45, with snippets read from others.

46 and smatterings of others. Odd list, I agree. Interestingly enough, only a couple of unread books are on my TBR list.

Perhaps about 39-40 finished plus a few that were thrown to the floor. Really surprised it wasn't less because I'm not a big fiction reader.
I agree a strange mixture. How many people can claim to have really read all the Bible or Shakespeare?
Lots of this 'Beeb based' stuff will be put together either by a committee or some trendy insider who remembered their reading list from 'Eng Lit' at university and threw in a Dan Brown or a J K Rowling as a sop to the masses. ;-)

I have definitely read 43, but there are some I couldn't tell you much more about than the very basic plot. There are about half a dozen more I have read some of, or skimmed through.

Veer - you ask how many people can claim to have read the whole BibLe?.... You should come out here to Lubbock. People carry their bibles around with them like shields and I would have no doubt that many have read every page. (Understood every page is a different matter, but read - probably.)

Not me.

I have read 61 (counting titles I had to read from school etc.) but yes, it is an odd list. "Five People you Meet in Heaven" - really??

I've read 40 of them.

I went to a private high school and we were required to take Bible studies in both the Old and New Testament. So, yes, I've read the Bible, but cannot say that I comprehended all I read.

Some of the titles on the list I found strange, indeed. ("The Lovely Bones"???)

I think I have read 29 or 30. I say "think" because I am not sure that I finished one of them. I have read parts of another 10 to 12.

Re Bible reading: many readers of earlier generations read the Bible completely several times during their lifetimes. My grandmother did. They set themselves a goal of a chapter a day and if they stuck to it, they were able to complete the task. People nowadays lack stick-to-it-ness and have too many distractions (mainly television and other books), and many just do not want to read the Bible for whatever personal reasons. But reading the Bible completely is not as strange as it seems to modern secularized people.

I think the BBC made a very conventional, "have you read what we've read?" list.

I for sure have not read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. I freely confess I do not have the attention span. I have read enough to usually win Biblical Trivia, however.

I've read 88 of them; very peculiar list. Clearly, I'm an eclectic reader.

kkay, you are the definite winner so far. Martin?

I'm the oddball. I read the Bible through every year, following a daily reading plan given out by an older pastor who died maybe twenty years ago. It still amazes me that every year I find passages that seem totally new to me.

I've read 47 of them. They are essentials. I still have them most of the pages are yellow from age.

re Bible reading. I'm not sure, but I don't think it has been common practice in the UK for several generations, though obviously there are some 'sects' that take it seriously. Despite the law stating that an act of (mainly) Christian worship shall take place in each school every day, we are a Godless lot.
As a child at little school we each had to have a copy and during weekly scripture lessons we read passages 'Moses in the bullrushes', 'Joseph and his coat of many colours' etc. My secondary ed. was at a Catholic school where no bible-reading took place. Interestingly, it wasn't until I went to College where Religious Studies was on the timetable that I found the course on 'history of the Bible' (as a series of documents rather than its possible 'truth') one of the most interesting classes.
We seem to have a wide collection of Bibles in our house. The most fancy is a huge goldleaf-encrusted one, still in its box, given to my Grandfather on 'the occasion of his twenty-first birthday' in 1900. It appears to be in 'mint' condition.
Do any of you have the old 'family' Bibles with the names and dates of all the births, christenings etc?

Although my family isn't religious, I have a Bible given to my father on one of his birthdays. It caused my mother a deal of merriment as it is inscribed:

"God bless you and keep you from Gran"

Mum always thought it was a good idea to keep her distance from Gran, who was a staunch Methodist (no fun on Sundays).

Kath, lol.
I once chose a piece from the Song of Solomon to read for a radio course and was practising it out loud to the family when I noticed my grandmother was looking shocked. "It is from the Bible."I explained. "Not in my Bible." she said firmly!

I've read 44 of them, and have several others on the TBR pile.

