How many of these books have you read?

[Nigeyb]

The BBC believes that most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books below...



http://www.listchallenges.com/kaunism...

How many have you read?

The average Goodreads member has, apparently, read 23 out of 100 books on this list.

I've read 41 books - quite a few of which I didn't enjoy.

Should I be feeling pleased?

I am not sure what the list meant to represent though. It seems like a mix of classics, Booker type novels and some best sellers.

Dune aside, I didn't notice much genre fiction and no list of this sort is complete without some Patrick Hamilton.

Over to you.

[Susan]

I have read 51 out of the list. Some I didn't like either and I have no idea what it proves.

[[deleted user]]

17 for me. Of the rest there are only 5 or 6 that I plan to read. Certainly seem to be some odd choices on there.

[Val]

That list is nothing to do with the BBC, this is theirs:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top...

There are three books on that fake BBC list which I just could not bring myself to finish, but I have read almost all of the others over the years, including the boring 'begatting' bits and the dietary laws in The Bible. ("Les Miserables" was an abridged version and I have not read all of Shakespeare's plays.)
It does not prove anything, except perhaps that I don't give up on books very often.

[Ruth]

Ooh creepy - I've read 23 of them! I never come out as average - Josephine Public and I have absolutely nothing in common - so I think that's an indication of how odd this list is!

[Susan]

It's an odd list, I agree Sarah.

[Val]

The real BBC list was from a self-selecting sample of the public voting for their favourite book.
I would guess that the revised list comes from the originator swapping some of the books they had not read for some that they had.

[Lobstergirl]

I've read 42. It's not a bad list - a decent combination of highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow. I wouldn't put children's works on a list like that - the entire Narnia chronicles, for example, plus the first one. And then the complete plays of Shakespeare (how many people have really read every single play?), plus Hamlet.

[Val]

In April 2003 the BBC's Big Read began the search for the nation's best-loved novel, and we asked you to nominate your favourite books.

Below and on the next page are all the results from number 1 to 100 in numerical order.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

This original list is also available on Goodreads, but the order has been changed by people voting on it.
There are no series and no plays, not even Shakespeare's.

The figure of six books comes from a study in the USA. Stats, from the Pew Research Center:

75% of Americans 16 and older read a book last year.
The median number of books read by readers last year was 6; the average, pushed up by those always-reading outliers, was 15.
The percentage of readers declined steadily with age, from 90% of 16 year-olds to just 67% of those 65 and older. Likewise, the percentage of readers increased steadily as household income and education levels rose.
81% of women read a book last year, but only 70% of men.

http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012...