... 100 books.

I found this on another blog and thought it was interesting. I'm not really sure who put the list together (the complete works of Shakespeare is #14, but then Hamlet is #98, so who knows. And what's up with the Bible at #6?) It's a fairly decent list of books, though. Here's how this goes:

The National Endowment for the arts estimates that the average adult has read only 6 of the top 100 books.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. (I had to make them purple, too, because the bold didn't show very well).

2) Italicize those you intend to read. (I did the ones I intend to read in the near future.)

3) [Bracket] those you have viewed as a movie or on TV

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (my favorite Austen)
[2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien]
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 (how is it I've never read this?)
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 (quite a bit, but who has read all of Shakespeare?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (great mystery)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (but I don't get why people like it)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (I don't recommend it though)
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 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 (just started this one!)
[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] (OK this is good, but not really a top 100 book)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (another great mystery)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (loved loved loved)
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
[52 Dune - Frank Herbert]
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (funny!)
[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 (probably will not read this)
[61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck]
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (this is good but really intense)
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] (a personal favorite)
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] (good, but again intense)
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

I've read 43 of 100... not too shabby.