100 most important books according to the BBC

I've read some, never heard of some & surprised by a few on this list.
IMPO 4 books left off the list (or possibly weren't published yet) that I have recently read that should be added are:

The Shack: William P. Young

Have a little faith: Mitch Albom

A Place Called Here: Cecelia Ahern
(chick lit but I found it to be a great book)

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews: Henry Fielding

And this short story...
The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien-
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling –
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -
6 The Bible -
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
8 1984 - George Orwell- YES
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger –
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -
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 -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden –
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan –
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel –
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby **** - Herman Melville -
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno - Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession - AS Byatt -
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -
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 -
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 -
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -

Message edited 8/25/2010 5:02:05 PM.

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

im surprised Les Mis isnt lower...

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

I feel pretty good about the amount of books I've actually read on that list!

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

I'm an English teacher, so I've read many of the books on this list.

I am perplexed by the fact that Bridget Jones' Diary is on the list.

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

I'm really confused as to how some of these made the list...

Bridget Jones more important than Les Miserables?!? Please!!

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

I'm notebooking this for when I am in need of a new book.

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

Posted by nel

Oh, no! Pride and Prejudice is one of my all-time favorites! Of course, to each his/her own, but I can't find anything boring about it. I think Austen just has the best sense of humor, and I totally appreciate her perspective on the class system and society's obsession with marriage in general. (Can you tell I teach this book every year? )

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

Posted by bird382

Posted by nel

Oh, no! Pride and Prejudice is one of my all-time favorites! Of course, to each his/her own, but I can't find anything boring about it. I think Austen just has the best sense of humor, and I totally appreciate her perspective on the class system and society's obsession with marriage in general. (Can you tell I teach this book every year? )

Sorry! I bet if I had a teacher as passionate as you I might think of the book differently.

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

I have read a lot of them.

But some of them are surprising. Winne the Pooh?

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

I know this is an old thread...but I had it in my notebook and figured others might want to see it. I go back to it when I'm looking to read something I should've read in HS lol

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -

and, as AP mentioned...

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, -

Really?.... the books are THAT good, that they're listed twice?

You'd think a list about literature would have had someone double-check the list.....

"The Complete Works of Shakespeare" is at least 36 plays... that sort of messes with the "100 most important books" count.....

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon -

This book was seriously horrendous. I can't believe they listed it above the Count of Monte Cristo!

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

Posted by GoldenRod

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -

and, as AP mentioned...

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, -

Really?.... the books are THAT good, that they're listed twice?

You'd think a list about literature would have had someone double-check the list.....

"The Complete Works of Shakespeare" is at least 36 plays... that sort of messes with the "100 most important books" count.....

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC

NM, on the lsit!

Message edited 11/6/2011 2:09:43 PM.

Re: 100 most important books according to the BBC