I agree it's an odd list!

Clearly done by a committee, which explains duplication and lumping those series together! I have read only 28 and a couple of Harry Potters, bits of the Bible and some of Shakespeare's plays when at school or drama school. Most of them read before I got hooked on mysteries.
Why only six on average? Was that particular number explained? That is only Jane Austen's total finished output!

Hmmm, Carolyn, I wonder if we've read the same 52. That's my total of completions, too, and I've sampled about a dozen others.

This meme has been floating around the Internet for a few years. I've seen slightly different variations of the original BBC one, with some titles omitted and others substituted. I think the list above is one of those that has been tinkered with; for example, #23 in the original list is Bleak House and #26 is Brideshead Revisited (they are missing in the above list).

Why do many of you find the list odd? I agree that there are some odd juxtapositions and sloppy counting of series/collections as single entries. But otherwise it seems to me to be a list of the usual suspects put out by a rather homogeneous set of readers -- Brits, in this case. (I doubt that a committee of Americans would have included, for example, Swallows and Amazons and Enid Blyton's collection in a Top 100 list.)

The list reflects the classics and litrachure those readers had to read in school -- many of which have been filmed (the films being secondary, or maybe primary, exposure), popular bestsellers, and many of the 'buzz' books of the last ten to fifteen years such as those book discussion groups glom onto. I agree with Lydia: it seems to me pretty predictable and conventional. A list put out today would have a lot of the same books but would probably include, say, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy just to make it a bit more up-to-date and relevant.

Annpan, I figured the six was just to make us readers feel superior.

Frieda, funny about our having read the same number, but I doubt the books are the same. Some of our reading is similar, but you read far more different things than I do. I like to be informed, but I like better to read for fun.

Carolyn, I'm all into reading for fun. I guess, though, that what I consider fun might seem peculiar to others. :-)

I still don't get why some consider the BBC list so odd, but you all often pick up on things that I completely miss.

67, since you ask; and about 5-10 I started/read a bit of/gave up on.

Friedag - I think the point is that the list is so mixed - it's a collection of "classic" classics. modern classics (is that an oxymoron? - I was thinking of Catch-22 and Atonement) and recent best-sellers. It includes a token sci-fi, too.

And as for the statement that most people have only read six - well, the cynic in me asks immediately "says who?". It sounds like one of those figures plucked from the air, based on little or no evidence, that will become repeated until it becomes holy writ.

Oh. Thanks, Martin. Well, if the 'odd' expression means the list is a mixture, I agree with that (as I said above) because it is a snapshot assortment of the titles of what the committee members had read at the time the list was created. I took it to be a general list of the Top 100 most-mentioned titles, not a specific list, say, of 'classics only' or 'the best children's books everyone should have read' or 'the books hoi polloi are not likely to have read'. I was thinking that 'odd' means unusual and that's what was throwing me, as I have some familiarity with every title listed, even those I haven't read, because they've been mentioned so often by RPers and other readers I know. But I suppose I've seen too many of these sorts of general lists to think a mixture is odd, unless it's just plain off-the-wall.

58, although the works of Shakespeare isn't one of them.

Lots of ordinary people read the bible through in a year and I know some who read it multiple times a year. Many bibles contain a chart for yearly coverage. I also have a bible that is segmented into a daily Old and New Testament reading for 365 days that includes Psalms and Proverbs every day. I don't use it as finding anything other than the daily reading is difficult.
It is also common to read a Proverbs each day so that in a month the book of Proverbs is covered.
I go to a weekly bible study too (Beth Moore typically) in addition to regular church but don't think I'm in a sect at all.

