The Challenge

Alright-- here we go. This is something I have wanted to do, and there is a good chance I will fail at it OR it will take me a really, really, really long time to complete BUT here is goes:

I am challenging myself to read and review (and not in an analytical sense, but just my overall reaction) the 100 books that the BBC released on their "books to read before you die"  in 2003. Now why is said actor doing said challenge. Well, I am of the firm belief that films are often based on 'bum bum bum bum' books! Weird, I know. I will be reading these in no particular order (pretty much because I don't want to start with The Lord of the Rings Trilogy). By allowing myself to have the freedom to pick out of the 100 books I won't feel like I am reading just to get them read but rather to enjoy the book. I have to say that one of my favorite things to do, is curl up in the afternoon with a tea and a book...now judging by the amount I am about to read, I need a lot of tea-- and I am seriously hoping that my teeth don't turn yellow because of this challenge!

I have completed 27 of these novels to date (August 14th, 2012), (which the BBC says is 20 more than the average reader will read-- but I am no average person and therefore cannot be deemed an average reader). Also, I am not going to change the list, but having both Hamlet and the complete works of William Shakespeare on the same reading list is redundant (just to point that out). I will not be reviewing the ones that I have previously read. I cannot promise that my reviews will be good as I am not going to pretend to be a literary expert, and I cannot promise that this challenge will be done in a timely fashion, as I have lots of things to do in my life, and reading is often left to do on public transit. The titles that are crossed off are the ones I have already read (duh), and I will readjust as I go on throughout this challenge.

I don't want you to think that I think that this is the best list I have ever found-- it is simply a list that I have found and that I am using. I realize that there are some amazing titles missing from this list but for now I am going to start here-- If you think that there is a novel (or a few novels) missing from this list and you can't bear the thought that it is not included-- by all means comment and I will see what I can do to tack it on (but no promises cause there are already 100 titles here). If you would like to join me on my adventure by all means!



The List 

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (March20'13)
        - The Fellowship of the Ring
        - The Two Towers
        - The Return of the King
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (April14'13)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte(Sept8'12)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Aug31'12)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (Aug8'13)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (Feb'14)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Sept12'12)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (July28'13)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (May15'14)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Sept2'12)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (Oct4'12)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Jan28'13)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (Jan'14)
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 (Oct9'13)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
        - The Magicians Nephew(Oct28'12)
        - The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
        - The Horse and his boy
        - Prince Caspian
        - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
        - The Silver Chair
        - The Last Battle
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen(Oct11'12)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (Aug14'12)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (Nov17'14)
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 (Dec14'12)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (May13'15)
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 (2015)
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 (2015)
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (Mar6'13)
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 (Dec'14)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (Aug1'13)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Apr24'15)
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 (2016)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding(Dec7'13)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (May27'15)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Oct8'12)
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 (Dec17'12)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (2015)
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (Jan22'13)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (2015)
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(May'13)
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 (2016)
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 Factoy - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo(Oct'15)

Total: 68

So if you feel the need to support me or if you are looking for a way to join the challenge without actually reading you do have a few options. First of all, you can always just leave a comment...or if you want to be more involved then that you can drop me off a can/tin/bag of tea anonymously outside the door to my apartment-- where I can think that someone is being extra sweet to me and I probably will boast to many people that I have a secret admirer. But make sure you go to David's Tea and ask which ones are good for your teeth (they have that now), and purchase those kinds because I do not want to end up with severely stained teeth and no dental insurance..... Or if you are looking for a gift idea simply because you love me-- there are a lot of books that I am going to need and some of which I do not yet own hint hint.

I will begin with The Kite Runner (because I have already purchased it and it is waiting for me on my Kobo now;) )


This is what my room is going to look like