Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
*Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
* Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.
*Bold and italicize books you have read more than once
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Old Testament Only)
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 Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
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
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 - A.A. 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 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 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 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 - 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 Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistr
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. 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
Because there's always room on the shelf for more young adult and children's literature.
About Me
- Cherylynne
- Cher-y-lynne {sher-uhl-lin} –noun 1. One who formerly sold and recommended children’s books at a bookstore; a specialist in young adult, middle grade, and picture books. 2. A para-educator at a middle school. 3. A struggling young adult writer. 4. A lover of chocolate and popcorn. Archaic: An Audiology and Speech Language Pathology major at Brigham Young University. Questions? Suggestions? Books you'd like me to review? E-mail me at cherylynne1 (at) gmail (dot) com.
This is a blog for my ranting, raving, and occasionally brilliant opinions. You have been warned. Enter at your own risk.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Book Review: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
Donnelly, Jennifer. Revolution. New York: Delacorte Press, 2010
"Take it down," I said, my voice cracking.
Dr. Becker held up his hands. "Okay, Andi, If you would like me to take the picture down, I will."
"Now."
"Damn it, Andi! Who do you think you're talking to?" Dad shouted.
"I can't do it right now," Dr. Becker said. "I need maintenance to do it. But I give you my word that it will come down, all right?"
I nodded stiffly. It was something. Some small win. I couldn't protect my mother from Dr. Feelgood but at least I'd saved her from Thomas Kinkade.
The traffic jam gives a bit. We pick up speed and few minutes later, we're on the outskirts of Paris. The road to the city is lined with shabby stone houses, used-car lots, falafel dens, and hair salons, their signs all shining garishly in the dark.
"It might do you good, you know," my father is saying as we hit the Boulevard Peripherique. "It might take your mind off things."
"What might?"
"A change of scenery. Paris."
"Yeah. Sure. My brother's dead. My mother's insane. Hey, let's have a crepe."
We don't talk for the rest of the ride.
After Andi's brother died, her family essentially fell apart. So when her father swoops back in and sends her mother to a psych ward and drags her off to Paris, she is not happy.
Then she discovers a guitar that’s over two centuries old. And with it, a diary that reveals a side of history that no one has ever heard before.
Brilliant concept. I LOVED the diary parts. As well as the music reports. The character is smart and creative, and it’s difficult not to adore her, even though she can be pretty snarky.
I wasn’t thrilled with the way it ended, but overall, it’s definitely worth your time. And if you love European historical fiction, you can’t miss out on this book.
Book 12--done!
Friday, November 12, 2010
Book Review: Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen
Godbersen, Anna. Bright Young Things. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.
The faces of each guest turned toward the bride, and though some of them tried to smile, their eyes seemed to say, I know what you’ve done.
Lest their looks cut her, Cordelia reminded herself that she was only half one of them. While her mother had been raised in Union, the other half of Cordelia came from some glittering, far-off place, and like Letty, she was too big for the town she’d grown up in. Letty was right, Cordelia now realized with some relief, to have insisted on a veil. Not only to protect her from the guests’ stares and the judgment in their expressions, but also because of John, who was now reaching for her hands. His eyes were shining, but she couldn’t meet them. She didn’t want any memory of the happy, expectant way he was gazing at her.
Lest their looks cut her, Cordelia reminded herself that she was only half one of them. While her mother had been raised in Union, the other half of Cordelia came from some glittering, far-off place, and like Letty, she was too big for the town she’d grown up in. Letty was right, Cordelia now realized with some relief, to have insisted on a veil. Not only to protect her from the guests’ stares and the judgment in their expressions, but also because of John, who was now reaching for her hands. His eyes were shining, but she couldn’t meet them. She didn’t want any memory of the happy, expectant way he was gazing at her.
Cordelia and Letty believe that their destinies lie far beyond the dull small town they've been raised in....they belong in New York City. Letty is going to be an actress, a singer, a star. And Cordelia is determined to find her father.
Beautiful prose. And I love that it's a historical fiction set in the 20's, we don't see much of that. Lots of twists and turns, you're never quite sure what's going to happen next. The characters were just reckless and stupid enough to make me happy...it made them real. Especially since they admitted they were being stupid. Then did it anyway.
If that doesn't ring true as a teenager, I don't know what does.
If you're a huge fan of Chicago, then this is a great book for you. I can't wait to see what happens in the rest of the series.
Yay for Book #12! I'm so excited to be liking books again!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Nameless Book Review #5
Yep...I was right about Book #11.
The first twenty pages were so abominable that there wasn’t much chance of it being redeemed. Don’t get me wrong, it tried. The middle parts were decent. But then the ending got all screwed up again. That whole incest subplot? It did NOT work for me. It came out of the middle of nowhere, and had no reason to be there. Nothing was even remotely resolved. When you write a novel from alternating POVs, there must be a REASON. Especially if you’re just going over the same old ground over and over again. There was no reason for the POVs, and there was no reason for the novel in general.
I've heard good things about Book #12, though...
The first twenty pages were so abominable that there wasn’t much chance of it being redeemed. Don’t get me wrong, it tried. The middle parts were decent. But then the ending got all screwed up again. That whole incest subplot? It did NOT work for me. It came out of the middle of nowhere, and had no reason to be there. Nothing was even remotely resolved. When you write a novel from alternating POVs, there must be a REASON. Especially if you’re just going over the same old ground over and over again. There was no reason for the POVs, and there was no reason for the novel in general.
I've heard good things about Book #12, though...
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