{"id":9140,"date":"2010-12-03T13:59:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T21:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9140"},"modified":"2022-03-07T09:48:58","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T17:48:58","slug":"that-100-book-list-thats-not-actually-from-the-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2010\/12\/03\/that-100-book-list-thats-not-actually-from-the-bbc\/","title":{"rendered":"That 100 Book List (That&#8217;s Not Actually From the BBC)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:3103,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/kriswager.blogspot.com\\\/2009\\\/02\\\/bbc-100-book-meme-or-is-it.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:3104,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.bbc.co.uk\\\/arts\\\/bigread\\\/top100.shtml&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260218064440\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.bbc.co.uk\\\/arts\\\/bigread\\\/top100.shtml&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 11:38:46&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 12:37:08&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-12 10:02:31&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-15 15:44:42&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-15 15:44:42&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:3105,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.guardian.co.uk\\\/uk\\\/2007\\\/mar\\\/01\\\/topstories3.books&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.theguardian.com\\\/uk\\\/2007\\\/mar\\\/01\\\/topstories3.books&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:3106,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.worldbookday.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260227015118\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.worldbookday.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 11:38:49&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 12:37:33&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-12 10:02:30&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-15 15:44:42&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-15 15:44:42&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>There&#8217;s been a book list meme going around Facebook for some time now that purports to be a list of 100 books of which most people will have read only six. I&#8217;ve been tagged a few times, and have seen the note pop up when other friends have passed it on. I&#8217;ll go ahead and toss my list in this post, but there&#8217;s one thing about this that&#8217;s been bugging me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/kriswager.blogspot.com\/2009\/02\/bbc-100-book-meme-or-is-it.html\" title=\"Pro-Science: BBC 100 book meme - or is it?\">The list has nothing to do with the BBC<\/a> &#8212; the closest the BBC gets is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/arts\/bigread\/top100.shtml\" title=\"BBC: The Big Read: Top 100 Books\">The Big Read<\/a>, a 2003 list of Britain&#8217;s 100 most popular books as determined by BBC viewer nominations &#8212; and actually appears to be taken from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/uk\/2007\/mar\/01\/topstories3.books\" title=\"The Guardian: Pride and Prejudice the most precious as modern readers turn over an old leaf\">a 2007 article in <em>The Guardian<\/em><\/a>, reporting on the results of a poll of 2,000 people by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldbookday.com\/\" title=\"World Book Day\">World Book Day<\/a> website.<\/p>\n<p>In this context, whether looking at the BBC list or the World Book Day list, the claim that most people will have read only six of the books on the list makes little to no sense. Both lists were of the <em>most popular books<\/em> as selected by the people who took the survey, which carries a strong implication that these are generally well-read books. Furthermore, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/uk\/2007\/mar\/01\/topstories3.books\" title=\"The Guardian: Pride and Prejudice the most precious as modern readers turn over an old leaf\">the Guardian article<\/a>, the &#8220;2,000 people who took part in the poll online at worldbookday.com nominated their <em>top 10 titles<\/em> that they could not live without&#8221; (emphasis mine) &#8212; so they <em>had<\/em> to have read more than six, and it&#8217;a actually a list of some of the most popular books.<\/p>\n<p>It looks like the bit about most people only having read six was added at some point just to give people a reason to feel superior and to get them curious enough to slog through the list and figure out just how many they have read.<\/p>\n<p>Still. That said. I&#8217;m okay with feeling superior. And I read a lot. So, even though the &#8220;background&#8221; has been thoroughly debunked&#8230;here&#8217;s how I stack up.<!--more--><strong>Bold titles<\/strong> are those that I&#8217;ve finished.<\/p>\n<p><em>Italicized titles<\/em> are those that I&#8217;ve started but not finished, or have read parts of, but not the whole thing.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Pride and Prejudice &#8211; Jane Austen<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Lord of the Rings &#8211; JRR Tolkien<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Jane Eyre &#8211; Charlotte Bronte <\/li>\n<li><strong>Harry Potter series &#8211; JK Rowling<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>To Kill a Mockingbird &#8211; Harper Lee<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>The Bible<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Wuthering Heights &#8211; Emily Bronte<\/li>\n<li><strong>Nineteen Eighty Four &#8211; George Orwell<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>His Dark Materials &#8211; Philip Pullman<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Great Expectations &#8211; Charles Dickens<\/li>\n<li>Little Women &#8211; Louisa M Alcott<\/li>\n<li>Tess of the D\u2019Urbervilles &#8211; Thomas Hardy<\/li>\n<li><strong>Catch 22 &#8211; Joseph Heller<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>Complete Works of Shakespeare<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Rebecca &#8211; Daphne Du Maurier<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Hobbit &#8211; JRR Tolkien<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Birdsong &#8211; Sebastian Faulk<\/li>\n<li><strong>Catcher in the Rye &#8211; JD Salinger<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Time