The Big Read

365 days

100 books

So, I have taken up a challenge.

I’m usually not good with challenges; unless they last for…like a day. Long term challenges have me busted because I run out of patience way before I should. My father says it’s because I lack discipline; and if you see the state of my room at the time of my typing this, you will agree with him.

But, today, right now, I’m setting out to prove him wrong. Also, I need something to keep me sane during this year of examinations (I’m a half-way medico and I have about as much chance of obtaining a post-graduation seat as a chick has of morphing back into the egg) and what can be better for my sanity than some good reading?

Sooooo….

CHALLENGE MATERIAL:

• THE BIG READ published by the BBC in 2003. It is a list of 100 most popular books as according to the survey they conducted in the UK. (Actually, they have compiled a list of 200 books. But, I think I should scale Kanchenjunga before going for the Everest.)

CHALLENGE OBJECTIVES:

1. Read the top 100 books listed in THE BIG READ.
2. Post a review of each book as and when it is read.

CHALLENGE DURATION:

• 1 year- starting from April 22, 2015 and ending on April 22, 2016.

1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
5. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
6. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
7. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
8. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
9. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot
11. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
12. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
13. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
14. The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
15. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
16. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
17. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
18. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
19. Dune by Frank Herbert
20. Watership Down by Richard Adams
21. The Great Gatsby by  Scott Fitzgerald
22. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
23. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
24. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
25. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
26. Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
27. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
28. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
29. The Stand by Stephen King
30. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
31. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
32. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
33. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
34. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
35. Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
36. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
37. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
38. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
39. Mort by Terry Pratchett
40. The Magus by John Fowles
41. Perfume by Patrick Süskind
42. The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
43. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
44. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
45. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
46. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
47. Ulysses by James Joyce
48. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
49. Holes by Louis Sachar
50. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
51. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
52. Vicky Angel by Jacqueline Wilson
53. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
54. Magician by Raymond E. Feist
55. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
56. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
57. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
58. Katherine by Anya Seton
59. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
60. Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson
61. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
62. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
63. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
64. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
65. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
66. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
67. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
68. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
69. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
70. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
71. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
72. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
73. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
74. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
75. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
76. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
77. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
78. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
79. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
80. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
81. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
82. Persuasion by Jane Austen
83. Emma by Jane Austen
84. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
85. Animal Farm by George Orwell
86. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
87. The BFG by Roald Dahl
88. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
89. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
90. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
91. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
92. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
93. Matilda by Roald Dahl
94. Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson
95. The Twits by Roald Dahl
96. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
97. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
98. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
99. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
100. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

There you go, folks (if there are any out there).

Wish me luck!