Lift Up Your Hearts!

I have seen this list, or something similar on a lot of blogs lately. Rumored to have been from a BBC list, but not everything matches up exactly. One of the blogs said that most people had read no more than 6 of the books.

These are the ones I've read:

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

Hmm...12, not very good. I've read a fair number of books, but not the right ones I guess.

Interesting that it's mostly classics with a few recent bestsellers thrown in.

I counted twice and got 27 or 28 (several more if movies counted).

Brave New World is probably worth re-reading (since you mentioned it).

I find it interesting that my reading mostly matches the English teacher I had the longest. I think she has more that I haven't read than the other way around. I find it slightly amazing that most people have only read 6. Didn't most people go to public school? Or do they not remember the titles of the books they were forced to read? Of course I forget that I don't know what a normal level English course looks like as I only visited one once and they were studying poetry. For my list, alter this one by . . .

Unbolding:
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (it rings a bell, but if I don't remember reading it it can't count)
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Bold:
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
34. Emma - Jane Austen
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Um, so you walloped me, but you're older. ;)

And are you sure you don't want to try Bridget Jones's Diary?

I think Owen Meany only rings a bell because Mr. Gartell liked it.

Now that I've looked up Bridget Jones, I can answer an unqualified No, although there's a very small part of me that is curious as to what could possibly be "the lighter side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession," to quote one reviewer.

Older, but not necessarily better-read. They didn't ask about Ovid, for instance. :)

Read:

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (I think so)
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible
1984 - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (don't bother)
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Lord of the Flies - William Golding (I remember liking it, but hey, I was younger than 20 then)
Dune - Frank Herbert (Good, but overrated)
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (Airport book. Don't bother, unless you have friends that gush about it.)
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I think so...)
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (It's a fun travel through British idiosyncrasies.)
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (Do I get extra points for slogging through the French? It's not nearly as enjoyable a book as I had anticipated.)
Charlotte's Web - EB White
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (not that I remember any)
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (Y'all haven't read this???)
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (In French - I'll be glad to pass it on.)

I'm pretty sure I've read either one or the other of the Dumas books and I know I've read a few of the authors mentioned but not the book that made the list (Conrad, Waugh, Ishiguro, Blyton, Hardy). I was also struck by the observation Peter V made, as there are a few pop lit books tossed in that I'm not sure have any business being in this list. Another interesting characteristic of the list is that of the books not originally in the English languange nearly all are French and two or three Russian. Must I conclude from that fact that American public schools don't ever have their kids read Goethe or Schiller?

If this were a contest, which is not my intention, I would roll over and play dead right now. Janet, you don't have to worry about "keeping up" with your mother, but your husband is going to be a challenge. Especially in German.

I can't speak for all American public schools, but ours never touched Goethe or Shiller—and I have to confess I had to look Shiller up on Wikipedia.... Hats off to the Swiss schools, although I'm willing to bet it was a set of Swiss/American parents who had the bigger influence.

DSTB—you mean you made your kids read The Lord of the Rings before they could see the movie, and you haven't read it yourself?

It is a strange list, I'll agree. Maybe I'll have to make up my own list of worthwhile books. :) In fact, seeing everyone's lists of books they think important would probably be more fun, and informative, than merely telling what we've read.

David read LOTR to the boys, but is making it a requirement that they read it on their own before watching the movie. So far that has not happened. I don't know if his resolve will hold though because he would like to watch the movies again and I think he would kind of like to do it with them.

The Hobbit and LOTR are kind of on my list, but I am not a big fantasy reader. Maybe I should add them to my pile for Maine this summer.

I would definitely say Bridget Jones is not for you. I have seen the movie which I enjoyed as entertainment, but I don't feel I need to read the book. I do not think you would like the movie.

I noticed Stephan's comment on Roald Dahl. A lot of people do not like him (too weird, too gross), but I think he is tremendously descriptive. I loved The Fantastic Mr. Fox as a kid and it wasn't until I was an adult that I found out he wrote it. The boys have read James and the Giant Peach, Mr. Fox and probably a couple of others. I found his two autobiographies fascinating and just as entertaining as his fiction. Ask the boys about the Black Mamba sometime.

