The Big Read was a survey conducted by the BBC of the British public in 2003 with the goal of finding the best-loved novels of all time.
I’m setting myself the challange to read all the books from this list.
Looking through some of these titles, and I wonder how many people have these as actual favourite books, and how many just say that they’re a favourite without thinking much about it or giving them a re-read.
I mean… Flowers it the Attic? Really?
| ? | # | title | author |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Lord of the Rings | J. R. R. Tolkien | |
| 2 | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | |
| 3 | His Dark Materials | Philip Pullman | |
| 4 | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | |
| 5 | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | J. K. Rowling | |
| 6 | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | |
| 7 | Winnie-the-Pooh | A. A. Milne | |
| 8 | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | |
| 9 | The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | C. S. Lewis | |
| 10 | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë | |
| 11 | Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | |
| 12 | Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | |
| 13 | Birdsong | Sebastian Faulks | |
| 14 | Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | |
| 15 | The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger | |
| 16 | The Wind in the Willows | Kenneth Grahame | |
| 17 | Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | |
| 18 | Little Women | Louisa May Alcott | |
| 19 | Captain Corelli’s Mandolin | Louis de Bernières | |
| 20 | War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | |
| 21 | Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell | |
| 22 | Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone | J. K. Rowling | |
| 23 | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | J. K. Rowling | |
| 24 | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | J. K. Rowling | |
| 25 | The Hobbit | J. R. R. Tolkien | |
| 26 | Tess of the d’Urbervilles | Thomas Hardy | |
| 27 | Middlemarch | George Eliot | |
| 28 | A Prayer for Owen Meany | John Irving | |
| 29 | The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck | |
| 30 | Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | |
| 31 | The Story of Tracy Beaker | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 32 | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez | |
| 33 | The Pillars of the Earth | Ken Follett | |
| 34 | David Copperfield | Charles Dickens | |
| 35 | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | Roald Dahl | |
| 36 | Treasure Island | Robert Louis Stevenson | |
| 37 | A Town Like Alice | Nevil Shute | |
| 38 | Persuasion | Jane Austen | |
| 39 | Dune | Frank Herbert | |
| 40 | Emma | Jane Austen | |
| 41 | Anne of Green Gables | Lucy Maud Montgomery | |
| 42 | Watership Down | Richard Adams | |
| 43 | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | |
| 44 | The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | |
| 45 | Brideshead Revisited | Evelyn Waugh | |
| 46 | Animal Farm | George Orwell | |
| 47 | A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickens | |
| 48 | Far from the Madding Crowd | Thomas Hardy | |
| 49 | Goodnight Mister Tom | Michelle Magorian | |
| 50 | The Shell Seekers | Rosamunde Pilcher | |
| 51 | The Secret Garden | Frances Hodgson Burnett | |
| 52 | Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck | |
| 53 | The Stand | Stephen King | |
| 54 | Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy | |
| 55 | A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth | |
| 56 | The BFG | Roald Dahl | |
| 57 | Swallows and Amazons | Arthur Ransome | |
| 58 | Black Beauty | Anna Sewell | |
| 59 | Artemis Fowl | Eoin Colfer | |
| 60 | Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | |
| 61 | Noughts & Crosses | Malorie Blackman | |
| 62 | Memoirs of a Geisha | Arthur Golden | |
| 63 | A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | |
| 64 | The Thorn Birds | Colleen McCullough | |
| 65 | Mort | Terry Pratchett | |
| 66 | The Magic Faraway Tree | Enid Blyton | |
| 67 | The Magus | John Fowles | |
| 68 | Good Omens | Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett | |
| 69 | Guards! Guards! | Terry Pratchett | |
| 70 | Lord of the Flies | William Golding | |
| 71 | Perfume | Patrick Süskind | |
| 72 | The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists | Robert Tressell | |
| 73 | Night Watch | Terry Pratchett | |
| 74 | Matilda | Roald Dahl | |
| 75 | Bridget Jones’s Diary | Helen Fielding | |
| 76 | The Secret History | Donna Tartt | |
| 77 | The Woman in White | Wilkie Collins | |
| 78 | Ulysses | James Joyce | |
| 79 | Bleak House | Charles Dickens | |
| 80 | Double Act | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 81 | The Twits | Roald Dahl | |
| 82 | I Capture the Castle | Dodie Smith | |
| 83 | Holes | Louis Sachar | |
| 84 | Gormenghast | Mervyn Peake | |
| 85 | The God of Small Things | Arundhati Roy | |
| 86 | Vicky Angel | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 87 | Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | |
| 88 | Cold Comfort Farm | Stella Gibbons | |
| 89 | Magician | Raymond E. Feist | |
| 90 | On the Road | Jack Kerouac | |
| 91 | The Godfather | Mario Puzo | |
| 92 | The Clan of the Cave Bear | Jean M. Auel | |
| 93 | The Colour of Magic | Terry Pratchett | |
| 94 | The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho | |
| 95 | Katherine | Anya Seton | |
