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Beth Patterson

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The BBC's take on what it takes

...to be well-read. They predict that the average person in the native English speaking world has only read 6 of these books.  Now that is a statement of some sort of crumbling of world order, wouldn't you agree?  I'm wondering in the US if it's even 6.  Painful to think about.

I've highlighted the ones I've read in purple; the ones in orange are books that have had the most personal impact.  Feel free to cut and paste and pass the list on.  It's also on Michelle Meech's Facebook page as a pass-along.  It's a pretty tame, white-bread list, but of course it is the BBC!

Some around the world are using it as their reading list.  One of the interesting things was that I read most of the books on the list was before I reached the age of 20.  I had a mother who didn't put a lot of value on 'perfect attendance' at school and would let me stay home for reading days...what a gift that was...and is!

Would love to hear in the comments section below the top 5 of this list that have moved you or shaped you, made you look outside the confines of the life you'd made up to that moment.  Also...are there books that you feel should be on this list that aren't? 

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 (most of it, except for some of the OT prophets and the 'begats' sections...ugh!)
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 (well, almost--some of his sonnets leave me a little boggled--probably just not ready for them yet!) 
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
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
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 (listened to it on CD...does that count?)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
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 (multiple times!)
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 
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
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 (seen both versions of the movie)
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 (here's an article called 'The Cheat's Guide  by someone spurred on to read this daunting book because...it's on this list! And it's on my bucket list to read!)
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 
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 (seen the play and listened to the soundtrack lots of times!)

Published Sunday, May 10, 2009 11:12 AM by Beth Patterson

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Daily News About Bridget Jones : A few links about Bridget Jones - Sunday, 10 May 2009 09:11 said:

PingBack from http://bridget-jones.dailynewsabout.com/archives/238

May 10, 2009 12:55 PM
 

Meech said:

Yes!  Join the conversation on Facebook.  If you're friends with Beth you should be able to jump over onto the conversation on my page... and while you're at it, tag me as a friend if you'd like.

I find it disappointing that most of the books on this list that I've read were not necessarily the books that formed me.  I suppose I shouldn't expect to find many American writers on this list... like Amy Tan (for crying out loud), Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, Chuch Palahniuk, etc.  But there are very few postmodern writers, non-white writers or, for that matter, female writers.

For example, I have read all of Thomas Hardy's books and I don't think you need to read them all to get what he's about.  However, only one of Khaled Hosseini's 2 seminal books is on the list and I find both of his to be supremely important in understanding what is happening right now because they come at the same issue from completely different perspectives.  Also, the Bible is on there but the Qu'ran isn't?  I guess Muslims in England aren't well-read.

I realize that it's a "consider-the-source" thing but England is one of the most racially and religiously diverse countries on the planet despite the fact that they have a so-called "state" religion of Christianity (by the way, the Church of England is not supported by the govmt).  So, it troubles me that an institution which is granted alot of clout because of its integrity is so blantently oppressive in something like this.  By saying that these are the books one should read in order to be considered "well-read"... well, that's just a prettier form of oppression.

OK... soapbox is put safely back under the bed.  I'm off to go think theologically now.  (that was a joke... please laugh)  :)

Let's hear what you have to say!!!

May 10, 2009 5:18 PM
 

Well read … ? « Homeless on the High Desert said:

PingBack from http://homelessonthehighdesert.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/well-read/

May 10, 2009 6:26 PM
 

Ten Bears said:

Good list, I'm at 66/100 and, like you early in life.

May 10, 2009 6:27 PM
 

Beth Patterson said:

Thanks, Michelle and Ten Bears--

So...what are the 5 books each of you would add to your list of formative, prima materia??

May 10, 2009 8:18 PM
 

DancesWL said:

I Heard an Owl Call My Name

Wonder Woman comic books : )

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

The Power of Now

Jane Eyre is my all time favorite for fiction.  To Kill a Mockingbird moved me greatly.  i could go on and on, Lovely Bones was a phenomenal work.

Thanks for this, Beth.

May 10, 2009 9:51 PM
 

Christine said:

I hadn't seen this particular list; it's quite interesting if just from a cultural perspective. Thanks for posting this!  

May 10, 2009 10:07 PM
 

Beth Patterson said:

Dances with Loons--

'I Heard the Owl Call My Name' is on my A list, too.  Not too many people know about the book.  It challenged me to my core--to be true, to not waver, to learn deep lessons about place and connectivity.  

Another book that should be here is 'The Death of Ivan Ilych'. Formative in my work with death and dying.

'The God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy is one of the best books I've ever read.

EB White's 'The Once and Future King' should be on the list as well.

So many...

May 11, 2009 12:50 AM

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About Beth Patterson

The Virtual Tea House website became 'word-ripe' when, over a cup of jasmine green, I realized that the web has an expanding part to play in the communal aspects of spiritual growth.

With a master's degree in religion, my career spans 30 years in end of life care and child abuse intervention and advocacy.

Here in beautiful Central Oregon, my spiritual homes of the high desert and the mountains are both in proximity. And for good measure, four hours away is Grandmother Ocean and the stunning Oregon Coast.

I'm making decent progress on the goal set by my mother early on: she taught us that the goal of humanity should be to become ever-more eccentric, i.e. more fully human.

Entering the 'forest-dweller' phase of life, I am honored to host the Virtual Tea House for all who wish to explore how our lives are enriched and made new a thousand times each day by the spirituality we embody. Exploring this engagement together is the purpose of the Virtual Tea House.

Welcome! Let's have a cup of virtual tea together and share what brings us joy, what we are being taught by life, how we are leaning into the Big Questions posed to us each day in sometimes 'distressing disguises'.

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