(no subject)

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
3) Put in a note with your total in the subject


X.... 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
.... 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
X.... 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
X.... 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (This is seven books!)
X.... 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
X.... 6 The Bible (This is 66 books, more if you're Catholic, and I've read them all)
.... 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
.... 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
X.... 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Three books!)
X.... 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
X.... 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
.... 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
..... 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
..... 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Oh, good grief! Can I claim half an x?)
X.... 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
X.... 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
..... 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
.... 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
X.... 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
X.... 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
.... 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
X... 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
X.... 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
X.... 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
.... 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
X.... 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
X.... 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (Argh, this is getting annoying!)
X.... 34 Emma - Jane Austen
X.... 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
X.... 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
..... 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
..... 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
X.... 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
X.... 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
X.... 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
..... 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
..... 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
X.... 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
.... 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
X.... 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (Why can't I count the other 26 books she's written?)
.... 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
X.... 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
X.... 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
X.... 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 Tart
..... 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
X.... 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
X.... 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
..... 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
X.... 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
X.... 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
..... 80 Possession - AS Byatt
X.... 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
..... 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
X.... 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
..... 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
X.... 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (In French! Extra points!)
..... 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
X.... 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
..... 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
X.... 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
X.... 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (Three books of it - if there's more, go ahead and try to take away my X!)
.... 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
X... 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry (In french!)
..... 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
X.... 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (In French!)
X.... 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
X.... 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
X.... 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Partially in French, then I got bogged down and switched to English.)

So, 43. Can I claim a Y for the ones I didn't read because I studied them in literature classes, and by the time the professor got through with them I had no desire ever to catch up on my course reading? (Actually, come to think of it, that was Madame Bovary. Oops.)

Also, I find it interesting that a person can't really consider themselves to be "well-read" in our society unless their tastes run to novels, especially some very long novels. (The section in Les Mis where Hugo expounds on the evils of a convent education goes on for about as long as an entire Narnia book, for example.) Surely there are some great and erudite examples of non-fiction that could be included on such a list, and would qualify the reader as well-read? I'm thinking the history books written by Sir Winston Churchill, for example. Having undergone a fairly standard twentieth century literary education myself, most of my own reading has been fiction until quite recently, so I'm not as familiar as perhaps I should be with non-fiction. And yet there are many people who will willingly pick up a non-fiction book but never touch a novel after high school. Why are they barred from being considered well-read?