100 Books BBC Believes You Should Have Read

Pleasantly surprised that I have read most of these and many are among my favorite books.

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds.  

 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 Nineteen Eighty Four - 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

 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

 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

 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 Hosseini 

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

 40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. 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-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

 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 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 - E.B. 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 - Roald Dahl 

 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Unaccustomed As I Am ..

Jessica the Rock Chick over at Life Is Rantastic is very good at truly creative ranting. Her rants are a phenomenal expression of true angst over the events in life. While I do hold strong opinions, ranting just isn't a natural part of my personality, and I truly envy those who do it well.

HOWEVER!!! The BBC is messing with me and I don't like it!. You have to understand that I love British movies and television shows. I even pay extra to Comcast just to get BBC America in my station lineup because there are better shows with better acting there than on the network schedule. Now would someone explain to me why it takes two years or more for a show in the UK to show up on their US counterpart?

For the first time, I've found a reality show that I like: "Any Dream Will Do". It combines my love of theater with great singing voices as they try to cast the role of Joseph in a revival of Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat. It is a little like observing a hopped up version of a tryout cattle call and it is brutal to get down to the final 12 out of thousands of applicants. It has another great plus as it gives me another excuse to watch John Barrowman. Who cares if he's gay? I'm retired and that man is great scenery, has a wonderful voice and can act up a storm. Sorry, my imagination drifted off subject there.

Do not click on the link above if you are watching the show and want to be surprised about who won because someone already has. If you are watching and like me googled for additional information, you already know not only who won but that the revival has already taken place and the show is now closed and no longer playing in the West End theater district. What's more there are already videos of the contestants and an "official video" of the winner performing the TV show title song, Any Dream Will Do. Again, don't click if you don't want to know who won and played Joseph.

This is all part of a nefarious plot between BBC UK and BBC USA to make my life miserable. Right now I'm waiting for new seasons to Hotel Babylon, Robin Hood, Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Primeval among others. I've seen all of the Doctor Who episodes that have been released to North America. I've seen them and seen them again on BBC America, CBC (Canada), and Sci Fi channels. Torchwood is in reruns on BBC America. If you write BBC America and ask when these programs might show up, you get a nice form letter from someone named Stephanie thanking you for your interest in their shows. Stephanie is darn lucky she wasn't in the same room with me when I read that bit of twaddle.

Now the schedulers manage to get an American version of BBC News every night. Not once do they mention events from two years ago as if they were current events. Why can't they get the darn (expletive I was thinking deleted)shows on at the same time is beyond me or at the very least know when they might be expected. It's not as if they need to try them out first on the Brits to see if they go over in the US. There is absolutely no guarantee that a hit show in one place will be a hit show in another. Just look at the American remakes of Coupling and The Office. One a flop and one a hit here as an American remake. Viva Blackpool a BBC hit went completely down in flames as Viva Laughlin even with Hugh Jackman.

It's not like there could be an American version of the Doctor with David Tenant or Torchwood with John Barrowman. They are so decidedly British shows. Those of us who love the Beeb series with British actors deserve to see them at the same time as our compatriots across the pond. Why keep us in suspense? Is it some sort of revenge? Have they never truly forgiven us for being revolting? If they want New York back or something, we could talk ... Just send me my shows!!!!

In the meantime, John Barrowman singing "Anything Goes" may make me a shade less grouchy, but I doubt it.

God Can Wait

Because of my added question about moving words to screen while doing the Book Meme, I was reminded of a signature event in television . Anyone born since the 1960s has probably never seen a mini series that actually forced public organizations, including The Church of England, to change the scheduled day or time for events, and as a result of its popularity, led to a PBS program that still runs today in its 37th year. A shorter form mini series in color has since been done, but simply doesn't have the accuracy or magic of the 26 episode black and white original.

If you have never read Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, it is a multi book soap opera masquerading as an historical novel. It has everything: seduction, romance, betrayal, violent attacks, heartbreak, gold digging, births, deaths, and family scandals over three generations. By the time you get through reading, every single one of the Forsytes in all their good and bad humanity have become members of your own family. In 1967, the BBC got it right. When the Forsytes were on, the nation stopped. A little delayed it was finally shown on PBS and miracle of miracles, water cooler talk the next day was all about what Soames and Irene had done the night before. Three years later, the popularity of The Forsyte Saga led to the creation of Masterpiece Theater and all the wonderful productions we have loved ever since.

The link above takes you to a site on the web that provides all sorts of detail about each episode, the actors, and events both fictional and real about the series. Your next stop is The Forsyte Saga, to buy the series which is something you really, really want to do. The following review from the purchase site says it all.

Please, oh please, watch this original b/w 1967 British version of The Forsyte Saga instead of the 2002 mini-series. You cannot compare the two...This 1967 version in contrast has perfect casting, a completely amazing script, multi-dimensional characters, why even the house at Robin Hill is more gorgeous in the original version! The DVD box set you can purchase off Amazon is well worth the price. Buy it before it goes out of print.

There's A New Robin In The Hood

In 1215, some of the barons of England banded together and took London by force on June 10. They, and many of the fence-sitting moderates not in overt rebellion, forced King John to agree to the "Articles of the Barons", to which his Great Seal was attached in the meadow at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. In return, the barons renewed their oaths of fealty to King John on June 19, 1215. This group of documents became known as the Magna Carta So much for today's history lesson, read all you want at Wikipedia and any number of esoteric descriptions all over the web.

Now on to the fun stuff: Robin Hood is back in town courtesy of BBC America. We all know the story. Good King Richard the Lionhearted is off on a crusade to the holy land to recapture Jerusalem (Not one of the more noble actions of the west and still causing trouble today, but again not today's tale). His brother bad bad Prince John (eventually to be the King John of the Charter) is running England and everyone is thoroughly miserable. His minions, the evil Sheriff of Nottingham and the treacherous Guy of Guiseborne, are bleeding the people dry with taxes, taking over the property of the noble knights camped out with Richard, and in Guy's case threatening the virtue of the luscious Maid Marian who is more than a little miffed about her fiance going walk about with Richard.

Robin comes back from the Crusades to find that he has been disposessed for back taxes, Guy is living in his castle, and Marian is decidedly snippy at him for taking off to do a little sword banging instead of staying home with her. Being unhappy with the situation Robin ends up outlawed, living in the forest with an eclectic collection of equally abused men, and stealing from the rich to spread around the neighborhood making the peasants glad he's back home.

And that is where all similarity to the old story ends when you hit the BBC. Maid Marian is a feminist who takes to dressing up to do a little sword banging and spreading of the wealth herself. Guy is evil to be sure but he confuses easily when in a tug of war between his lust for Marian and his greed and thirst for power. The Sheriff is, well, so rotten and dispicable that you can't help but laugh at his sordid little antics particularly when they come in the form of puns with a rock music background.

Robin is very very handsome in a rather pretty boy way but not nearly as swashbuckly as say Doug Fairbanks or Errol Flynn. He gets rather petulant at times, particularly when Marian is riding him about not doing enough for the peasants. The titles of the episodes are almost as entertaining as the dialogue: "Who shot the Sheriff", "Parent Hood", "The Taxman Cometh" ... well you get the idea, and yes the last line of the dialogue in "Who Shot the Sheriff" was, "I didn't shoot the deputy."

Season one just completed but they are showing reruns if you have access to BBC America. Also the first 13 episodes are available on DVD. Do yourself a favor and catch up on Season one before the group in the greenwood get up to their antics again.










The Sheriff of Nottingham



Robin & Marian





Guy of Guisborne