BBC Book List

[Thanks to Kate M for this one, which landed on my Facebook page]

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions: Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read – even those you’ve read more than once!
Make sure you delete my x’S! When you’ve finished, tag 10 people to do it too, and put your total at the bottom.

1 – Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – x
2 – The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – x
3 – Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 – Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – x (all 7….)
5 – To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – x
6 – The Bible – x
7 – Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – x
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
13 – Catch 22 – Joseph Heller – x
14 – Complete Works of Shakespeare
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 Traveller’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 – x
24 – War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – x
25 – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – x
26 – Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
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
32 – David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 – Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis – x (all 7…)
34 – Emma – Jane Austen – x
35 – Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 – The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis – x (huh isn’t this part of 33?)
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 – x
41 – Animal Farm – George Orwell – x
42 – The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – x
43 – One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 – A Prayer for Owen Meany – 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 – x
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 Zifon
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-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 – x
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 Dick – Herman Melville
71 – Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens – x
72 – Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 – The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett – x
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 – 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 – x
91 – Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad – x
92 – The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery – x
93 – The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks – x
94 – Watership Down – Richard Adam – x
95 – A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 – A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
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

I’ve read 41 and now have a bunch of new ones to tackle. There is a particularly strong skew towards a British style of schooling with a great deal of the English “classics” in there. I’d be somewhat impressed if half these books were even heard of by anyone from outside the United Kingdom.

A quick Google of “BBC Book List” returned back a slightly different list on the BBC Website itself, posted in 2003  BBC – The Big Read – Top 100 Books with the pre text

In April 2003 the BBC’s Big Read began the search for the nation’s best-loved novel, and we asked you to nominate your favourite books. Below and on the next page are all the results from number 1 to 100 in numerical order!

Shame there isn’t more:

• Fantasy & Adventure (Eddings, Feist, McCaffrey etc),
• Sci-Fi (Banks, Gibson, Asimov, Heinlein, Scott-Card etc) &
• Espionage (Clancy, Le Carre, Ludlum etc)

Crack House – Harry Keeble, Kris Hollington

A harrowing story retold from the first hand experience of Det. Sgt. Harry Keeble, policing the Haringey district of London, where he embarked on a mission with his squad to close 100 crack houses in 12 months. Confronting in a frightening and shocking manner, it is with some sadness you read and reaffirm that humanity is capable of this level of depravity and self abuse.

I wish I had a Kil’n in my study…..

Kiln People – David Brin

David Brin’s standalone novel in this instance was a surprise and a pleasant one at that. The blurb attracted me – the promise of a slick sci-fi detective theme set in a Cyberpunk style environment. However the sparkle came when the books overtones of Asimov’s Elijah Bailey Detective series were enhanced by the books central character Albert Morris and his numerous “selves” which he replicates each day to complete various of his tasks confronting him. Being made of clay, each of these ‘selves possesses an animate “soul” giving them some credo of life force – “Kil’n People”. Albert’s “ditto’s” ramble thru the story with ever increasingly interesting and diverse adventures. Because of their clay base it precludes an existance much longer than a standard day, whereby an “inload” – downloading of the ditto’s memories – must be undertaken. Neat. Real Albert will than assimilate the ditto’s memories and thus has enhanced his reach from the additional memories he’s absorbed. Easy prose, the book gets 4/5 for writing style. The let down was that I found I had to keep on referring backwards and forwards between chapters to work out which ditto I was following, as the story does jump around a bit following each of Alberts multiplicities. However 5/5 overall for this book, as it sparked much discussion and conjecture amongst my friends and peers who I have since loaned the book too and let read. Stimulating reading.

Magician: Apprentice & Master, Raymond E. Feist

The Riftwar Saga – Raymond E.Feist

Original Release: Magician

New Release:
Magician – Apprentice
Magician – Master

Why split the 2 books?

I’m intrigued. I’ve recently purchased the revised 10th anniversary edition of this masterpiece, Magician one of the original books that got me interested in the whole genre of Sci-Fi Fantasy and Adventure. Splitting the 2 books may make it easier to tote around, but also increases the coffers of the publisher. I’m not convinced. Getting to the books themselves, (Apprentice & Master) they have a rousing style of story telling. Using language that is easy and accessible, they nonetheless detail in oratorical prose the tale of “proud, noble men & women, of sturdy character, unimpeachable honour, unquestioned loyalty and faith”. Oppositely they detail enemies and fiends of pure evil and unspeakable cruelty, leaving much for the reader to detail – tis a fine line that Feist treads, but he pulls it off well. Candidates of the genre will relate well to the accepted traits of the races – Elves are wise, long lived and otherworldly beautiful, The Dwarves are ever the stalwarts of mining, good cheer, bastions of faith and loyalty, unsurpassed in their battle prowess, and the world of men, is ever the mixed bag of the best and worst of everything. You find that often, you’ll relate to various of the characters, all admirable in their own way, and draw parallels with your own life and the people you know. Essentially a tale of humanities struggle against unknown forces, the story telling preserves the interest of the genre, expanding the magic system with some neat concepts and ideas. Dragons, magic, battles, triumph, loss, love & hate are all covered in finite detail and ample measure. Where the strength of the books is however is the way Feist describes the depth of the way people think and his ability to distill the characters into those that possess that all too rare quality of focusing on the things that are important in any given situation. It’s not muddy and boring but! They’re funny too, with rare flashes of humour and dialogue between the characters a highlight of the story telling. Overall, one of my favourite tales, they remind me much of my hopes and dreams I had as I grew up and entered the world. Rereading these some 15 years on, I am reminded keenly of what I have achieved and what I yet hope to achieve. These books come with a thorough recommendation if you like the genre of Fantasy & Adventure. Which character do I aspire myself to be? Arutha, the Prince of Crydee. He’s ultra cool in my book and his sister Carline is impeccable.

The Phoenic Legacy: M.K.Wren

The Phoenix Legacy, M.K. Wren

Book 1 – Sword of the Lamb
Book 2 – Shadow of the Swan
Book 3 – House of the Wolf

I first got these books on the recommendation of my Librarian in Year 8 (some 17 years ago) and now they are a critical read for me every 2-3 years. They have the depth and scope of Frank Herberts Dune (1st, 2nd & 4th – 3rd’s rubbish) and flashes of brilliance ala Asimov’s I-Robot series, without the sparseness.   An engaging read, they are emotive, intelligent and definitely succeed in painting a picture of a world that is entirely plausible and feasible in our near future. What is also impressive is that the descriptions of technology and the word amalgams used to personify and name particular objects and concepts aren’t used to excess and don’t overtake the good old fashioned story telling aspect.   The covers of the US books are very different to the Australian covers – they do look lame – and definitely contributed to the poor following that resulted. The Australian books have black borders top and bottom and have classic Sci-Fi mixed with Fantasy Genre imagery that sparks the imagination and invites speculation and hence appeal. Everyone I know who has read them has ordered the books off Amazon and guard their versions with absolute commitment. Highly Recommended.   Highly recommended reading and I advise, do not loan them out once you get them. I once had someone offer me $200 for the trio, because mine are in mint condition. I have two sets – the loan out copy to trusted friends who keep reborrowing them and the personal copy.