The Top 100 Books to Read

Recently an email came across from a friend. It was a list of the top 100 books. In the email, it challenged that most people would have read only six of the one hundred titles. My wife and I delved quck and deep into the list. She reminisced about the seventh grade English teacher whose grade of 'C' was equivalent to a college level 'A'. She slammed a 'B+' in the class. I countered that if a teacher had asked me to read a book, I would quickly have thrown the book into the trash pile.

As I went down the list I began checking off title after title. Dune, Sherlock Holmes, A Christmas Carol, the list went on. When we got to the bottom of the list, my wife had read twenty five. I had read twenty three, and our friend had read twenty five as well.

Then I went back through the list to see if I had missed any. The question that came to mind was where are all of the other books I have read in my life that had not made the list? After all, if Bridgette Jones Diary can make a list of the top one hundred reads, then why hadn't Around The World In Eighty Days, Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer or Journey To The Bottom Of The Sea?

That just led me to more questions, because even as an adult, I find I need to question authority , leadership or anyone else who tries to tell me something I do not agree with. I searched the Internet, including the BBC website and Google news listings for "Top 100 Books". Finally I found the original article from 2003, in which the BBC conducted a poll of the top one hundred books as voted by their viewers. Quickly I realized it was a popularity contest, not a rating of the top one hundred classics that should be read. The second question that crossed my mind was, why is the Chronicles Of Narnia listed and the several spots down the list, The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe listed, as they are one in the same?

Still I wondered why was The DaVinci Code on the list, and not Fahrenheit 451? Surely a Kurt Vonnegut classic should have a spot over the comparable newcomer Dan Brown. I enjoyed both books, but classic versus recently popular New York Times Bestseller... the classic wins. I compared the BBC list to the list that had been emailed to me. The list emailed to me had also made the rounds on the Facebook social networking site. The two lists differed considerably.

We all exchanged emails back and forth. Why isn't Steven King on the list? Again... How The Heck Did Bridgette Jones Diary make the list. On one list was The Bible. On the actual list, The Stand. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory; can anybody argue Roald Dahl's place in literary history?

I found an article that analyzed the list and found that sixty six of the titles were British authors and more than half of the books were set in Britain. I am a fan of Neil Gaiman, but would he really be on a list of the 100 books people should have read? There is an argument there for both sides. That all leads to this final analysis of the list created by the BBC. What books should really be on it? I loved Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, but The Prince Of Tides by Pat Conroy could surely make that list. What about Faulkner?

It all comes down to personal preference. What does your top list include? The BBC list is below. Peruse the list. Add a comment, and we can develop a list of our own.

BBC Top 100 (listed alphabetically)

1984 - George Orwell
The Alchemist - Paul Coelho
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
The BFG - Roald Dahl
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Catch 22 - Joseph L Heller
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Charlie & The Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M Auel
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
Crime and Punishment - Fyoder Dostoyevsky
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Double Act - Jacqueline Wilson
Dune - Frank Herbert
Emma - Jane Austen
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
Girls in Love - Jacqueline Wilson
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian
Gormenghast - Mervyn Peak
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Holes - Louis Sacher
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer
Katherine - Anya Seton
The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe - CS Lewis
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton
Magician - Raymond E Feist
The Magus - John Fowles
Matilda - Roald Dahl
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Middlemarch - George Elliot
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Mort - Terry Pratchett
Nightwatch - Terry Pratchett
Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Persuasion - Jane Austen
The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Princess Diaries - Meg Cabot
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret History - Donna Tart
The Shell Seekers - Rosamund Pilcher
The Stand - Stephen King
The Story of Tracy Beaker - Jacqueline Wilson
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCollough
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Twits - Roald Dahl
Ulysses - James Joyce
Vicky Angel - Jacqueline Wilson
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte