" is as good as I remember!

War and Peace is a good hunk of life during the reading. I think I got my first grey hairs about halfway through...
Ruth H. Aug 8, 2009, 5:24pm EDT
I've read a lot of them, and have several others on my ever growing to-be-read pile. I guess it's a subjective list though - there are ones I would have included such as A Clockwork Orange, and All Quiet on the Western Front.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 8, 2009, 5:26pm EDT
Good additions Ruth! I didn't even think of "A Clockwork Orange", but then...the movie made me go a tad mad...madness madness..
Gordon Swanson Aug 8, 2009, 7:43pm EDT
As many have said, I read many of the above when I was little. They appear to be mostly if not all fiction. Why do you thing this is all we read? I started on non-fiction when I was in fifth grade because fiction just puts garbgage in our minds. I was tired of all the fiction books and wanted something more interesting. I may have been a nerd in some times, but I learned a lot that fiction readers didn't.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 6:17am EDT
Hello Mr. Swanson,

It's nice to see a new face:)
Ah! I didn't make the list, I'm simply passing it along.

I have to disagree that fiction just "puts garbage in our minds", I think it helps stimulate the imagination and broaden our dreams. Fiction definitely has it's place in the land of literature.

Besides what is truly non-fiction? Tech manuals and Text books? Even those are often based in opinion and educated guesses. There really is no such thing as non-fiction if you ask me. Religious texts, history books, it's all biased and full of opinion and even fanciful tales. Maybe an Anatomy book, yaya that would qualify as non-fiction.

Thanks for the visit:)
Gordon Swanson Aug 11, 2009, 3:06pm EDT
Kerry, I guess I should admit that I read all the fiction books in our small library and they were getting boring. I needed something that made me feel like I was not wasting my time. I grew up with the Bible and Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Mechanic Illistrated, National Geographic, and similar magizines. I enjoyed reading the Encyapeata Britanica, and text books of every kind. I also tried inventing while I was in grade school, but some of my ideas were ahead of time and only later my inventions made a lot of money for my companies, but not one cent for me. As an engineer is was considered my job.

As you can see from my picture I am now an old man, but do have two non-fiction books published that I like to talk about. Must say that I read Harry Potter books as I wanted to see what my granddaugher was so interested in. Lord of the Rings series also was written good and most injoyable. I am now reading the book "Fordlandic" just out on Henry Ford and finished a book I cannot recall the name about a young British man that tried to prove Perry was not a lyer by going to the North Pole the same way the Perry did, with some modern changes. Enjoyed this a lot because I have spent a winter in the Canadian Arctic as an army test subject.

You sound interesting, so give me a note when you have time and we can talk about our past.
Lana B. Aug 8, 2009, 8:22pm EDT
I've read 50 of them, some even more than once. Take that, BBC! LOL
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 6:17am EDT
yea! Take that BBC!

Very nice percentage:)
Karen M. Aug 8, 2009, 9:32pm EDT
I have read many of them, but then again, I teach English !LOL
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 6:18am EDT
ah! You cheat Karen! No professionals allowed! You're messing up the grading curve for the rest of us. :) lol
Carrie C. Aug 9, 2009, 12:01am EDT
The list also has Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materialsas one book. It is a trilogy.
El Toro Bravo de Amor Aug 9, 2009, 1:17am EDT
a couple dozen. But some more than once.

In defense of "fiction." All successful "fiction" tries to interpret classic themes, and ingrained human characteristics. Good and bad.

Fiction need not be detrimenal to a reader. It can be quite inspirational.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 8:10am EDT
Hi El Toro:)

Yaya! Fiction is quite wonderful eh? My life would be so very boring without it:)
Lori Cee Aug 9, 2009, 11:12am EDT
shamefully and without a doubt i can say that i've only read 6. damn you, bbc! but some of the titles look so familiar and i can remember characters and things that happened in the books that i may have read them when i was younger. i have a few of them on my bookshelves now. i guess i'd better get moving with these. you, my dear, have presented a challenge that i simply cannot ignore.

i'll print the list and use it as a bookmark for the 1000 recordings to hear before you die by tom moon that i borrowed from the library.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 8:13am EDT
Read read read:) This list would actually make a great bookmark, I should have a few printed up and laminated as stocking stuffer:s for my kids. yaya I like that idea!

So..does 1000 recordings to hear before you die really exist? I should check that out. I am musically challenged. Ugg..
Elizabeth O. Aug 9, 2009, 11:19am EDT
I've read 59 of these ~ I'm a bookworm, what can I say? I'm been reading "Vanity Fair" for a few months, I put it down, read something else, then pick it back up. Its not the most exciting of reads, but its good.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 8:16am EDT
Being a bookworm is a beautiful thing, I'm proud to say I'm one as well.

I'd like to be more of one actually, I want to read every book ever written, but I don't think I'll live that long. lol
☃ Aunt Shanny Aug 9, 2009, 11:38am EDT
I've read most of them over the years. Most because I had to for HS or college literature classes.
Kerry (A tree, not a lemon) .. Aug 11, 2009, 8:16am EDT
School is good for something at least eh? yaya
Gordon Swanson Aug 14, 2009, 7:39pm EDT
I always considered books as my friends. You can loose yourself inside a book whereas a movie just tell you what the director thought would give the best drama. I see no text books, expecially manuals in this talk. I always like manuals the best because they would explain more of what I wanted to know. I also enjoyed all the encyipeates as they covered a deeper range then the text book. The first thing I purchased when I graduated from college was the Encyapeita Americana. When I found a new place to live and work, I sat down and read it through and enjoyed every minute of it. I had read the Encypeatia Brictanica before and I enjoyed the Americana the most.
Linda M. Sep 8, 2009, 10:51am EDT
I have read 17 of them, although i must confess that most were while in I was in school, and were for class. I do most of my reading on the computer now.
Amanda "middle of nowhere" C. Oct 10, 2009, 7:44pm EDT
Hey...I've missed you. Is everything okay?
Wilma M. Oct 12, 2009, 5:41pm EDT
I've read 34 of them (to the best of my memory.) The most recent one was The Kite Runner.

Recently I've been reading mysteries.
Wilma M. Oct 12, 2009, 5:42pm EDT
Tried to read 100 Years of Solitude and just couldn't get going in it. I still have the book so maybe some other time, it will be more appealing.
Mary G. Oct 12, 2009, 6:51pm EDT
I have read many of them including several in college.
Cortney R. Nov 7, 2009, 10:36am EST
I have read a good number of those, but there is a lot that I still haven't read. I will have to try and start reading some of them. I know the library will have them.
Lee P. Nov 12, 2009, 7:24pm EST
I've read most of them. There are only nine that I haven't read. Didn't even know they existed. LOL

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