Monday 14 November 2011

That's What YOU Think! Reading Challenge

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You may remember a few years ago that the BBC published a list of 100 books that they believed the majority of us have only read 6 off - personalty I think that the list is a little off as there are whole collections (e.g. The Complete Works of Shakespeare) listed and then individual works from the collection listed (obviously Hamlet isn't part of the Complete Works of Shakespeare :/).

I for 1 hate being told what is expected of me (when it comes to this kind of thing) and slotted into a nice little box.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series –
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 Faulks
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
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
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 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 Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
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 Mitchel
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


 So the purpose of this challenge will be read  more than 6 of the books that are on the list and if you have read some of them already, all the better! :)

You can set yourself a personal goal or just take each book at a time as it comes your way through the winds of chance. Whatever you prefer.

Every month staring January 1st I will put up a post so you can link to your reviews, comments or rants on the book you have tackled.

And remember that if you have already read books on the list you can still take part. How about picking 6 that you haven't read yet?

And most of all guys have fun!



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17 comments:

  1. Good idea for a challenge! :)
    I've actually read 11 of those *puffs chest* haha. But most of them are definitely 'been meaning to read..'s and I own a lot of them so I'll pop you in my 'considering' list for challenges! Trying not to sign up for everything I see else I won't complete anything, haha.

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  2. Haha. Good for you! :) That is what I am doing, being careful how many I decide to take part in or like you said nothing will get done :)

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  3. Wow, that's a silly list. I've read 33 of those books, though that might be from majoring in English...

    Can I still take part? Perhaps by reading six that I haven't already?

    Leslie
    Working for the Mandroid

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  4. I'm laughing at this list too, as I've read 11 or 12 of the books to date.

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  5. @Mandroid

    Yes, of course you can still take part :)

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  6. I wasn't able to access your list but I think I found it somewhere else

    If it is the same list......

    I've read 22, started some, own many and have some on my reading list for 2012!

    great challenge idea

    I'm in....be back later with a blog post link

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  7. Ha--I can already yell "That's what you think BBC!" I have read 29 of them--actually kind of surprised myself with that! I am considering signing up for this one--but I am just now looking at 2012 challenges.
    *smiles*

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  8. I can't get to the List. When I click on the Link it tells me I'm not allowed to see it..oO Even tho I don't even know the list yet I want to join the Challenge.. Only can't if I don't know what's Part of it :D.

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  9. I've read 16 on that list and would like to read more! I think I'll aim for another 5 books this year.

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  10. I've already linked by post about participating, but I picked my 6 new ones on the list, so I figured I'd share that link as well. Thanks for the challenge, it will be fun!
    http://meganm922.blogspot.com/2012/01/thats-what-you-think-challenge-rough.html

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  11. Here is my list: http://mlit12.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/reading-challenge-1/

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  12. I'm coming into the game waaay late, but thanks for the challenge! Mine is at http://katybrandes.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/thats-what-you-think-reading-challenge-3/.

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  13. Hi Alex, you can find my article here: http://www.peekabook.it/2012/06/thats-what-you-think-reading-challenge.html

    Valentina
    www.peekabook.it

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  14. I couldn't find a spot to link my reviews, but I've completed the challenge. Here's my completed challenge post with links to each of my reviews: http://meganm922.blogspot.com/2012/10/completedthats-what-you-think-reading.html Thanks for hosting such an awesome challenge!

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    Replies
    1. Hi Megan! Congrats. I added your link to the Round-Up post! :)

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  15. Challenge completed!
    I read:

    1) The Three Musketeers
    2) The Color Purple
    3) Jane Eyre
    4) Wuthering Heights
    5) The Great Gatsby
    6) The Lovely Bones

    Valentina
    www.peekabook.it

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    Replies
    1. Hi Valentina. I have added your blog link and final reads to the Round-Up post. Congrats! :)

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