1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 The 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 May 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 Traveller’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 – L.M. 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

Since I don't know anything about a lot of those books I'm not going to strike any more out.

Yesterday I found out that my library has Chasing Mona Lisa by Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey. I'm so excited, I really want to read it. I was hoping we could go to the library tomorrow, but my parents have errands to do. But hopefully I will get to read it soon.

SnowAngel

Read
Love

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 The 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 Traveller’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

I've read 49, if I counted right. Very few of those books are anything I would say I love, though. I've seen that list before, and it's a strange combination of books that are considered classics and more modern popular books. Does anyone have an idea of when the earliest book on the list was written? Other than the Bible and Shakespeare, I think everything was written after 1800.

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte I read it, but found the circumstances and morals very distasteful.

May I ask why? I found it very good, Jane sticks to her morals herself, and that ultimately helps Mr. Rochester in the end.

SnowAngel I see you've crossed out all the Dickens. Are you not a fan of him?

"His Dark Materials" ...are those the Golden Compass books?

"His Dark Materials" ...are those the Golden Compass books?

Yes, they are.

There seem to be a lot of people on here who dislike Jane Eyre. Interesting. I've heard nothing but good about it in other places.

~Riella

There seem to be a lot of people on here who dislike Jane Eyre. Interesting. I've heard nothing but good about it in other places.

There are also quite a few of us who like it. I'm not quite sure where we all went, though.

I'm still reading A Lady of Quality. I'm moving pretty slowly through it, partially because the main character is kind of annoying and I'm pretty sure I've just figured out what's going to happen for her in the end. I'm really far more interested in what'll happen to two of the secondary characters, and I'm only four chapters in.

I also picked up The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge from the library. I haven't started it yet, but a friend recommended it (and the rest of her books) to me a while back and I'm trying to make a conscious effort to read it (and a number of other books that were recommended or that I feel guilty about) this summer. Has anyone read it, or any of her other books before?

Thanks, Mal! Yes, I'm eagerly looking forward to tackling hopefully at least one work by every author on my list. I'm really looking forward to TKAMB, and will probably start this one first because we own it. Thanks, I really like Longfellow! He has such rhythmic, beautiful poetry of what I've read and liked. I've been wondering where to start for Whittier--I got a book that said "Complete Works of Whittier." but it was abridged and hard to read/go through. May I ask you for a recommendation of a book/work to start with?

May I ask why? I found it very good, Jane sticks to her morals herself, and that ultimately helps Mr. Rochester in the end.

Sure, I don't mind. The main circumstances and morals that disturbed me were that I was not comfortable with a romance story centralized on an extra-marital affair, in the whole scheme of the novel; to basically sum it up.

The Golden Compass is the US title given to the UK book Northern Lights. His Dark Materials is the name of the series.

Has anyone read [The Scent of Water], or any of [Elizabeth Goudge's] other books before?

I've read The Little White Horse, which if I'm remembering what little I know about the author is one of her only children's titles. I've had her other books praised highly to me as well, and/but based on that experience I would expect it to be predictable and syrupy sweet with some lovely prose.

Sure, I don't mind. The main circumstances and morals that disturbed me were that I was not comfortable with a romance story centralized on an extra-marital affair, in the whole scheme of the novel; to basically sum it up.

Thanks. Yeah, I can understand that, and I agree. I guess I was just looking at it from the perspective of what didn't happen. I don't agree with how they carried it out (out of marriage):the kisses and the romance just on the borderline of "going to far". So yes, I agree. But I was happy for Jane when she walked away. Although it certainly would've helped lessen her pain if her relationship was entirely chaste in every aspect. But then that would've missed the point of the book entirely, she never would've went back.

All in all though, I love Jane Eyre. It was a very lovely book that I could easily relate to, very real in the way of people and how they are. I enjoyed seeing the mental and emotional parts of Jane's life as well, and how it was drawn from Charlotte Brontes life to begin with. I also enjoyed the (dare I say it) spiritual side of it, and how Jane saw the various characters and there morality; such as her cousin, the preacher. (Can't remember his name...)Bronte had a very good understand of people and there emotions and motives, and she did well to put all that into Jane, it made it much more realistic.

_____________________________________________________________________
Ah, and thank you both Ithilwen & Warrior 4 Jesus for getting back to me...I knew they sounded familiar.

