BBC Top 100 English Novels

Cafe Society
1

Over here is the BBC’s list of the 100 most-loved novels in English. How many have you read? The average is supposedly six.

====I got eleven==

  1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
  2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
  3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
  4. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
  5. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
  6. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
  7. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  8. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
  9. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
  10. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
  11. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

==I have never even heard of these 32 novels==
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
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
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
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
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer

2

If you have never heard of Terry Pratchett and Roald Dahl, then there is some great reading out there for you!

3

Jeez, clearly children and geeks are highly overrepresented in that survey.

I got 24.

Out of the list, I’d say Birdsong is an absolute must-read. An incredible book.

A Suitable Boy is amazing too, though a serious committment - the longest novel ever published in the English language.

His Dark Materials is actually a trilogy - you may have heard of “The Golden Compass”, that got made into a movie.

4

I misinterpreted Paul’s slightly weird list choice - from his list I’ve read 24; from the actual list I have read 46.

5

I’ve read 47 from that list. I think I’m going to add a few more to my Kindle.

6
  1. I refuse to read Clan of the Cave Bear on principle, I couldn’t finish Emma or Kane and Abel, and most of the rest I never heard of. I’ve always wanted to tackle Gormenghast, but haven’t had the time.

War and Peace and Ulysses - forget it. Life is too short, and they are too loooooong.

Regards,
Shodan

7

BTW in a year or two I would put money that Freedom by Jonathan Frantzen would be on that list. Or should be anyway.

8

I’ve finished 54 of these. Note that this list was compiled in 2003.

  1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
  2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
  3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
  4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
  5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
  6. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
  7. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
  8. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
  9. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
  10. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
  11. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
  12. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
  13. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
  14. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
  15. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
  16. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
  17. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
  18. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
  19. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
  20. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
  21. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
  22. Middlemarch, George Eliot
  23. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
  24. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  25. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
  26. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
  27. Persuasion, Jane Austen
  28. Dune, Frank Herbert
  29. Emma, Jane Austen
  30. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
  31. Watership Down, Richard Adams
  32. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
  33. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
  34. Animal Farm, George Orwell
  35. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
  36. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
  37. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
  38. The Stand, Stephen King
  39. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
  40. The BFG, Roald Dahl
  41. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
  42. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  43. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
  44. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
  45. The Magus, John Fowles
  46. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
  47. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
  48. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
  49. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
  50. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
  51. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
  52. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
  53. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  54. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
9

I got 39. Didn’t count anything that I started and didn’t finish (that would have jacked the total up considerably).

10

Yeah, I’m in the same place, in fact I’m taking another run at Ulysses right now (but actually enjoying it for the first time).

My wife has read 76 of those!

11

I can say with certainty that I’ve read at least ten on the list, though I faintly remember reading a few more. Not much to brag about. :frowning:

12

I’ve 23 and none of them are the Harry Potter ones. I find at least half of this list to be biased towards the last decade and (unlike this half) feel that most of the books I read will still be there in another 10 years. Also, a list like this without Nabokov disqualifies itself from being taken seriously.*

  • I know, I know, that’s just an opinion.
    Add me for having started, but not finished, Ulysses and War and Peace
13

I’ve read 53.

14
  1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  2. To Kill a Mockingbird
  3. Winnie the Pooh
  4. Nineteen Eighty-Four
  5. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  6. The Hobbit
  7. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland
  8. Dune
  9. Animal Farm
  10. Swallows And Amazons
  11. Mort
  12. Good Omens
  13. Guards! Guards!
  14. Night Watch
  15. The Colour Of Magic

So… fifteen, not a partcularly worthy list, and a third from one author (with an assist from Neil Gaiman).

I don’t think you could grow up in the UK when I did without reading Pooh, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Alice in Wonderland. To Kill a Mockingbird used to be a set text for O-level English which is probably why it’s so high up. I think I read the Orwells thanks to school as well, why they’d be in anyone’s favourites I don’t know, they’re both pretty bleak reads.

Four and a half Pratchetts in the top 100 and one of them os TCoM. WTF?
The list goes on to 200 where there are ten more Pratchetts including Small Gods, Reaper Man and Wyrd Sisters. Who the frak voted for TCoM over them?

It’s a very strange list that can include American Psycho and The Very Hungry Catapillar.

15

Let me just note that this is not a list of the top English novels. It’s a list of the favorite novels as voted on by a sample of people from the U.K. A lot of the novels weren’t originally in English and weren’t by British authors.

16

Oh, a top 40 list! This explains why I’ve read almost half.

17

Thirteen. I’d have done a lot better had I actually read everything that was assigned to me in school.

18

43 – didn’t count the ones I didn’t finish, or the ones where I decided to watch the movie/miniseries instead – War and Peace, most of the Dickens and all of the Austen. :slight_smile:

19

Where is “the Sotweed Factor”.

20

38 for me. It does make sense as a “most popular” list rather than “Best” list, although too many people don’t make a distinction between the two categories.

I wonder how many people voted for “Ulysses” because they knew it was highly regarded, not because they had read it.