Freidag: I thought the list was odd because it is sloppy; they lumped whole series together as one entry in one place, then had "Shakespeare" and then individual Shakespearean plays elsewhere-the same with C.S. Lewis. Also the juxtaposition of authors and titles such as Shakespeare and Charlotte's Web struck me as aimless.
re: Bible reading: When I was being interviewed for a teaching position in a Catholic elementary school, the principal, a teaching Sister, told me that Catholics do not routinely study the Old Testament in any great depth. I was surprised, since we Protestants pull the weekly lextionary texts from both Testaments. Can anyone shed light on this? I didn't pursue the question with Sister because the conversation moved on to a different topic, and my teaching job was temporary and over long ago.

I was surprised to find I have read 71 of the books on this very odd list. It seems to me that it was put together slapdash by several people and not edited properly for duplication, inconsistencies, etc. (Like everything these days, the curmudgeon grumbles.)

The Bible is one of the books I have read, having purchased a special edition for my Kindle that breaks it into daily readings. I enjoy studying the Bible from a historical perspective - it is a marvelous document about human nature, history, changing times, although I do find it quite difficult. In reading it through I found it quite tedious, to be honest. I much prefer smaller readings with commentary to get the historical and sociological context. I have read a lot of Shakespeare but by no means the entire canon. And I am afraid I don't know anything about Catholics and the Bible, although I would be interested to know.

I started the "odd" commentary. I meant it was odd in terms of the choice of books which were the mix of classics, recent bestsellers, and must-read-for-school books so there didn't seem to be any cohesiveness to the list. Odd also in that it was sloppily made--all HP as one tick, all Shakespeare as another tick and then Hamlet standing alone. Finally, odd as in I would guess that very very few adults who've graduated from high school would have read only 6 or fewer of the listed books. Even my 14 year has read more than twenty of the listed books if we count HP and LotRs individually.

I'll shed some light on the Catholic/bible issue too. :) Each week, we hear a reading from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and then the priest reads a selection from the Gospels; that is standard for all Catholic masses. My children went to Catholic school and the OT was included in study, too. Catholics also include the apocrypha in the bible which is a set of books not included in the Protestant bible.

Thanks to all for your added comments about the 'oddness' of the list. Because of them, I was intrigued enough to search for the original list.

It seems that the idea originated with the BBC's 2003 BIG READ as a search for "the nation's most-loved novel." Readers nominated their favorites and the BBC narrowed the nominations down to the top 200. Each subsequent year there has been a new 'challenge' with a top 100 list. Naturally enough, with reader nominations there is not going to be a whole lot of cohesiveness, rhyme or reason. (Maybe that explains that problem. Talk about a committee!)

As for the list Carolyn posted above: as I suspected, it has circulated the Internet since 2009, at least, and has been tampered with, hence the combining of the series and collections by its various self-appointed editors. Somewhere along the way, someone added the line "the BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here." Why I don't know -- the absurdity of it being obvious, as several of you have pointed out and I realized as well. It did not appear on the original BBC Big Read list or on their subsequent sponsored Top 100 lists. Martin, you are right about the repetition of 'figures plucked from the air' becoming 'holy writ'!

The list that started this thread, in spite of its inconsistencies and errors, didn't, and still doesn't, seem particularly odd to me. I expect those pesky flaws when readers and posters are free to do their own tinkering. It's what I've found to be usual. It sure does seem to be the way these days, Siobhan. :-)

View the BBC list at its site to see if it seems any more focused or the juxtapositions seem less jarring. At least it doesn't combine all the Potter books.

Thanks for the clarification, Frieda. The list came to me in an e-mail, and I was surprised at how many I had read. It makes more sense now that you let us know it was compiled from nominations by readers of their favorite books.

I have read 48. But I have tried to read Ulysses at least 10 times (I GIVE UP!) and Captain Corelli is in my to be read pile. Denise

Perhaps the trick is to read Ulysses like the Bible - divide it into chunks and read it over time. (BTW, annpan - "Not in my Bible" is a gem!)

