Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Librarians' must-read list



The 30 books listed below are the ones that topped a World Book Day poll conducted by the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council in Great Britain, in which librarians around the country were asked the question, "Which book should every adult read before they die?"

Let's see what this future librarian has already read.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. The Bible
3. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
4. 1984 by George Orwell
5. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
8. All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
9. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
10. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
11. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
12. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
13. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
14. Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
15. Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
16. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
17. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham (waiting on my bookshelf)
18. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
19. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (waiting on my bookshelf)
20. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
21. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
22. The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
23. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (waiting on my bookshelf)
24. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
25. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
26. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
27. Middlemarch by George Eliot
28. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
29. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
30. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

14 out of 30. Not too shabby, I should say. Still there are a lot of good books to be read, both on the list and outside it. How did you do?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

12 out of 30.
Not too bad for a pharmacist.

Willow said...

Not bad at all :-) Librarians get very happy when non-librarians enjoy reading fiction :-)

Anji said...

I'm 12 too; i've seen one in the form of a film and have read another book by Sebastian Faulks. Am i the only person who hasn't read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

Willow said...

I'm sure you're not, Anji. They made us read it in school and I'm actually glad they did. If you ever get some time to spare, do read it.

Ruth L.~ said...

Go for "Grapes of Wrath" next, okay?

Ruth~