BBC’s “The Big Read”: Top 100

Posted April 2003; updated 2/16/2019.

image from readandsurvive.com

In April 2003 the BBC asked for nominations for the nation’s best-loved novels. The results of “The Big Read” were originally posted here, but are also listed here.

1. J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-1955)
2. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813)
3. Philip Pullman His Dark Materials (trilogy: 1995-2000)
4. Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
5. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)
6. Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
7. A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
8. George Orwell 1984 (1949)
9. C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1970)
10. Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847)

11. Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961)
12. Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847)
13. Sebastian Faulk Birdsong (1993)
14. Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (1938)
15. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
16. William Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908)
17. Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861)
18. Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869)
19. Louis DeBernieres Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994)
20. Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869)

21. Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936)
22. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) (1999)
23. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
24. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)
25. J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937)
26. Thomas Hardy Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891)
27. George Eliot Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life (1872)
28. John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
29. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
30. Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

31. Jacqueline Wilson The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991)
32. Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
33. Ken Follet The Pillars of the Earth (1989)
34. Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850)
35. Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
36. Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883)
37. Nevil Shute A Town Like Alice (1950)
38. Jane Austen Persuasion (1818)
39. Frank Herbert Dune (1965)
40. Jane Austen Emma (1816)

41. L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908)
42. Richard Adams Watership Down (1972)
43. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925)
44. Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844)
45. Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited (1945)
46. George Orwell Animal Farm (1954)
47. Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol (1843)
48. Thomas Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
49. Michelle Magorian Goodnight Mister Tom (1981)
50. Rosamunde Pitcher The Shell Seekers (1987)

51. Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden (1987)
52. John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937)
53. Stephen King The Stand (1978)
54. Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877)
55. Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy (1993)
56. Roald Dahl The BFG (1982)
57. Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons (1930)
58. Anna Sewell Black Beauty (1877)
59. Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl (series: 2001-2012)
60. Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866)

61. Malorie Blackman Naughts and Crosses (2001)
62. Arthur Golden Memoirs of a Geisha (1997)
63. Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
64. Colleen McCullough The Thorn Birds (1977)
65. Terry Pratchett Mort (1987)
66. Enid Blyton The Magic Faraway Tree (1943)
67. John Fowles The Magus (1965)
68. Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman Good Omens (1990)
69. Terry Pratchett Guards! Guards! (1989)
70. William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954)

71. Patrick Süskind Perfume (1985)
72. Robert Tressell The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914)
73. Terry Pratchett Night Watch (2002)
74. Roald Dahl Matilda (1988)
75. Helen Fielding Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996)
76. Donna Tartt The Secret History (1992)
77. Wilkie Collins The Woman in White (1860)
78. James Joyce Ulysses (1922)
79. Charles Dickens Bleak House (1853)
80. Jacqueline Wilson Double Act (1995)

81. Roald Dahl The Twits (1980)
82. Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle (1948)
83. Louis Sachar Holes (1999)
84. Mervyn Peake Gormenghast (series: 1946-1956)
85. Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things (1997)
86. Jacqueline Wilson Vicky Angel (200)
87. Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932)
88. Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm (1932)
89. Raymond E. Feist Magician (1982)
90. Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957)

91. Mario Puzo The Godfather (1969)
92. Jean M. Auel The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980)
93. Terry Pratchett The Colour of Magic (1983)
94. Paulo Coelho O Alquimista (The Alchemist) (1987)
95. Anya Seton Katherine (1954)
96. Jeffrey Archer Kane and Abel (1979)
97. Gabriel García Márquez Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
98. Jacqueline Wilson Girls in Love (1997)
99. Meg Cabot The Princess Diaries (2000)
100. Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981)

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Stephen King's The Stand published this month

First posted 6/11/2020; updated 7/6/2020.

The Stand Stephen King

First Publication: September 1978 Category: post apocalyptic novel Sales: ?

Accolades:

About the Book: The Stand expanded on “Night Surf,” a short story by American horror author Stephen King. He outlined “the total breakdown of society after the accidental release of a strain of influenza that had been modified for biological warfare causes an apocalyptic pandemic which kills off the majority of the world’s human population.” WK “Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge – Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious ‘Dark Man,’ who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them – and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.” AZ “King’s apocalyptic vision of a world…tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.” AZ When it first came out in 1978, it had a 1980 setting, but by its paperback release the setting date changed to 1985. After a 1990 re-release, the book was set in 1990. WK “The Stand was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1979 and was adapted into both a television miniseries for ABC and a graphic novel published by Marvel Comics.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon WK Wikipedia

In July 2018, I became the organizer of the Classic Novels Book Club. Check out the Book Club tab here or Meetup for more information. This is our October 2020 book.

Joseph Heller Catch-22 Published 10 Years Ago Today

Updated 7/5/2020.

Catch-22 Joseph Heller

First Publication: November 10, 1961 Category: satirical novel/war story Sales: 10 million

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book: Catch-22 is “a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest – and most celebrated – books of all time.” AZ It is an “irreverent” LC “black comedy” LC with a “satiric treatment of military bureaucracy” LC which “became a cult classic, especially among the Vietnam War generation, for its biting indictment of war.” LC “It uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot.” WK “Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable” AZ “Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier,” WK “a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy – it is his own army” AZ who continuously issue “orders from above that made no sense” LC and “constantly “increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service.” AZ Yossarian wants to plead insanity just so he can stay alive but attempts to get out of perilous duty will put him “in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions,” AZ but “anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.” LC The phrase “has had such a penetrating effect that its title has become synonymous with ‘no-win situation.’” LC “Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon LC Library of Congress (2012). “Books That Shaped America” WK Wikipedia

You can also watch the 1970 movie version on Amazon.

In July 2018, I became the organizer of the Classic Novels Book Club. Check out the Book Club tab here or Meetup for more information. This is our October 2019 book.

Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited published 25 years ago this year

Last updated 7/6/2020.

Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh

First Publication: 1945 Category: novel Sales: ?

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book: “The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece-a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire.” AZ “In this classic tale of British life between the World Wars, Waugh parts company with the satire of his earlier works to examine affairs of the heart.” BN “Through the story of Charles Ryder’s entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities.” AZ “Charles Ryder finds himself stationed at Brideshead, the family seat of Lord and Lady Marchmain. Exhausted by the war, he takes refuge in recalling his time spent with the heirs to the estate before the war – years spent enthralled by the beautiful but dissolute Sebastian and later in a more conventional relationship with Sebastian’s sister Julia. Ryder portrays a family divided by an uncertain investment in Roman Catholicism and by their confusion over where the elite fit in the modern world.” BN “At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh’s early satiric explorations and reveals him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity.” AZ “Although Waugh was considered by many to be more successful as a comic than as a wistful commentator on human relationships and faith, this novel was made famous by a 1981 BBC TV dramatization.” BN Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon BN Barnes & Noble (review from Publisher’s Weekly) Shmoop: characters Shmoop: summary Shmoop: themes

In July 2018, I became the organizer of the Classic Novels Book Club. Check out the Book Club tab here or Meetup for more information. This is our May 2019 book.