In 2003, the BBC have conduct a search for the nation's most beloved novel and they have a list of 100 book, over the years the list became a list of how many books have you read.
Below you will find the list .
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
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 Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’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
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 Marquez
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 Golding50 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 Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov63 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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile 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 Flaubert86 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 Miserables - Victor Hugo
Source:- The Big Read
Fiona from A Fork in the Road have a great point of view which she shares on her site.
Forget the BBCs booklist, how many of these have you read?
Fiona believe that the list is limited and she shared a list of books by African author or about Africa that must be read .
beautiful list , read it all here
For those who read in Arabic , what will you list of a must read Arabic novels would include ?
Share with us, please :)
And how about lists of books from each Arabic countries
And another from every single countries in the world, it would be a great way to widen our knowledge of the whole world.
If you knew any of the lists, share with us please :)
Update: Chiara has provided two amazing sites you can check for more books. Free books :)
Free eBook By Project Gutenberg
Update: Chiara has provided two amazing sites you can check for more books. Free books :)
Free eBook By Project Gutenberg
Arabic Literature (in English)
Thanks Chiara :)
Great post and idea to encourage "literary literacy". I have read 75 of the books on the BBC list, and the French ones on the African list. I am aware of more Arabic writers than I have read although I read some. Naghib Mahfouz and Amin Maalouf, both in French, come to mind at the moment. Oh, and Tarar Ben Jelloun, also in French!
BalasHapusThanks for the ideas for my reading list!
many thanks wafa` :)
BalasHapusI have read +40 of them! :nerdo: I know ,, loool
You made me feel guilty! I need to read more! After Ramadan, I'll try to make reading one of my habits :)
BalasHapusI haven't read much in my life .Want to READ .
BalasHapusI've read 38 of the BBC list. Something I thought was interesting is that the "average" Brit has only read about 6 books on the list... I guess we're all bookies here ;)
BalasHapusChiara,
BalasHapushave i ever told you how much i love your comments, they deserve to be posts by themselves, full of information and great points.
sadly, i have only read 26 of the BBC list but doing good in reading more from both lists and many more.
I like some, only some of Naghib Mahfouz's novel. No disrespect to such author but he is not my favorite. I like Tawfiq Alhakem much more. I have read to Ben Jelloun in Arabic and he is so good.I loved his writing.
Never read for Assia Djebar,but will include her in my list.
Never heard of Gisele Halimi, excuse my ignorance, will add her to my list.
As for the sites, i do know about the Project Gutenberg, but never heard of the rest. thanks for sharing them with us, off to check them :)
Chiara,
BalasHapusCan you please provide the link to Grey Books, and the name of the app that's based on the Project Gutenberg's collection ?
Thank you :)
Haitham,
BalasHapusyou are welcome bro :)
And nerds are always the best, lol
Susu,
BalasHapusjoin the guilty club, lol
InshAllah after Ramadan, you can add reading to your list of daily activists, it's an amazing one, believe me :)
Izdiher,
BalasHapusyou should, it's an amazing habit that would enrich your whole life in a great way :)
Becky,
BalasHapusI have only read 26 from that list, but planning to read more.
I guess feathers alike falls apart, right :)
Insha Allah
BalasHapusIzdiher,
BalasHapus:)