1 Pride and Prejudice
2 The Lord of the Rings
X
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
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare:
X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
X
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
X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
X
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
X
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
X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
X
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
X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
X
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
X
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
X
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
X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
X
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
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
X
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl
X
100 Les Miserables — Victor Hugo
X
Total: 48
That list is so American/British biased. Oh well.
1. What author do you own the most books by?
Damn. Frank Herbert (6), Arthur C. Clarke (5? 6?), Asimov (6-7?) Dawkins (6), Amartya Sen (economist - 4), John Gribbin (7?). I think it might be Gribbin. It's not really fair if you like a series and go and get the whole lot by the same author. I have a shitload of books, at least for my age :/
2. What book do you own the most copies of?
The Bible; I've got 4 or 5 I think.
3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No but I wouldn't do it myself.
4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I think the last character I secretly was in love with... hrm was when I was a young teenager so I'll not try to answer that :p
5. What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
The Bible
6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Sorry…I don’t remember any.
Narnia chronicles, probably Prince Caspian or The Horse and His Boy of the lot
7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
I don't tolerate bad books, I'd never finish one and I'd be able to tell before I bought it just from browsing.
8.What is the best book you've read in the past year?
The Ancestor's Tale, Dawkins
9.If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
The idea revolts me.
10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
100 Years of Solitude, Marquez
11.What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
100 Years of Solitude, Marquez (I fear they'd butcher it)
12. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I once dreamt I was Pilgrim in Pilgrim's Progress. When I reached the River of Life opposite stood the dazzling brightness of the city of God. My parents and brother got into the boat but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The bright light turned out to me my dad turning the lights on in my room to wake us up for school. I was 8. I never ever did get on that boat.
13.What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
This is a trick question to show what elitist snobs we really are right? Well hrm, I tend to appreciate even the worst in a book and don't think I've come across anything I'd really call 'lowbrow'. Hm do tabloid magazines count? Oh oh I know, I thumbed through a tribute 'book' to Michael Jackson that had so much pictures and so little text I'd read the entire thing cover to cover in 15 minutes in a bookstore. God forgive me if I can't remember the title.
14.What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
Probably all of Kant. Or maybe Rorty. They both suck.
15. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
I've only watched pretty mainstream Shakespeare plays. Probably The Tempest.
16. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
In what respect? I'd rather having someone French knocking on my door in the dead of night than a Russian, unless it was Anna Kournikova I spose.
17. Roth or Updike?
No idea
18.David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
No idea
19. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Milton
20. Austen or Eliot?
Eliot
21.What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Dickens. I just find him boring.
22.What is your favorite novel?
Dune, Frank Herbert
24. Poem?
Farewell to Youth, Siegfried Sassoon
25.Essay?
The Author and his Interpreters, Umberto Eco
26.Work of nonfiction?
The Selfish Gene, Dawkins
27.Who is your favorite writer?
I have none. Maybe Chinua Achebe or Frank Herbert
28.Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Hm. Rick Warren?
29.What is your desert island book?
Dune
30.And... what are you reading right now?
I'm reading about 3 different books right now. Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Miall, Woodhouse, and Miall); Postmodernism, Economics & Knowledge (Cullenberg); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?: Africa and China (Ampiah and Naidu); Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (Duffield)