Reminds me of a story I once heard - there is a famous walk in the UK called the Pennine Way. It's about 250 miles long, up the spine of England. Most people take about a fortnight to walk it all (those who complete the course, that is!). Anyway, I heard about a couple who have taken ten years - so far! Every nice weekend, when they are in the mood, they choose a part they haven't done, take two cars, drive to each end of the selected part and walk from one car to the other, exchanging keys half-way. Same principle as the Bible, really!

(Or of course, approach Ulysses in the same way that many teenagers deal with "Lady Chatterley's Lover" - just read what we used to refer to as "the dirty bits!")

Context is everything. What some readers perceived as odd was probably the lack of context. Friedag, thank you for researching the instigation of the list and how it morphed. I had seen the list Carolyn_ky posted, or one like it, before. I think I vaguely remembered the context so I did not find the list itself odd, although the "6 out of a 100" line smelled.

Martin, it was a joy listening to my grandmother and her friends describe the historical novels they read. They bowdlerised and put their own interpretations on them. After one read "Forever Amber" I was surprised to learn that Amber took a taxi to the Palace and even more so when she beat her 'boyfriend' to the door to stop him getting away by taking the lift down. I never found out how that C17th beauty really got there first!

Nice list but far from complete, isn't it? So many wonderful works not listed. That being said, I love to check things off from lists. I read 51 and started (and tossed aside) 3 of the titles listed.

PAM

I've read at least 52 of them.

I have serious doubts that most people have only read six of them. Some of these books are very "mainstream": Harry Potter, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Lovely Bones. And The Five People You Meet in Heaven (awful book, IMO) certainly made the rounds of book clubs for quite some time. Goodness, even my 9 year old twin daughters have read a few of the books on this list (Harry Potter, Narnia). We're really meant to believe that the majority of adults have read six or less?! Again, I'm not buying it.

I've read 78, tossed aside one (A Confederacy of Dunces) and read most of the Bible, though not serially.

Well, with Frieda's explanation of how the list was compiled, what I now find odd is that enough voters nominated Winnie the Pooh as a favorite; those Pooh books always remind me of Dorothy Parker's snarky "Tonstant Weader fwowed up" review. Perhaps, though, A.A. Milne's versions are more beloved across the sea; in the States, we are all about Disney Pooh. :)

Bookmom, heh! There's a definite cultural mark on the list, not surprisingly as it was compiled by and for Britons.

Re the children's books listed, several of those are among my all-time least favorites. Even as a child I didn't care for them and I've never quite understood the English (not sure about the Scottish, Welsh, Irish) preoccupation with anthropomorphism. It's too twee for my taste. But even English adults seem susceptible to 'talking-animal syndrome', even in rather serious books (e.g., Watership Down, I think; since I can barely remember it correct me, please, if I'm wrong about the seriousness). Vee or anyone, do you have any theories as to why the English are so enamored with creatures who "dress in cunning clothes," Wind in the Willows-style?

I keep getting bumped out.

Frieda, I hadn't realised that it was a particular trait of the English authors to dress small furry animals in clothes. I assumed writers from other countries did the same.
Perhaps just the English go on enjoying these childhood books for too long. Many middle-class English children were required to grow-up quite young and set aside childish things, as a preparation for Ruling the Empire maybe? Is it a comfort zone thing? Is it similar to adults who keep a beloved ancient teddy bear or gollywog (a doll now forbidden by the PC brigade) on their bed?
I used to love the Little Grey Rabbit stories as a child and had many of those small books by Beatrix Potter and always noticed that the Potter animals only had their top halves clad in bonnets, tailcoats, shawls, while their nether regions were still fur/feather-covered!
And as for the Disney-ing of the delightful illustrations by Ernest Shepherd in the AA Milne books. Truly execrable. :-(

Just thought of a 'foreign' talking animal 'Babar the Elephant' by Jean de Brunhoff. He used to wear quite snappy suits and spats.

