The BBC Big Read Top 100

One thing you will quickly find out about me is that I am rather competitive about the dumbest things, and usually against myself.

In April 2003, I was sitting in the car enthusiastically telling my Aunty about the latest Flat Stanley book I had read (I was only 7 years old and FS was all the range!) when she mentioned the BBC’s Big Read. Aged seven the idea of searching for the nation’s best loved novel sounded so exciting. The public were asked to nominate their favourite book and although very little I had read up until that time would feasibly be on the list. I mean if The Chronicles of Winnie the Pooh was not on the list then it was rigged :).

Just under a decade later, I had just finished my GCSE's and was looking for a new challenge (in reality I wanted to put off results day as long as possible) and my mind wandered back to that conversation with my Aunt all those years ago and so began the competition/challenge against myself to read the BBC Big Read Top 100 Books before my thirtieth birthday.

Ideally I wanted to complete the list in a decade but I know myself better than to set such a strict time limit while I still has A-levels, hopefully univerity and a career to kick start. In hindsight this was propably the only realistic time scale I have ever set myself. So here it is, the BBC’s Big Read, top 100 of the nations best loved novels.

Now as you can see I have a lot of catching up to do over the next six years so maybe you want to join me on this challenge too. I plan on rewarding myself with a massive Milky Bar chocolate once its all done, and maybe I'll get you one too! 

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

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