CAFE: A gathering place. A place of refreshment.

Thirsty for the latest releases in Christian fiction? Ready for a peek into the world of publishing and writing conferences? Hungry for spiritual and real-life nourishment? Pull up a seat; you're in the right place, and I'm so glad you've stopped by.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

HOW WELL READ ARE YOU?

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Normally you just put an ( X ) if you've read it. But I'm also putting an asterisk if I read part of it and couldn't get through it, or didn't finish the series! Man, do I have a lot of books to finish!


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen ( )
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ( )
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ( X )
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling ( )
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible - (x)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( X )
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ( )
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
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 ( )
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 (x)
34 Emma - Jane Austen ( )
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ( )
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ( )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ( X )
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( )
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (x)
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 (x)
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 ( X)
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 ( X )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( X )
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ( )
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ( )
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
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 ( )
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
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 ( X )
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 ( )
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 ( X )
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ( )
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ( )

Okay, I beat the prediction of the BBC with 26 reads. A lot from high school and college. Many, many other favorite "classics" aren't on the list, so I wonder how the selections were made.

How about you? How many have you read?

7 comments:

Georgiana Daniels said...

Ooo, fun! You're well read. I might have to borrow this list. I think I've read 16 fulls and a few partials on here.

carla stewart said...

Go for it, Georgiana. If anything, it might prod our memories about books we've loved or hated at one time :-)

Myra Johnson said...

Interesting list! I've copied it to peruse at my leisure (what is THAT???). I see several on the list that I sort of maybe remember reading. Eventually maybe I'll read a few more. Being well-read is definitely a worthwhile pursuit.

Erica Vetsch said...

:) I am absquatulating with the list too...it will show up as my Friday Five (+ 95!)

I agree, there were some books I think are classics and must reads that didn't make the list.

Anne Mateer said...

I got 44. Does that make me a complete nerd?

carla stewart said...

Glad for the comments. D'Ann--you are not a nerd. Refined, poised, AND very well read. Your thoughtful blog shows that side of you.
Myra, whatcha doin' girl? I'm like you--I think I remember some of these books. Just don't give me a test on them:-)
Erica, I'll be looking for your list.

Georgiana Daniels said...

I'm posting mine in the morning. Great blog, Carla--and I love your heading too.