| 96 | Kane and Abel | Jeffrey Archer | |
| 97 | Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel García Márquez | |
| 98 | Girls in Love | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 99 | The Princess Diaries | Meg Cabot | |
| 100 | Midnight’s Children | Salman Rushdie | |
| 101 | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K. Jerome | |
| 102 | Small Gods | Terry Pratchett | |
| 103 | The Beach | Alex Garland | |
| 104 | Dracula | Bram Stoker | |
| 105 | Point Blanc | Anthony Horowitz | |
| 106 | The Pickwick Papers | Charles Dickens | |
| 107 | Stormbreaker | Anthony Horowitz | |
| 108 | The Wasp Factory | Iain Banks | |
| 109 | The Day of the Jackal | Frederick Forsyth | |
| 110 | The Illustrated Mum | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 111 | Jude the Obscure | Thomas Hardy | |
| 112 | The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ | Sue Townsend | |
| 113 | The Cruel Sea | Nicholas Monsarrat | |
| 114 | Les Misérables | Victor Hugo | |
| 115 | The Mayor of Casterbridge | Thomas Hardy | |
| 116 | The Dare Game | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 117 | Bad Girls | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 118 | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | |
| 119 | Shōgun | James Clavell | |
| 120 | The Day of the Triffids | John Wyndham | |
| 121 | Lola Rose | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 122 | Vanity Fair | William Makepeace Thackeray | |
| 123 | The Forsyte Saga | John Galsworthy | |
| 124 | House of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski | |
| 125 | The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver | |
| 126 | Reaper Man | Terry Pratchett | |
| 127 | Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging | Louise Rennison | |
| 128 | The Hound of the Baskervilles | Arthur Conan Doyle | |
| 129 | Possession: A Romance | A. S. Byatt | |
| 130 | The Master and Margarita | Mikhail Bulgakov | |
| 131 | The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood | |
| 132 | Danny, the Champion of the World | Roald Dahl | |
| 133 | East of Eden | John Steinbeck | |
| 134 | George’s Marvellous Medicine | Roald Dahl | |
| 135 | Wyrd Sisters | Terry Pratchett | |
| 136 | The Color Purple | Alice Walker | |
| 137 | Hogfather | Terry Pratchett | |
| 138 | The Thirty-Nine Steps | John Buchan | |
| 139 | Girls in Tears | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 140 | Sleepovers | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 141 | All Quiet on the Western Front | Erich Maria Remarque | |
| 142 | Behind the Scenes at the Museum | Kate Atkinson | |
| 143 | High Fidelity | Nick Hornby | |
| 144 | It | Stephen King | |
| 145 | James and the Giant Peach | Roald Dahl | |
| 146 | The Green Mile | Stephen King | |
| 147 | Papillon | Henri Charrière | |
| 148 | Men at Arms | Terry Pratchett | |
| 149 | Master and Commander | Patrick O’Brian | |
| 150 | Skeleton Key | Anthony Horowitz | |
| 151 | Soul Music | Terry Pratchett | |
| 152 | Thief of Time | Terry Pratchett | |
| 153 | The Fifth Elephant | Terry Pratchett | |
| 154 | Atonement | Ian McEwan | |
| 155 | Secrets | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 156 | The Silver Sword | Ian Serraillier | |
| 157 | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest | Ken Kesey | |
| 158 | Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | |
| 159 | Kim | Rudyard Kipling | |
| 160 | Cross Stitch | Diana Gabaldon | |
| 161 | Moby-Dick | Herman Melville | |
| 162 | River God | Wilbur Smith | |
| 163 | Sunset Song | Lewis Grassic Gibbon | |
| 164 | The Shipping News | E. Annie Proulx | |
| 165 | The World According to Garp | John Irving | |
| 166 | Lorna Doone | R. D. Blackmore | |
| 167 | Girls Out Late | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 168 | The Far Pavilions | M. M. Kaye | |
| 169 | The Witches | Roald Dahl | |
| 170 | Charlotte’s Web | E. B. White | |
| 171 | Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | |
| 172 | They Used to Play on Grass | Terry Venables and Gordon Williams | |
| 173 | The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway | |
| 174 | The Name of the Rose | Umberto Eco | |
| 175 | Sophie’s World | Jostein Gaarder | |
| 176 | Dustbin Baby | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 177 | Fantastic Mr Fox | Roald Dahl | |
| 178 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| 179 | Jonathan Livingston Seagull | Richard Bach | |
| 180 | The Little Prince | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | |
| 181 | The Suitcase Kid | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 182 | Oliver Twist | Charles Dickens | |
| 183 | The Power of One | Bryce Courtenay | |
| 184 | Silas Marner | George Eliot | |
| 185 | American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis | |
| 186 | The Diary of a Nobody | George and Weedon Grossmith | |
| 187 | Trainspotting | Irvine Welsh | |
| 188 | Goosebumps | R. L. Stine | |
| 189 | Heidi | Johanna Spyri | |
| 190 | Sons and Lovers | D. H. Lawrence | |
| 191 | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | Milan Kundera | |
| 192 | Man and Boy | Tony Parsons | |
| 193 | The Truth | Terry Pratchett | |
| 194 | The War of the Worlds | H. G. Wells | |
| 195 | The Horse Whisperer | Nicholas Evans | |
| 196 | A Fine Balance | Rohinton Mistry | |
| 197 | Witches Abroad | Terry Pratchett | |
| 198 | The Once and Future King | T. H. White | |
| 199 | The Very Hungry Caterpillar | Eric Carle | |
| 200 | Flowers in the Attic | V. C. Andrews |