One of my favorite people posted this on her blog, and I’m completely ripping her off and copying it. (Hi NGS!) Below is a list of books printed by the Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Artsto promote reading. At some point, they claimed that the average American has read only 6 of the following 100 books. Like many other people, according to my Google search, I can’t find that particular claim anywhere on their site, nor could I find this actual list. But I’m passing on the list anyway, with the caveat that it could be total crap. You’ve been warned!

Key
1) Bold the books you have already read
2) Italicize the books you intend to read
3) NGS added: Make fun of other books in parentheses. (This is my favorite rule.)

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1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (High school reading - Couldn’t tell you one character in it today)
2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (Funny story: I borrowed the series from my dad so I could read it. But I never really got around to it. My mom, however, knew I had them and nagged endlessly for me to return them, regardless of my dad’s assertion that it was ok for me to keep them. So one day I brought them back and put them horizontally on the bookcase on top of other books. She needed them back so badly, that they stayed exactly where they were for THREE YEARS, despite their out-of-placeness! One of my dad and my favorite private jokes now.)
3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (High school again. Same rules apply)
4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling (Of course I’ve read these. And if my friend would give me back the first 3 I lent her, I’d read them all again)
5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell (I’ve always meant to read it. Just haven’t got to it yet.)
9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Not terrible. High school reading that I actually remember)
11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (I always wanted to be Jo when I grew up)

12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read a lot of them, but not the complete collection. So I’ll take 1/2 credit, please.)

15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (See #2)
17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (I liked this book, I remember, but can’t tell you why now)
19) The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch by George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (High school again)
23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Does anyone NOT love this?)
26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Lewis Carroll is sick and twisted. I love him)
30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
34) Emma by Jane Austen (high school yet again. They really were big on reading)
35) Persuasion by Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis(Is this not part of the Chronicles of Narnia that I answered in #33?)
37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
41) Animal Farm by George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding (I still refer to this book in everyday life

50) Atonement by Ian McEwan (Ok, the movie might have been nominated for best picture, but I thought it was dull. I have no desire to read the book now. Thank you Hollywood.)
51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
52) Dune by Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (I don’t know if the Cold Comfort Farm movie is based on this book, but I adore the movie. I think I might have to check out the book.)
54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (High school yet again)
55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (Different. I think I liked it.)
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
69) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
72) Dracula by Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses by James Joyce
77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal by Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession by AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Fantastic. The play is excellent as well!)
84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte’s Web by EB White (How do you go through elementary school and NOT have read this?)
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
94) Watership Down by Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare (How can you put the Complete Works of Shakespeare as #14, and then have one of his works alone as #98?)

99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

A third of them I’ve read, a third I’ve no desire to read and a third I’ve never heard of. At least I’m evenly split!