100 Books (But Actually More Like 155)

The BBC has compiled a list of 100 must-read books. I haven't seen anything official on this, but the word on the street is that they are assuming the average person has only read six of them. 

The list does not seem to be the same as the BBC's The Big Read, a list of the supposedly 100 best-loved books in England. I yet to see anything official for this list - only Facebook and blog posts so far. 

The books I have read in their entirety have a þ beside them, and books I've read parts of, but not finished, are in italics. 

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen     þ 

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I've only read one)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling     þ      
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee     þ      
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte     þ       
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell     þ       
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman     þ 
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens  
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy  
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller     þ
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     þ  
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     þ  
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens 
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams     þ
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky     þ 
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck     þ
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     þ 
34. Emma - Jane Austen     þ
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen     þ 
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis     þ 
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 Meany - 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     þ 
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan     þ 
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel     þ
52. Dune - Frank Herbert 
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen     þ
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon 
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley     þ 
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     þ 
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     þ 
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett     þ 
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     þ 
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     þ 
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     þ

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     þ 
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factoy - Roald Dahl     þ

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo 

I have some issues with the list which make me question its legitimacy. 

For instance, I don't find it consistent that some items include entire series, such as His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, but then some authors, like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, have numerous works listed as separate items. 

Also, The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven books, is listed at #33, but then The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the second in the Narnia series, is listed on its own at #36. The same happens with Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

The BBC has such a skewed sense of what constitutes a single book, however, for now, 31/100 (or 52/155) doesn't seem too shabby.

Which of the 100 have you read? Have you read more than six?

Kansas City Public Library