The Guardians top 1000 books

Crash

1000 novels that everyone must read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

Just interested as to what people think? and if you have the time, run down through it and see how well you do - surprised my total was as low - 50 out of 1000

pwd

62. about half of which were in the sci fi and fantasy section. Started reading a lot of others on that list, but put them down because they were boring.
American Gods I did read in full and I thought it was one of the most overrated books ever. Definitely don't think it should be on the list.

turgon

I generally prefer lists with numbers, although obviously more divisive, they at least give a starting point. Imagine trying to get someone into books, just go yeah just read any of the Guardian 1000. Wouldnt work methinks.

orangecake

I managed 82. Although the Science Fiction and Fantasy section was odd. The Magus, The Monk and The Butcher Boy? I wouldn't have thought when I was reading them that they would be in that category.

pwd

Yeah there were a few choices in that category that surprised me too. Robin Hobb and Steven Erikson were glaring omissions also.
edit: I don't think there were many pure fantasy novels there at all in fact

lemon_sherbert

I'd read 94. But I really liked the list; the subdivision by genre, all of my favourite books are on that list, I've saved it to my computer for future reference.

Blush_01

A paltry 51. i was actually more shocked at how many books are on that list that I've bought and never finished reading.

Woohoo, new mission!

Sticky??

adamski8

9 pretty pretty bad

John

58 read and another false start (Emma). The "genres" were a bit loose all right and I noticed an error in one of the titles: they list Pier Paulo Pasolini's Ragazzi di Vita (Boys of Life) as The Ragazzi Pier by Paulo Pasolini. Philistines!

Crash

orangecake wrote: »

I managed 82. Although the Science Fiction and Fantasy section was odd. The Magus, The Monk and The Butcher Boy? I wouldn't have thought when I was reading them that they would be in that category.

Wow didn't even notice it in the SF&F list...bizarre - that means I match Blush_01 at 51.

Blush_01 wrote: »

A paltry 51. i was actually more shocked at how many books are on that list that I've bought and never finished reading.

Woohoo, new mission!

Sticky??

Snap by the way - I think i'd be around 80-90 if I included books i'd started to some extent.

EDIT: Oh if this were to be a sticky, the selection of books could be displayed nicely as a table.

Six of One

That list hurts my eyes ... but ... 58! And quite proud of that. Thought it was going to be a single digit figure. Resisting the calls of Amazon as we speak :P.

Permabear

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Crash

They do have it quite clearly displayed on the entry page stating "comedy - does not equal humour"

edit: I think they include at-swim-two-birds in the comedy list - which again, like finnegans wake, would be one of the above, not the other.

Tristram

Books read wrote:

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Just William by Richmal Crompton
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Ennui by Maria Edgeworth
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
LA Confidential by James Ellroy
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
The Third Man by Graham Greene
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
The Big Blowdown by George Pelecanos
Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Evelina by Fanny Burney
The Outsider by Albert Camus
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
Dune by Frank L Herbert
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
The Time Machine by HG Wells
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coeztee
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Amongst Women by John McGahern
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Bomber by Len Deighton
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
A Sentimental Journey by Lawrence Sterne
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

I think thats 104.

Permabear

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John

And for the record, Finnegans Wake is frequently hilarious.

oxygen_old

Why is the Wasp Factory in the SciFi and Fantasy section. I think their confusing Iain Banks, and his sudoname Iain M Banks. Makes you wonder about the crediblity of the list.

Earthhorse

I don't know, that list is kind of overwhelming. Couldn't be bothered going through it to count what I have or haven't read.

A shorter list with a little information on each entry would be more useful.

Lizzykins

I ploughed through that list and I've read 126 of them. I thought I was reasonably well read but seemingly not!

girlbiker

Lizzykins wrote: »

I ploughed through that list and I've read 126 of them. I thought I was reasonably well read but seemingly not!

Me too...127 read...pretty crap outof 1000 but dont agree with some of them White Teeth Zadie Smith, hated it.
But love Robert Harris and Rohinstin Mistry and The novel Middlesex...actually alot of my favourites are on the list.
Why do anderoids dream of electric sheep I wouldnt have read until someone highly recommened it and it was great, maybe I'll try his other books on the list.