Traveler\u2019s Wife &#8211; Audrey Niffenegger<\/li>\n<li>Middlemarch &#8211; George Eliot<\/li>\n<li><strong>Gone With the Wind &#8211; Margaret Mitchell<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Great Gatsby &#8211; F Scott Fitzgerald<\/li>\n<li>Bleak House &#8211; Charles Dickens<\/li>\n<li>War and Peace &#8211; Leo Tolstoy<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Hitch Hiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy &#8211; Douglas Adams<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Brideshead Revisited &#8211; Evelyn Waugh<\/li>\n<li>Crime and Punishment &#8211; Fyodor Dostoyevsky<\/li>\n<li><strong>Grapes of Wrath &#8211; John Steinbeck<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Alice in Wonderland &#8211; Lewis Carroll<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Wind in the Willows &#8211; Kenneth Grahame<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Anna Karenina &#8211; Leo Tolstoy  <\/li>\n<li>David Copperfield &#8211; Charles Dickens<\/li>\n<li><strong>Chronicles of Narnia &#8211; CS Lewis<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Emma &#8211; Jane Austen<\/li>\n<li>Persuasion &#8211; Jane Austen<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe &#8211; CS Lewis<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Kite Runner &#8211; Khaled Hosseini<\/li>\n<li>Captain Corelli\u2019s Mandolin &#8211; Louis De Bernieres<\/li>\n<li><strong>Memoirs of a Geisha &#8211; Arthur Golden<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Winnie the Pooh &#8211; AA Milne<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Animal Farm &#8211; George Orwell<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Da Vinci Code &#8211; Dan Brown<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>One Hundred Years of Solitude &#8211; Gabriel Garcia Marquez<\/li>\n<li>A Prayer for Owen Meaney &#8211; John Irving<\/li>\n<li>The Woman in White &#8211; Wilkie Collins<\/li>\n<li><strong>Anne of Green Gables &#8211; LM Montgomery<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Far From The Madding Crowd &#8211; Thomas Hardy<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Handmaid\u2019s Tale &#8211; Margaret Atwood<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Lord of the Flies &#8211; William Golding<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Atonement &#8211; Ian McEwan<\/li>\n<li><strong>Life of Pi &#8211; Yann Martel<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Dune &#8211; Frank Herbert<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Cold Comfort Farm &#8211; Stella Gibbons<\/li>\n<li>Sense and Sensibility &#8211; Jane Austen <\/li>\n<li>A Suitable Boy &#8211; Vikram Seth<\/li>\n<li>The Shadow of the Wind &#8211; Carlos Ruiz Zafon<\/li>\n<li><strong>A Tale Of Two Cities &#8211; Charles Dickens<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Brave New World &#8211; Aldous Huxley<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time &#8211; Mark Haddon<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Love In The Time Of Cholera &#8211; Gabriel Garcia Marquez<\/li>\n<li><strong>Of Mice and Men &#8211; John Steinbeck<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Lolita &#8211; Vladimir Nabokov<\/li>\n<li>The Secret History &#8211; Donna Tartt<\/li>\n<li>The Lovely Bones &#8211; Alice Sebold<\/li>\n<li><em>Count of Monte Cristo &#8211; Alexandre Dumas<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>On the Road &#8211; Jack Kerouac<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Jude the Obscure &#8211; Thomas Hardy <\/li>\n<li><strong>Bridget Jones\u2019s Diary &#8211; Helen Fielding<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Midnight\u2019s Children &#8211; Salman Rushdie<\/li>\n<li><strong>Moby Dick &#8211; Herman Melville<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Oliver Twist &#8211; Charles Dickens<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Dracula &#8211; Bram Stoker<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Secret Garden &#8211; Frances Hodgson Burnett<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Notes from a Small Island &#8211; Bill Bryson<\/li>\n<li>Ulysses &#8211; James Joyce<\/li>\n<li>The Bell Jar &#8211; Sylvia Plath <\/li>\n<li>Swallows and Amazons &#8211; Arthur Ransome<\/li>\n<li>Germinal &#8211; Emile Zola<\/li>\n<li>Vanity Fair &#8211; William Makepeace Thackeray<\/li>\n<li>Possession &#8211; AS Byatt<\/li>\n<li><strong>A Christmas Carol &#8211; Charles Dickens<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Cloud Atlas &#8211; David Mitchell<\/li>\n<li>The Color Purple &#8211; Alice Walker <\/li>\n<li>The Remains of the Day &#8211; Kazu Ishiguro<\/li>\n<li>Madame Bovary &#8211; Gustave Flaubert<\/li>\n<li>A Fine Balance &#8211; Rohinton Mistry  <\/li>\n<li><strong>Charlotte\u2019s Web &#8211; EB White<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Five People You Meet In Heaven &#8211; Mitch Albom<\/li>\n<li><strong>Adventures of Sherlock Holmes &#8211; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Faraway Tree Collection &#8211; Enid Blyton<\/li>\n<li><strong>Heart of Darkness &#8211; Joseph Conrad<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Little Prince &#8211; Antoine De Saint-Exupery <\/li>\n<li>The Wasp Factory &#8211; Iain Banks<\/li>\n<li><strong>Watership Down &#8211; Richard Adams<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>A Confederacy of Dunces &#8211; John Kennedy Toole<\/li>\n<li>A Town Like Alice &#8211; Nevil Shute<\/li>\n<li><em>The Three Musketeers &#8211; Alexandre Dumas<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>Hamlet &#8211; William Shakespeare<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory &#8211; Roald Dahl<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Les Miserables &#8211; Victor Hugo<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>That&#8217;s 41 that I&#8217;ve finished, and another five that I&#8217;ve either read pieces of, didn&#8217;t finish, or read kid&#8217;s adaptations of (which I counted as &#8220;partials&#8221;). Not bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The list has nothing to do with the BBC &#8212; the closest the BBC gets is The Big Read, a 2003 list of Britain&#8217;s 100 most popular books as determined by BBC viewer nominations &#8212; and actually appears to be taken from a 2007 article in _The Guardian_, reporting on the results of a poll of 2,000 people by the World Book Day website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}