Friedag....I waited to see what Vee would reply about the humanised animals. When I was a small child, born in the UK, I was given a set of Rupert Bear annuals and won a Beatrix Potter book so I have never thought it strange to read about this kind of world. I am not familiar with US children's literature and did not realise this kind of book was not usual there. However there are plenty of cartoon characters portrayed by Disney etc. who display human attributes, aren't there? They are now in book form too, so have evolved from that genre.
Vee, regarding getting a golliwog doll. I found a beautifully hand-made new one which had been donated to a charity shop and bought it for my great-GD. I asked her mother if this was all right and she told me that in the childcare centre where she works, there are dolls of all kinds and colours and also disabled dolls! I mostly buy her Sesame Street characters but could not resist this handsome Golly. It reminded me of my much-loved one who kept company with my German-made baby doll who was quite non-PC at the time, which was the early 1940s!

Vee and Annpan, American writers of children's books are just as apt as English ones to anthropomorphize and dress their animal characters in human clothes. Besides Disney, there's Dr Seuss and his weird critters, Joel Chandler Harris's no-longer-PC "Uncle Remus" tales, the Sesame Street characters, and probably a lot of others. Some Americans are very fond of the English books, too.

The difference I see, though, between these writers' stories and those of English writers: American readers, unlike English readers, seldom continue to favor them long past childhood. Oh, they often remember them affectionately, are likely to read them to their own children or reread them for themselves, etc., but the majority of American adults aren't going to admit that children's books are still their favorite books. Maybe it's a fear of being labeled 'childish'. I don't know. It's an interesting sociological/cultural phenomenon -- to me, that is. :-)

My own personal problem with the English books: they are so unbearably pretty and precious. I hated Beatrix Potter's books! Especially Peter Rabbit.

Vee, my sons loved Babar, so I gritted my teeth and read those books more than I ever wanted to. In fact I probably read more kids' books as an adult than I did as a child. The breakover age for me was about nine.

Ann, we used to collect the Rupert annuals, though I never cared for the strange Chinese element in them. I'm glad that golliwogs are still OK in Australia and that the PC Police haven't reached the nursery/playroom.
We were looking through DH's old childhood photo album and laughed at a snap of him and his sister being read Little Black Sambo and another of his sister clad in nothing but her 'birthday suit'; neither would get pass the 'censor' today.
I notice that Frieda is now referring to me as a Briton. Over here it usually has Ancient in front of it (apt in my case). I see myself, clad in a moth-eaten animal skin, probably scratching in unmentionable places waiting for my club-wielding mate to drags a mammoth carcass into the cave.

Vee, we posted at the same time!

Not just you, Vee, we Americans tend to call the inhabitants of the UK, Brits or Britons, especially when talking between ourselves. It's much the same as the English calling all Americans "Yanks." We would qualify the ancient variety of Briton with exactly that word. :-)

Vee, that is exactly how I pictured you! Except you are also wearing a necklace made of bones. ;)

I suppose I shouldn't admit this, but I love Winnie-the-Pooh, Wind in the Willows, etc. I don't really think of the characters as talking animals, although that is undoubtedly what they are. They are just characters to me. OTOH, I can't stand Disney stuff.

I still remember having Little Black Sambo taken away from me when I was very young.

I read somewhere that the Golden Books with black characters are now collectors items! Vee, golliwogs are on sale at stores here but are not, to me, very attractive ones. The handknitted kind have proper separate coats and the shop ones are just made of all-in-one cloth. I haven't seen one of these disabled dolls. A PC idea, perhaps, but a good one. Australia cares for disabled people in many ways. Such as the buses with ramps and public loos which make it simple for mechanised wheelchair drivers to have independance.
We seem to have strayed from the topic but that is the charm of this forum! I am a poster on another one and some people get annoyed at off-topic ramblings!

Talking animals don't bother me in the least; when I was young, I loved the Babar stories and count Watership Down as one of my favorite books. My own children adored the Beatrix Potter tales and E.B. White's books, among others-read to them by me. It's not anthropomorphized animals that are the problem, I just never liked Milne's Pooh stories and agree with D. Parker's assessment.

