Until you've read these books, at least according to British librarians:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible (by God!)
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
I've read Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials, but for the rest, um, I better not die soon!
Oh yeah, and 1984, though long ago...
I've read 10/30, and see 10 more that I've been meaning to read for a time now.
(Most recently The Lovely Bones. Great book!) | |
I'll read The Lord of the Flies shortly, but many of those books have titles I can't even recognize.
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1984 and To Kill A Mocking Bird made me sad. Because they bite.
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I was kind of disappointed in 1984, probably due to my high expectations of Orwell prior to the reading.
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The bible was written by Xenu. Everyone knows that.
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To Kill a Mockingbird is an amazing novel.
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I have read "To Kill a Mockingbird" so many times, I want to kill myself... Damn you American School System! And why "Whinnie the Pooh"? But "Gone With the Wind" was a decent book. But I just dont like "A Christmas Carol" for some reason...
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Hmm, I've read... none of them. :(
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The bible? That is a horrible example of a book. Either fictional or non, it is not a good book. The plot is driven by too many plot devices. Chapters don't match up with each other and the writing style changes in every section. Now I know why this is, but it doesn't change the fact that it is not a book to be read for entertainment, and doesn't belong on such a list.
But I digress, you did not write that list, so no reason to bicker at you. I have read a few of them, mostly from high school. I didn't find many of them entertaining, but I am a kid of the digital age. I like my media preprocessed just like my food. | |
To Kill A Mocking Bird was a fairly good book. Except what kind of person calls their daughter 'Scout'?
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The bible? That is a horrible example of a book. Granted, the structure is a bit lacking, but it's on the list because there are a lot of cultural references in Western societies to the Bible. I guess I should get around to reading it someday. I'm in almost the same boat as Deadron, except I've never read 1984. :-( Ah! I see 1984 is in the public domain in Australia. Excellent. *strolls on over to Project Gutenburg* You Americans aren't allowed to download it for free until 2022, though! Dang that Mickey Mouse clause, huh? =) | |
1984 and Lord of the Flies were my two favourite books out of that.
The His Dark Materials trilogy was alright, but the ending was aweful and left me with a strong sense of disappointment, leading me to the conclusion that Philip Pullmans only good book is Count Karlstein. | |
You Americans aren't allowed to download it for free until 2022, though! Dang that Mickey Mouse clause, huh? =) Well, not legally ¬_¬ | |
South Park has a very nice TV adaptation of Dickens' Great Expectations, which I highly recommend if you don't have time to read the book.
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - Forced to read it at school. It's anti racism. That's about it really...
The Bible (by God!) - Not even going there. | |
I read To Kill a Mockingbird, and Life of Pi. I just finished Life of Pi yesterday, too!
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Hrm, 18 down... Although I dislike the Bronte and Austen selections. Some pretty trite melodrama, IMHO. Wuthering Heights is at least a bit darker. I also dislike giving one author two selections. Especially *that* author. But, literature considers them quite the writers, so what can you do?
Since the category is fiction I would replace some of the choices with something from Poe, Hitchcock, or Stephen King, Ayn Rand, Lewis Carrol, Doestoyevsky, Alexandre Dumas, etc. Specific titles: Le Morte De Artur (Mallory), Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan), Don Quixote (Miguel Cervantes), Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift), The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne), or maybe Charlotte's Web (EB White). I also think the Bible doesn't seem to fit on a number of grounds. 1) It is arguably at least partially non-fiction (and certainly written as such). 2) It is a compilation of books, not actually one title. And don't bring LoTR in this one- Tolkien wrote it as one volume that had to be broken for publication purposes. The "books" are actually named after the first chapters of each division. | |
It would take someone like me now until I die to read all those books.. :(
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper LeeThe Bible (by God!)
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien1984 by George OrwellA Christmas Carol by Charles DickensJane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
I have quite enough time of reading-while-not-dying-yet left ahead of me. =/