Susan's Spot

When we moved to Mesa, my kids enrolled in a charter school which was big on the reading of classics.  They sent home a list of recommended books.  As I looked over the list, I decided that I needed to get busy.  For the most pa

rt, you can't go wrong reading classics.  The first one that I read off that list was Jane Eyre.  I couldn't believe that I had waited so long in my life to read it!  The Big Read is a National Endowment for the Arts program to encourage community reading initiatives.  This is a list of their top 100 books.  They estimate the average adult has read only six.  It looks like I have a loooonnnnggg way to go!

Bold those that you have read.  Italicize those you intend to read and *star the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice-Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings-JRR Tolkien  (I only partially bolded this title.  I read the first and could barely get through it so I didn't try the other two.)
3. Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte**
4. Harry Potter Series-JK Rowling***
5. To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee*
6. The Bible 
7. Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte
8. 1984-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. Bird Song- Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye--JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler's Wife-Audrey Niffenegger18
20. Middlemarch-George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind-Margaret Mitchell
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
26. Brideshead Revisted-Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment-Fydor 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**(I read about half of them.  I need to read the rest.)
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 (The whole series!)******
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 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