(I made an edit to my list, I "STRIKE"-d those out . )

SnowAngel I see you've crossed out all the Dickens. Are you not a fan of him?

Nope, not a fan. I had to read parts of several of his books for literature and couldn't stand them.

Excellent post about Jane Eyre, AslansChild! I love it, too!

SnowAngel

About Dickens, Hmm...sorry to hear that! Have to say, David Copperfield is a good read, to me anyway. and Jane Eyre? YAY! A fan!

Reporting in to mention that I've finally succumbed to peer pressure and started reading Les Mis. So far I'm enjoying it, but I think it's probably going to take me forever to get through.

I also read Shadow and Bone last week.

I'll admit it, I was initially interested in the book just because the cover was pretty and caught my eye. The story itself is fun, though nothing terribly groundbreaking. It's set in a Russian-themed fantasy kingdom marred by a cloud of darkness cutting the country off from the sea. Within the darkness are winged human-eating monsters that make the journey nearly impossible. The main character is a young woman who discovers she has the ability to manipulate and summon light, giving her the ability to potentially destroy the plague of darkness. There's a bit of a love triangle, but by the end of the book (first of a trilogy), she's firmly decided where her heart lies, which refreshing. There are a few fun twists and the writing itself is pretty good. Definitely worth a shot if you're looking for a lighter fantasy to read over the summer.

I also finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower after two of my friends highly recommended it.

It was amazing. Easily lands on my favorite books list. It's told through the letters that a high-school freshman writes to an anonymous stranger over the course of the year, relating the events that happen to him and the seniors that he befriends. I identified very strongly with so many things that happened in it and aspects of Charlie's personality; it was actually kind of an eerie reading experience. Nature of the content (swearing, some adult scenes) means I would only recommend it for older teens. There's a movie adaptation releasing later this year starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson. The author of the book both directed the movie and wrote the screenplay, so I'm really anxious to see it.

Better late than never, right?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline those you love.

Looks like I have some reading to do!

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 The 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 - I quite enjoyed the first book (Northern Lights/The Golden Compass) and am currently reading the second
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 - Most, but not all
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger - How similar is this to the recent movie?
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 - Started this but didn't get far
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert - Tried reading this as a kid but didn't get far. I should try it again
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

I've started reading books by Clive Cussler. He writes thriller/adventure novels. Many involve ocean science and archaeology. Has anyone else read any of his work?

I finally found myself a copy of "Touch Blue" by Cynthia Lord I love that book. I have not read it in ages and it's better than I remembered

plot synopsis:

Eleven-year-old Tess Brooks, whose hair is "pitch brown and straight as pine needles," is the superstitious sort. She believes good luck floats around, sticking to some people and skipping over others. She loves living on an island off the coast of Maine with her lobster fisherman father, school teacher mother and younger sister Libby.

After Tess's best friend, Amy Hamilton, and her family move to the mainland, the island's only school is in jeopardy of closing because of the low student population. If it shuts down, Tess's mom will lose her job, and her family and several other island families will have to move to the mainland, away from the only home Tess has ever known. In response, several island families have agreed to take in foster children from the mainland. If all goes according to plan, bringing these kids to the island will provide stable homes in a lovely environment, increase enrollment at the school, and avoid the shutdown.

Thirteen-year-old foster child Aaron Spinney is tall and skinny with long red hair "bright as October leaves" and muddy green eyes. He also has a big-time attitude. In his short life, he has had more than his share of bad luck. His mother is a recovering alcoholic and an addict whose whereabouts is unknown. After being taken from his mother, Aaron was raised by his grandmother until she got sick and died. Since her death, he has been bounced around foster homes. Older children are harder to place, but the Brooks welcome Aaron --- along with two younger sisters who want to get to know him --- into their home, where he has his own room with a view of the ocean. But is this enough to make him want to stay?

While most of the community welcomes the foster children to the island, not everyone is kind to them. There's Mrs. Coombs, the island busybody and biggest complainer, and Eben Calder, the cruel bully who makes fun of Aaron and provokes him into a fight. It soon becomes apparent that Aaron is different, and not just because he's a foster child. He has a very special and beautiful musical talent. While he is a welcome addition to the Brooks family and the island, at least one person is jealous of his gifts. And he yearns for his own mother, his own family. Will Aaron become part of his new family on the island, or will he try to leave and reconnect with his mother?