Roxilla

I have been a voracious reader since I was old enough to read books by myself, and even before that I had a somewhat precocious start to books, having to share bedtime stories with a sister who was 5 years old.

As an adult, I try and read every night, and have a very varied literature taste which ranges from old school science fiction to trashy bodice rippers. My favourite author is Haruki Murakami, but I also love Stephen King, Mario Puzo, Terry Pratchett and many, many others. That said, I don’t always get around to the obvious classics, and lean more towards cult classics.

Anyway, I came across an awesome tag on Gill’s blog the other day, and loved it so much I decided to pinch the idea, even if I don’t tag anyone it’s still a great list and I invite anyone who loves reading to take up the challenge!

Here’s how it works…

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1) Look through the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Highlight or colour the books you LOVED.
4) Underline the ones you still want to read but just have not had a chance yet.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 or less and force books upon them.
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The Book List:

1. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
2. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
3. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
4. Lord of the Flies – William Golding (a std 5 set work book which haunted me for life)
5. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
6. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
8. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
9. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
10. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (such a lovely story, especially for a school set book!)
11. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
12. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
13. His Dark Materials (trilogy) – Philip Pullman
14. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
15. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
16. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger (another great school set book)
18. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
19. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
21. Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
22. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
23. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
24. Animal Farm – George Orwell
25. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
26. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
27. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
28. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
29. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
30. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
31. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
32. Complete Works of Shakespeare
.33. Ulysses – James Joyce
34. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
35. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (one of the longest and slowest tasks ever, but I managed)
36. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
37. The Bible
38. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (the movie is great too, with Robert Redford and tons of pizazz)
39. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
40. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
41. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
42. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
46. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
47. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (this book should be read by everyone at least once)
48. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
49. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
50. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
51. Little Women – Louisa M. Alcott
52. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
53. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
54. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
55. Middlemarch – George Eliot
56. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
57. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
58. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
59. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
60. Emma – Jane Austen
61. Persuasion – Jane Austen
62. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
63. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
64. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
65. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving (my sister is currently reading this, can’t wait to get my hands on it after she’s done)
66. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
67. Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
68. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy (The Mayor of Casterbridge put me off Thomas Hardy for life!)
69. Atonement – Ian McEwan
70. Dune – Frank Herbert
71. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
72. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth (another laborious and dragging accomplishment)
73. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
74. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
75. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
76. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
77. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
78. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
79. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
80. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding (also read the sequel, and my favourite of hers, Cause Celeb)
81. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
82. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
83. Dracula – Bram Stoker
84. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
85. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
86. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
87. Germinal – Emile Zola
88. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
89. Possession – A.S. Byatt
90. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
91. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
92. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
93. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
94. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
95. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
96. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
97. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
98. Watership Down – Richard Adams (I cried like hell in this book, but man I loved it)
99. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
100. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

I was disappointed not to see any Philip K. Dick, Ben Okri, Carlos Castenada, Mario Puzo, Hunter S. Thompson or Ira Levin, but overall a pretty good list indeed.