I think Little Black Sambo came out sanitized and updated as Sam and the Tigers. Uncle Remus, while not very popular now, was a reflection of the times in which it was written and supposedly is a treasure trove of African-American lore. It didn't stop me from being horrified when my dear, very southern m-i-l pulled out a moldering copy of Uncle Remus, been in the family for years, and attempted to read it to my own children who, in short order, wandered away. I think the dialect confounded them.

Frieda's "cunning clothing" comment gave me a laugh and I thought my own closet could use a few cunning additions.. till Vee posted the observation about the top halves and furry/feathery nether regions. Hmm, not a good look for me.

bookmom, you gave me the first laugh of the day (very wet and murky as has been much of Sept).
Re A A Milne's books. I understand that poor Christopher Robin was made to wear those silly little smocks and knickers and have a 'long' hair cut until well out of 'toddler-hood' so when he eventually went to boarding school he was mocked by the other boys and later scorned in the RAF during WWII. He went on to run a bookshop in Dartmouth, Devon, but never fully 'recovered' from his childhood.
I suppose his father made lots of money out of him.

I do not mind talking animals as characters, usually, but there are an awful lot of talking animals and anthropomorphs on the list! I counted at least 9 books (or 10 with the way the list is written) featuring them. I have to say that does appear a little "odd" now that I study it closer.

A British favorite I do not understand the popularity of is "Alice in Wonderland." I always thought it was grotesque. If I had known an author when I was a girl who wrote such a book for me, like Carroll did for Alice Liddell, I would have been insulted. I would have gone straight to my dad and told him there was something wrong with that man!

I am glad that "Peter Pan" does not appear on the list.

Here we are trying to psychoanalyze British readers by their choice of favorite books. I wonder how different a strictly American list would be and what it would say about us. Friedag, your pointing out the cultural aspects has been very thought provoking.:)

Friedag, just a couple of thoughts about this interesting topic...I believe that books like "The Wind in the Willows" were based on people who were known to the author. So you have a book featuring real people written as animals who have the real people's characteristics!
Also, is this love of these kind of books taken into adulthood really only an older generation thing? I have given copies of these beloved books, which I don't read myself any more, to my Great-granddaughter but I don't know if she will read them as an adult.
A Children's Librarian told me that the children did not want to read their parent's favourite books, preferring the modern stories.
Perhaps love of these old classics will die out. A pity because they were beautifully written.

I really liked the Beatrix Potter books and saw nothing strange re the animals wearing clothing, as a child. After all, when we were kids, we used to dress up our pets like dolls.

I can recall being given one of those old dolls which were half black and half white, according to how you flipped them upside down. Recently, in the downtown old market of Charleston, I saw those dolls for sale. I would have thought they would have been banned, due to P.C.

I remember loving "Little Black Sambo" as a child, but when I went to the USSR in the 60's, it was pointed out how this racism was a flaw in the American value system, and that of course, we Soviets, with our pure intents have no such values....

My parents took me to see the movie "Uncle Remus" when I was a child growing up in Atlanta, GA. I remember being driven by the former home of Joel Chandler Harris on the other side of my city. I thought the film charming and was shocked that it went out of circulation, when the P.C. police took over....

My grandmother gave me the Milne books in the 1940's. I loved the poems and could recite by heart the one about "My teddy bear is rather fat, " for years.

I have read 63, rather a lot for a foreigner, I think, because the majority of the books are in English. I haven't read all of Shakespeare or the Bible but much of both. I even have the King James's Bible because I like to look up quotations in the original. Some of the books are in my TBR pile, Life of Pi and A Suitable Boy, for instance. Thanks for the explanation of the odd compilation. I had never heard of several books on the list.

My list would have been much longer if I had been able to finish all the books by Thomas Hardy I have started to read. It was a comfort to me to read Stephen Fry's memoirs and see that we have the same opinion of Hardy's novels.