Stealing

I am blatantly stealing this post from my friend Amy (at least, I hope we are still friends). Thanks for the idea. I love to read and so I must copy, steal and support this idea! Plus, I haven't posted for a while and this is a lot easier than downloading all the photos off my camera, organizing them in iphoto and thinking of something interesting to say about them. Give me a break, I've been sick this week. Just be glad I'm not blogging all the gory details.

Anyway, The Big Read is a National Endowment for the Arts program to encourage community reading initiatives.  This is a list of their top 100 books.  They estimate the average adult has read only six.

Bold those that you have read.  Italicize those you intend to read and *star the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice-Jane Austen***(seriously deserves that many stars, along with all the other Austen books.)
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
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(Sure enough to bold but I may have missed something!)
15. Rebecca-Daphne Du Maurier*
16. The Hobbit-JRR Tolkien
17. Bird Song- Sebastian Faulks
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. Brideshead Revisted-Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment-Fydor 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*(One of my all time FAVORITES!)
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 Hosseini*
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 ( I feel like I should get some stars after reading this book.  Read it and you'll see what I mean!)
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* (Super good!)
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 (Yawner!)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time-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(Are you freaking serious?)
69. Midnight's Children-Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick-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 Bell Jar-Sylvia Plath
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(Would star but so SICK of the story that I just can't do it!  Even Barbie has a version now.  Can we say all together "OVER DONE!"  Just leave the story alone, people.  Please.)
82. Cloud Atlas-David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple-Alice Walker (I'm curious if Oprah will come after me with her secret network of spies.  Still, no star.  Why? Well, because I'm feeling a little mad about her blatant financial support of a certain presidential candidate that has representatives call my house nightly and fill my mail box with junk and interrupt my favorite TV programs! So there!  Take that!)
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 (This is a caca book. Only read if you are feeling like being depressed or you have to write an English paper.)
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(I only bolded half because I read half of the book and then got bored and seduced by another more interesting book.  I never came back.  Sorry, I'm just like that.)
96. A Town like Alice-Nevil Shute
97. The Three musketeers-Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet-William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables-Victor Hugo* (Really good book.  Especially if you skip the 100 pages on the description of the town...or was it something else?)