Read any good books lately

As I was perusing some blogs today I came across Cats...Books...Life is Good with a list of 100 books supposedly put out by the National Education Association. She had been unable to find the list posted on their site and I was not able to find this exact list anywhere either. However, apparently the average person has only read 6 of these books and like her I have read more than that so I thought that I would post it.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
   

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
   

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 Traveler’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 Mitchell

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

Of this list there are 42 that I have read (in red), 14 that I have never heard of before (in blue), 14 that I have been meaning to read (in green) and those in black I have no desire to read ever. How do you fair?

Also on the topic of books I have some some really good ones lately. All of these are by authors that I typically like their work but these were outstanding examples of the excellent storytelling that they are capable of. I have read two book by Stephen King recently, Duma Key and Bag of Bones, and both were excellent but Bag of Bones was the best book I have read by him since The Stand. Another author that I read regularly is Dean Koontz and he has a series of books about a character named Odd Thomas. These books are fantastically written and the story pulls you along so strongly that you really don't want to put it down. Finally I have been exploring the world of children's literature and came across a book by Neal Gaiman called Coraline. It is a quickread but has some fantastic imagery and an intriguing story line.

If anyone has any recommendation for good summer reading I would love to hear about them. Already on my list are Atheist Universe and a couple of Augustine Burroughs books.