Thank you EHS!

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. Can you believe it! I would just like to thank The High School for providing me (ahem, making me) the time (or lack there of) to read many of these fine books below. Though I was hoping to have read half of them, I came close, and have read 43, seen a few movies, and have a couple on a list of "one day" to read. I'm not sure where this list is from, what's the criteria?! I bet I could find a list where I read all the books, but I like this list. Has a bit of everything. Though having multiple Jane Austen books put the numbers in my favor, I'm a sucker. :)

I have two favorite books. One, however, is not on this list. The Horse Whisper, by Nicholas Evans. My grandmother was a member of this book club, kind of like those CD programs, where you rip off the particular stamps, send them in, and you get those 12 cds for 1 cent each, and 2 at the regular price. OH, what was that called. CBG, BCG, CBS, BB&T, oh I don't know. Anyway, she would quickly read her books, and when I got old enough or she felt it appropriate, I would read them next! I was such a little dork and even faked needing glasses in 1st grade because I felt they would make me a better reader. They were pink, naturally. When I read this book, I fell in love with it. I could read it over and over and over again. I was super excited when back in the day, Robert Redford was making the film version. Hmm, Robert Redford plus favorite book, HAS to be a winner. Alas, I was pretty let down and he changed the plot line. A cute movie, but nothing like the book.

My other favorite book... well let's see if you can guess. It's been number 1 and 25. It should be pretty obvious.......

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ()
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ()
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
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 ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (x)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (x - well, a whole hell of a lot of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (x)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ()
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x)
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 ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ()
34 Emma - Jane Austen (x)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (x)
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 ( I saw the movie!)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ()
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( x)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ()
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (x)
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (x)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (x)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (x)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ()
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ( x)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon ( )
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 (x)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck ()
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (x)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (x)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (x)
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 ()
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 (x)
76 The Inferno - Dante (x)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (seen the movie!)
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ()
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (x)
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 ()
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 (x)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (x)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (x)
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 (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (seen the play on broadway!)