I'll take some of these choices on board but fares much better out of the BBCs best read list, something like 179 out of 200 but beware all you highbrow readers Harry Potter is there!

Earthhorse

As with all lists there are a few odd entries; Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - what? The whole series?

girlbiker wrote: »

Why do anderoids dream of electric sheep I wouldnt have read until someone highly recommened it and it was great, maybe I'll try his other books on the list.

I'd recommend tackling his short stories first and Dr. Bloodmoney before The Man in the High Castle, which I personally didn't enjoy but which is often acknowledged as one of his best.

Despite what I said earlier I did actually do a count. A rather paltry 22 it turns out. To make up for that here is the list in Excel format for those of you interested in keeping track of it (you'll find the books I've read marked in column B so you may wish to clear it down).

KevinH

Zadie Smith is on that list and Charles Bukowski isn't, so instead of counting how many books I've read on it I think I might print it out and use it to wipe my arse.

Richard Roma

Shocked that there are no Ayn Rand books in it

KevinH

In fairness Rand is atrocious.

Permabear

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Nevyn

I gave up counting after I hit 620 /shrug I have always been a prolific reader.

John

KevinH wrote: »

In fairness Rand is atrocious.

In fairness, you're wrong :pac:

tangerinepuppet

I got 92 and I have about forty more of them at home, waiting to be read. I can't understand the complaints about Zadie Smith being on the list. I love White Teeth.

silvine

Jonothan Strange and Mr Norrell
The Years of Rice and Salt
Cloud Atlas

Three disappointing and boring books

Too much work to wade through the list figuring out what I've read but I guess 50+ maybe.

no memoirs, no short stories

Um why? There's dozens of both which deserve to be read.

trishasaffron

I've read 270+ of those on the list. But in fairness I've a few years on most other posters:o

When I find a writer I like I tend to devour all their books - so people like Anthony Trollope and Patrick O'Brien (though I'd more than enough of him in the end) I've whole shelves full of their books.

Blush_01

tangerinepuppet wrote: »

I got 92 and I have about forty more of them at home, waiting to be read. I can't understand the complaints about Zadie Smith being on the list. I love White Teeth.

On Beauty is one of my favourite novels.

I'm now intent on reading Tristram Shandy this year. I've attempted and failed a few times, but I will not be beaten this time!

Thaed has reinforced herself as one of my Boards heroes.

randomguy

Finally got the time to go through this list. Very anglo-centric, but i'm still really impressed. Lots of obvious stuff, but also a touch of eclecticism - does well on modern American - Foster Wallace, Chabon, Eugenides, Richard Ford etc. If I was to complain, I'd say that Latin American literature isn't too well represented. While everyone will find stuff on the list that they really don't think should be there, there is nothing on the list that everyone will agree should not be on it. So while there is stuff whose inclusion I might object to, I can see why it would be included in someone else's subjective list.

The only glaring omissions that I can see are The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (but Canada is well represented by Margaret Atwood), John Banville at his peak, maybe the Book of Evidence or The Untouchable, and Tom Robbins - i'd plum for Fierce Invalids home from Hot Climates but the rest of the world prefers Even Cowgirls get the Blues.

Stuff I am delighted to see there -
Cryptonomicon, Marguerite Duras, Anthony Burgess' Earthly Powers, Samuel Butler, A Suitable Boy, Peter Carey's Illywhacker (a headwrecker of a great novel), A Sheltering Sky, Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le Metro, Julian Barnes' a History of the World in 10 and a 1/2 Chapters.

I was all ready to be outraged at the omission of Lonesome Dove, one of the great under-rated novels. But the compiler included it, a good sign.