For the record, don't miss the sarcasm in my suggestion of Bridget Jones to Mom. I can't remember if I've read Charlie and the Chocolate factory or not or if it was just a picture book version. I loved James and the Giant Peach in elementary school, though nothing touched my favorite: Stuart Little (and for that very reason I refuse to watch any movies based on the book). And Mom, there are so many things I will never be able to come close to my husband on I could have decided to walk away in shame, only I knew they would make him a great homeschool dad. ;) But on a purely serious note, "The Death of Adam" by Marilynne Robinson has be excited to read all different primary sources. I think reading her essays came at the right time, as I enjoy reading the primary sources we study for medieval history and notation. I hate summaries, and I forget them in no time, but reading the words of someone influential is fascinating. If I had known that I might have chosen to go to one of those 'great books' colleges, but it's too late for me now. However, nothing is stopping me from picking up those books now, which I'd love to do when I make the time . . .

Having read books doesn't in the least mean I remember the content... and the only reason I "beat" you is that I read the Da Vinci Code and Brigdet Jones's Diary. As if that really counted.

I remember Janet liking James and the Giant Peach, and I thought it was okay but not notable, not good enough to make me want to read any more of Dahl's books. I guess for Charlie I made the (embarrassing) mistake of judging a book by the movie that was made from it. I shall have to give Dahl another try.

LOTR is not for everyone, I have to admit. I don't want to admit it, because I think it is one of the most fantastic and inspiring books ever written, but enough people don't find it so that I can't say they're all wrong. :) Porter didn't get very far in the first book before dropping out, and I doubt our brilliant and accomplished but not given to imaginative thinking unless it pertains to mathematics friend would get much farther. I wouldn't dare suggest MacDonald's Lilith or

Okay, that's not nice. I must have made a typo in my html, but that it should chop of the rest of my long comment irrecoverably is just plain mean. I'm the webmaster, right? I can go in and edit my comments—a fantastic privilege, when you think about it—but even there it's chopped off. :( When will I learn to save long comments before trying to post them? Okay, what can I remember?

Ahem. As I was saying, I wouldn't dare suggest MacDonald's Lilith or Phantastes to either of them. But for me, no one said it better than C. S. Lewis: "Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart...good beyond hope."

I shall have to find The Death of Adam. And add it to the already enormous stock here of books waiting to be read. The first (editorial) review on Amazon was not encouraging, as it starts out with a quote, "My intention, my hope, is to revive interest in... John Calvin." But since the author finds in Calvin and his followers "a more fulfilling morality, one that substitutes personal responsibility for contemptuous condemnation of our fellows," which is quite the opposite of my own experience with those who claim to be Calvin's followers, perhaps I'd better take a second look.

Yes, Janet, start now! You should have many more years ahead of you than I do to expand your horizons. Think of the principle of compounding interest and how much you can accomplish over the years with a small but regular "savings" plan, one that is immune to the vagaries of the market and the actions of fools and thieves.

Stephan, it wasn't just your present list that cowed me, nor even the fact that you, like Janet, have more years of reading ahead than I do, but the realization that this was largely an English list, and you probably have a similarly long one in German. :)

Not nearly as long as my English list. School reading in German, yes - but from high school on I mostly read in English. (Notable exception: Crime and Punishment in German.)

Of course I would have been really impressed had you read it in Russian. :)

I have been working on the HTML filtering issue - it turns out it is a really hard problem, to allow some HTML, and not allow hackers to write bad HTML that takes over your site.

Your site (being on my server) has been upgraded to the latest code, which is better than my first couple attempts at being more secure, but isn't complete yet.

Unfortunately, it seems like all of the LifeType developers have disappeared, so I haven't had anyone to bounce ideas off of.

My current best thought is to disallow all HTML, and then use a version of bbcode or something instead to allow italics, links, etc.

The good part about bbcode, et al. would be that it would be easy to secure it, and probably easier on less technical commenters. But, the downsides are if people are used to HTML, and we no longer support it, maybe that is annoying for them.

I'm glad someone's still developing LifeType—I like it. I think I've seen bbcode on a couple of forums I belong to. I find it a little annoying to use it rather than html, but not nearly as annoying as losing what I've written or having my site taken over by spammers. I could always stop making mistakes when I type—like that's gonna happen!

Jon loved Roald Dahl as a kid, and he was surprised I hadn't heard of him. Turns out, I knew James, etc and had read The BFG, but didn't remember the author. Now that we're parents, we edit a lot out of those books as we read them aloud to the kids. I suspect Mom won't really like the books much.

I get to add another to my list. I just finished Pride & Prejudice. I loved that spunky Elizabeth.

Now to choose another one....

Oh, wait. I see that The Da Vinci Code was on the list and I finished that last month. I didn't read it before because of all the hype.

Although I really liked Pride & Prejudice, I don't think I will read another Jane Austen right away. I like to mix things up with my reading. However, when I do choose another Austen, what would people recommend?