BBC Top 100 English Novels

Cafe Society
41

II’ve read most of the childrens and YA ones and a chunk of the adult ones.

42

I’ve read 32.
ETA: And 29 from the Australian list.

43

Rowling wrote children’s fantasies. However, Tolkien really only wrote one children’s book, that I know of (Hobbit), and while Pratchett has written some children’s books, most of his work is for adults. Most of his books can be read by children and teens, in that there’s no overt sex in it, but he wrote for adults, and kids aren’t going to understand a great deal of what’s going on.

44

Book Nazi. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll never understand why A Prayer for Owen Meany appears on these lists over Irving’s other works.

45

Personally speaking I’d read about 4 or 5 Irvings before I came to Owen Meany, and the latter blew them all out of the water. I’ll also mention that it was the one work of Irving’s that BBC Radio 4 (unconnected to the above poll) chose to interview him at length about a couple of months ago.

46

I’ve read 88 of them - but before you get terribly impressed - there is a reason. I taught gifted education at secondary schools for about 30 years, with a policy that I mostly read only what kids recommended to me. It’s a great way to establish a positive relationship quickly - ask their advice on something to read and then actually read it. Because my specialty is gifted math and science, the science fiction and fantasy scored highly. If you look at the list with that bias, it is a testimony to the kids I taught. I’m in Australia, but I didn’t do nearly so well on the Australian list. I’d probably do badly on an American list.

47

Thirteen for me.

48

I can’t in a quick search find any lists that were specifically voted on by Americans. This list is probably pretty close though. It’s an online poll, and it appears that it was voted on mostly by Americans:

49

Oh, alright then, let’s just say I don’t like fantasy (including scifi, for the record). I love a family saga, which is why I love A Suitable Boy so much (I read it on holiday in Thailand, and it’s so long that I only got half way through, ending up sawing it in half so I could carry on reading it on my commute. I know I know, sacrilege. You can buy it in instalments now).

50
  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. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
  14. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
  15. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
  16. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
  17. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
  18. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
  19. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
  20. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
  21. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
  22. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
  23. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  24. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
  25. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
  26. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
  27. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
  28. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
  29. Persuasion, Jane Austen
  30. Dune, Frank Herbert
  31. Emma, Jane Austen
  32. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
  33. Watership Down, Richard Adams
  34. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
  35. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
  36. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
  37. Animal Farm, George Orwell
  38. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
  39. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
  40. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
  41. The Stand, Stephen King
  42. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
  43. The BFG, Roald Dahl
  44. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
  45. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
  46. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
  47. Mort, Terry Pratchett
  48. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
  49. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
  50. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
  51. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
  52. Matilda, Roald Dahl
  53. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
  54. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
  55. The Twits, Roald Dahl
  56. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
  57. Holes, Louis Sachar
  58. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
  59. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
  60. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  61. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
  62. Magician, Raymond E Feist
  63. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
  64. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett

66, I think? I’d read most of the ones I’ve heard of.

51
  1. Or possibly 27 - I have read one (and it will stay at one) Terry Pratchett book, but I couldn’t tell you what it is called.
52

  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. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

  10. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

  11. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

  12. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

  13. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling

  14. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling

  15. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling

  16. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

  17. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

  18. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck

  19. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

  20. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

  21. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

  22. Watership Down, Richard Adams

  23. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

  24. Animal Farm, George Orwell

  25. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  26. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck

  27. The Stand, Stephen King

  28. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  29. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

  30. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding

  31. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

  32. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

  33. On The Road, Jack Kerouac

  34. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

  35. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

  36. There’s a few on that list that I will definitely get to, and a whole lot I have absolutely no interest in. By the way, if you counted all the times I re-read some of these, my “read count” would go up to over a hundred, maybe by a lot (I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve read some of them). A few years ago I resolved to stop re-reading the books I love so much, and start getting to some of the ones still on my “you have to get to this one” list. I violated that resolution yesterday when I read A Christmas Carol again.

53
  1. And I enjoyed the hell out of most of them.

I haven’t read On the Road or Ulyssses, for the simple reason that they are two of the most boring books I’ve ever opened.

I will read War and Peace someday.

54