I've read just short of 250, with about 70 others that are on my mental list of books I will definitely read. I'm early 30s, but have spent a lot of my life lounging about reading random stuff.

gaf1983

I've read exactly 40, no more no less, those being:

Just William by Richmal Crompton
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Asterix the Gaul by Rene Goscinny
Burmese Days by George Orwell
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

I also found three that I started but didn't finish:

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

In fairness I started Jurassic Park when I was eight and an avid subscriber of DINOSAURS! magazine, so I was probably biting off more than I could chew.

One that I'm reading now: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

And a bucketload (54, to be precise) on my long finger list:

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The King of Torts by John Grisham
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Fatherland by Robert Harris
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
How Green was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Plague by Albert Camus
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
A Passage to India by EM Forster
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Germinal by Emile Zola
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Bomber by Len Deighton
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Beach by Alex Garland
Enigma by Robert Harris
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Candide by Voltaire
Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut

zesman

Got 72 but with about 25 on that list at home and waiting to be read

RonMexico

Am I the only one who finds these lists rather annoying? I somehow find it more rewarding to find good books in my own time, instead of looking up a list to figure out what I should read next.

My bookshelf looks like the assorted readings of a maniac. :pac:

randomguy

RonMexico wrote: »

Am I the only one who finds these lists rather annoying? I somehow find it more rewarding to find good books in my own time, instead of looking up a list to figure out what I should read next.

My bookshelf looks like the assorted readings of a maniac. :pac:

i really like these lists - they give me ideas of what to read next, and remind of books and authors that i had forgotten about. It is the equivalent of wandering around a second-hand bookshop for a while. And this one has a decent enough breath - i like a lot of stuff that the compiler recommends, some of it quite obscure, so when I see that he/she includes All Quiet on The Western Front and The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist, that registers at the back of my brain and might make me reach for them if I see them on the shelves of a bookshop in a few months or years time.

So no, I don't find these lists annoying at all. But then again I don't look them up to figure out what to read next; I'd say that anyone who does would be a bit strange alright.

IvyTheTerrible

I've read about 210, fairly evenly spread among the categories. I now have a list of things I have to read!

DapperGent

pwd wrote: »

American Gods I did read in full and I thought it was one of the most overrated books ever. Definitely don't think it should be on the list.

Yeah I love a lot of Neil Gaiman's stuff but American Gods was awful.

mcgovern

I read 45, almost all of those in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section, which I think was a very poor selection.

vinylbomb

RonMexico wrote: »

Am I the only one who finds these lists rather annoying? I somehow find it more rewarding to find good books in my own time, instead of looking up a list to figure out what I should read next.

+1

And also, invariably they contain some sh*te like Paulo Coelho.
(That is obviously IMHO, one mans meat is another's poisin.)

líreacán

I have read 49 of them, although did notice a few on the list that I either gave up whilst reading or else possibly read when I was younger, but don;t remember whether I am mixing them up with abridged versions/film versions!!!

Here are the 49 I've definitely read:

Just William
The Commitments
Bridget Jone's Diary
The Curious Incident...
High Fidelity
A Time To Kill
To Kill A Mockingbird
Fingersmith
Little Women
Great Expectations
The Bell Jar
The Catcher in the Rye
On Beauty
The Secret Diary of Arian Mole...
Jane Austen Novels x6
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Madame Bovary
Far From The Madding Crowd
Atonement
Norwegian Wood
Anna Karenina
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass...
Lord of the Flies
The Chronicles of Narnia
Cloud Atlas
The Time Traveller's Wife
1984
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
Things Fall Apart
A Tale of Two Cities
Castle Rackrent
Animal Farm
Carrie's War
Heart of Darkness
The Beach
The Kite Runner
The Scarlet Pimpernell
Treasure Island



All in all I think that's a fairly reasonable well-balanced list. Hopefully I will pick up a few more on the way during my 50 book challenge, already in the middle of Rushdie's Midnight Children!!

Locamon

Had a look through this and found I have read just over 50 of the books on the list. I would describe myself as an avid reader so I was a bit surprised but then a lot of the list just wouldn't appeal and I like to read a lot of non fiction...though I made a mental note to look out for a few titles on the list. Disappointed some of my personal favourites didn't make it but then I guess that's why they are 'personal'....:)

turgon

For those interested, I converted the Guardian top 1000 into a .xls file for Microsoft Excel/OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet. It has headings Surname, First name and Title. Its automatically sorted according to surname so authors' works are together. I got rid of the headings "Comedy" etc.

