Okay, so here’s the books from the BBC’s “Best 100” that I’ve read.
1. 1984 – George Orwell
2. The Alchemist – Paul Coelho
3. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
4. Animal Farm – George Orwell
5. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
6. Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
7. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
8. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
9. Catch 22 – Joseph L Heller
10. The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
11. Charlie & Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
12. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
13. The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M Auel
14. The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett
15. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexander Dumas
16. Crime and Punishment – Fyoder Dostoyevsky
17. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
18. Dune – Frank Herbert
19. Emma – Jane Austen
20. Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
21. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
22. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
23. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
24. Good Omens – Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
25. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peak
26. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
27. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
28. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
29. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
30. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
31. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
32. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
33. The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe – CS Lewis
34. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
35. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
36. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
37. Magician – Raymond E Feist
38. Matilda – Roald Dahl
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
41. Mort – Terry Pratchett
42. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
43. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
44. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
46. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
47. The Stand – Stephen King
48. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
49. Tess of the D’Ubervilles – Thomas Hardy
50. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
51. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
52. The Twits – Roald Dahl
53. Ulysses – James Joyce
54. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
55. Watership Down – Richard Adams
56. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
57. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
58. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
59. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Fifty-nine out of 100.
Then again, some of my favorites aren’t on the list, and more than a few of them I wouldn’t consider “best” by any degree.
Oh well. That’s the point of a list like this. Make people disagree and talk. So…
Lord of the Rings doesn’t belong on that list. Just because everybody’s read it and everybody likes it doesn’t make it “the best.”
Otherwise… well, Towering Inferno did win the Oscar for Best Film, didn’t it? So did Titanic, and Gladiator, and…
(Getting the asbestos suit on…)