Summer Reading (and some are not)
July 11th, 2008 by Sonja

I got this from Kievas at Sharing a Journey … it’s too good to not pass on.  My only quibble is that there’s only one African-American book on this list.  These books are come from an overwhelmingly Northern European Caucasian perspective.  Still … worth review at some level.

This is from something called “The Big Read” from the NEA. They came up with a list of their top 100 books, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these books. I will highlight the ones I’ve read. Cut and paste into your blog and let us know which you’ve read.   Just for kicks … also mark the three you’d most like to read next. Mine are in italics. And then maybe hop over to Amazon or take a trip to Barnes and Noble for some summer reading material.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (note – 3 big fat books!)
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (note 7 big fat books!)
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 Faulks1
8 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 (and it’s sequel)
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 (all 5 books in the series)
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 – 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 – 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 Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert (read all of the Dune books …)
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 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 Flaubert
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
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

So, there big NEA people, I beat your system.  Hah!  Here’s my recommendation.  Don’t go to B&N or Amazon … go to your local library.  Get a library card.  Borrow the book(s) from your library.  Read them and return them.  It’s reduce, reuse and recycle at it’s finest!!


10 Responses  
  • tasha writes:
    July 11th, 20088:22 amat

    hey, have you been on http://www.pollthepeople.com ???
    amongst a very ecclectic list of the top books of all time, audrey niffenegger ranks highly – good to see something other than Harry Potter!
    i’m working for the site this summer and i just got niffenegger’s top five books which will be on the site soon so check up in a day or two!

  • Maria writes:
    July 11th, 20089:24 amat

    That was fun…good start to a list of books to read with kids someday (we’ve done a few like the Hobbit and Charlotte’s Web).

  • Ariah Fine writes:
    July 11th, 200810:02 amat

    Just have to say that I grabbed the liberation poster image idea from your blog. I LOVE that quote and just added it to my sidebar.
    Thanks

  • K.W. Leslie writes:
    July 11th, 20081:59 pmat

    I stuck the list on my blog. Though what is the bible doing among works of fiction?

  • Adam G. writes:
    July 11th, 20082:33 pmat

    I’ve read 15 of those. My usual reading is a bit…different…than what is on that list.

  • kievasfargo writes:
    July 11th, 20089:26 pmat

    I haven’t bought a (new) book in ages…like you, we use our library system a lot. Guess I should have modified that last line as well :)

  • Dan Brown | Summer Reading (and some are not) writes:
    July 12th, 200811:00 amat

    […] I got this from Kievas at Sharing a Journey … it’s too good to not pass on.  My only quibble is that there’s only one African-American book on this list.  These books are come from an overwhelmingly Northern European Caucasian perspective.  Still … worth review at some level. This is from something called “The Big Read” from the NEA. They came up with a list of their top 100 books, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these books. I will highlight the ones I’ve read. Cut Source: Summer Reading (and some are not) […]

  • 100 Books : Subversive Influence writes:
    July 14th, 20084:03 pmat

    […] Sonja posted a list, saying “This is from something called The Big Read from the National Endowment for the Arts. They came up with a list of their top 100 books, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these books.” Odd, I couldn’t find the list on their website… who really came up with this? I’m not the only doubter, but I’ll play along. […]

  • The Great Read | Byrnesys Blabberings writes:
    July 18th, 20085:05 amat

    […] Jamie posted a list of the classics he has read after reading sonja’s list, […]

  • Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club) writes:
    August 20th, 200812:06 pmat

    […] Ravine of Light ? Summer Readingand some are not […]


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