Top 1000.xls


Details:
I wrote a PHP script to convert the text into a spreadsheet. The main problem is splitting the authors name into two parts; I just took the last word as the surname and the rest as the first name. So if they have a "double-barrel" surname you will have to find them by the very last surname.

Theres only 998 books there. I dont what the story with that is, but William Goldings trilogy is there so that might make a 1000.

Ive only opened this file in OpenOffice so Im not 100% that it opens in Microsoft Word. If it doesnt leave a comment and ill try it in Windows.

turgon

As the title says

Top 1000.pdf

MissRibena

I've come in at 129 which is a lot more than I expected. It seems to be one of the better lists of this kind that I've come across but I suppose with 1000 entries it's a lot easier to have something for everyone.

Whatever about the use or otherwise of these kinds of lists, I love 'Listmania' on Amazon or lists like the one here of what to read before the apocalypse. I rummage around for ones that include some of my all-time favourites and put the ones I haven't read in my wishlist. This is probably how I choose the majority of my books now.

My local bookshops are not great and have more chicklit, thrillers and cookery books than I'd like, so picking up reads by rummaging doesn't work that well unless I'm in Dublin or London. For a long time, my local charity shop had a fantastic selection. I even asked the assistant once if they could tell me who was donating all the good books (I think I'd read one too many Bridget Jones books at that stage!) but they came down from central sorting in Dublin apparently.

Recommendations from friends and family are very dicey. Sometimes it works out ok but more often than not we don't have the same taste. Newspaper reviews don't work out that great for me either.

meganj

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Howards End by EM Forster
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Crash by JG Ballard
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
White Noise by Don DeLillo
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard
Regeneration by Pat Barker
Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Beach by Alex Garland
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Candide by Voltaire

I think that's nearly 90 which i'm surprisingly pleased at even if it is a bit lame. I'm also pleased at the amount of books on it which I read which weren't for college! I think it's a decent enough list nice mix of new and old! But it's never going to be definitive as everyone has at least a few books which they think are wonderful which aren't on the list! Nice to see the Kite Runner, Suite Francaise and the passion of new eve on it!

As for White Teeth the first time I read it I was non-plussed but the second time I thought it was a wonderful novel about identity and trying to find a place in a world that wants you to respect your heritage but also wants you to emerge yourself in the local culture!

Quite a few which I haven't read! To the library.. when it opens of course!!

turgon

Only 35 myself:

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
A Passage to India by EM Forster
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Beach by Alex Garland
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

lemon_sherbert

I'm up to 114 since last time I posted. I get a pedantic sense of achievement from these kind of lists, silly but there it is!:)

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Thank You Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
True History of the Ned Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The King of Torts by John Grisham
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Outsider by Albert Camus
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Howards End by EM Forster
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Adam Bede by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
A Room with a View by EM Forster
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
The Magus by John Fowles
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Adam Bede by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
A Room with a View by EM Forster
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
The Magus by John Fowles
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

emeraldstar

^^ Ah now. Even if you read it twice you can't count it twice

lemon_sherbert

emeraldstar wrote: »

^^ Ah now. Even if you read it twice you can't count it twice

Haha! Sorry, clearly my copy and paste skills in Excel are not up to par, sorry about that!

lemon_sherbert

Here's the true list (I think I've got it this time:rolleyes:)

Comedy

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Thank You Jeeves by PG Wodehouse

Crime

True History of the Ned Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The King of Torts by John Grisham
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Family and self

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Outsider by Albert Camus
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Howards End by EM Forster
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Love

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Adam Bede by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
A Room with a View by EM Forster
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Science fiction and fantasy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
The Magus by John Fowles
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
The Sword in the Stone by TH White

State of the nation

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Silas Marner by George Eliot
A Passage to India by EM Forster
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

War and travel

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain