The World Book Night Long List - 2012

[lillibet]

http://www.worldbooknight.org/your-books/the-wbn-top-100-books

From 25 June – 31 August 2011 we asked readers to nominate the 10 books they most love to read, give and share. Over 6,000 people nominated more than 8,000 titles and the top 100 displayed below will be used to inform the choice of the editorial selection committee who will be selecting the WBN 2012 titles.

I can never resist a list of books. For my own reference, I'm going to bold those I've read and italicize those I've started without finishing. If you feel like doing likewise, or commenting to push something unread further up my stack, have at.


The 2012 Long List
ordered by number of votes:

1 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
2 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
3 The Book Thief Markus Zusak
4 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
5 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger
6 The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien
7 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
8 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
9 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
10 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
11 American Gods Neil Gaiman
12 A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini
13 Harry Potter Adult Hardback Boxed Set J. K. Rowling
14 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
15 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien
16 One Day David Nicholls
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
18 The Help Kathryn Stockett
19 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
20 Good Omens Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
21 The Notebook Nicholas Sparks
22 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Stieg Larsson
23 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood
24 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
25 Little Women Louisa M. Alcott
26 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
27 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
28 Atonement Ian McEwan
29 Room Emma Donoghue
30 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
31 We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver
32 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
33 Captain Corelli's Mandolin Louis De Bernieres
34 The Island Victoria Hislop
35 Neverwhere Neil Gaiman
36 The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
37 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger
38 Chocolat Joanne Harris
39 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
40 The Five People You Meet in Heaven Mitch Albom
41 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
42 Animal Farm George Orwell
43 The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett
44 The Eyre Affair Jasper Fforde
45 Tess of the D'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
46 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
47 I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith
48 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
49 Life of Pi Yann Martel
50 The Road Cormac McCarthy
51 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
52 Dracula Bram Stoker
53 The Secret History Donna Tartt
54 Small Island Andrea Levy
55 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
56 Lord of the Flies William Golding
57 Persuasion Jane Austen
58 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving
59 Notes from a Small Island Bill Bryson
60 Watership Down Richard Adams
61 Night Watch Terry Pratchett
62 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
63 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon
64 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke
65 The Color Purple Alice Walker
66 My Sister's Keeper Jodi Picoult
67 The Stand Stephen King
68 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
69 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
70 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
71 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
72 Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
73 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Mary Ann Shaffer
74 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
75 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
76 The Graveyard Book Neil Gaiman
77 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
78 The Princess Bride William Goldman
79 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
80 Perfume Patrick Suskind
81 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
82 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
83 Middlemarch George Eliot
84 Dune Frank Herbert
85 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel
86 Stardust Neil Gaiman
87 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
88 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
89 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling
90 Shantaram Gregory David Roberts
91 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
92 Possession: A Romance A. S. Byatt
93 Tales of the City Armistead Maupin
94 Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami
95 The Magus John Fowles
96 The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas John Boyne
97 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
98 Alias Grace Margaret Atwood
99 Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami
100 The Wind-up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami (though I did read Wild Sheep Chase)

Comments

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

I've read 42 of them (with surprisingly little overlap with you), and as usual, I obviously have differences in taste than some of the people who nominated these. (And is it me or is this kind of Brit-heavy?)

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I think WBN started in Britain. I found it through Gaiman's blog, which seems to be how many people got there, based on the number of hits he got on the list.

[minkrose]

I find it really odd that of the two Margaret Atwood books, one of them is Alias Grace. I recall really not enjoying that one, though it was borrowed from my friend's mother, and I felt I had to read & return it as quickly as possible. Everything else I've read by Atwood was either from the library or my own copy.


Actually, now that I'm reading the list again before I comment further, I see that "I Capture the Castle" is on there - the only book in my life that I deliberately refused to finish reading because I disliked it so much. I can't recall any other books that I didn't finish that aren't somewhere in our house, and all of those were for school. My sister read it, I started it, asked her about my issues with it and she said "don't bother finishing it." This had never occurred to me. I still try to finish what I start, if only so I can have a fully formed opinion on it (positive or negative!).

[thismightbejess.livejournal.com]

I really loved the beginning of I Capture the Castle, but did not like the direction it took, or the ending, at all. I too try to finish books even when it is clear that I don't like them--I don't know why, really--I guess I just don't like leaving them unfinished. The book that often appears on these lists (although it is not on this one) that I am currently trying (and failing) to read is A Confederacy of Dunces. I've heard it's brilliant, but so far I just find it irritating.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

I LOVED I Capture the Castle. It shot immediately onto my list of all-time favorites. The movie's pretty good, too!

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

In the past few years I've gotten bolder about not finishing books that are not engaging me.

And yeah, Alias Grace would not be on my Top Five Atwoods list, either.

[schmoomom.livejournal.com]

Really? I'd have thought you'd have read To Kill A Mockingbird in high school. Damn, that's on my top 10. The Help was good too, but just good, not great (to me). Shadow of the Wind I loved, same with Memoirs of a Geisha. Brendan loved Cloud Atlas; loved to the point he couldn't stop talking about it for a week. LOVED. I'm reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo right now and, well, I don't see the excitement. But I'm only halfway, so maybe there's a thing coming.

[jostajam.livejournal.com]

Read number 82. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It is one of those gorgeous, lyrical, beautiful, horrible books.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to for a long time. Maybe I can set a goal to read it before you come over with the apple cake, so we can talk about it.

[bex77]

Here's my strange results.

- Read myself
Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Color Purple Alice Walker
Possession: A Romance A. S. Byatt

- Read aloud by me and N.
The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien
Harry Potter Adult Hardback Boxed Set J. K. Rowling
The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling

- Forced to read in high school
Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
Animal Farm George Orwell

- Seen the movie
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
The Notebook Nicholas Sparks
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chocolat Joanne Harris
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
Dracula Bram Stoker
Persuasion Jane Austen
Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
The Princess Bride William Goldman
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
Tales of the City Armistead Maupin

- Have and need to read
The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger

[thismightbejess.livejournal.com]

I've read 33 of them! Not bad. I too recommend The Shadow of the Wind. And, actually, Midnight's Children has some of the best story-telling I've ever read, but the story itself was meandering and unfulfilling, for me. But I guess it is supposed to parallel the history of modern India, so it makes sense that it isn't a nice, simple story.

How did you feel about Kafka on the Shore? It's on my TO READ list.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I didn't read Kafka on the Shore--Jason loves Murakami, but I didn't make it past the first one.

Midnight's Children failed to grab me--in the first hundred pages or so it felt like yet another middle aged man bewailing his loss of youth. I keep thinking I should try a different Rushdie and see if it does more for me.

[jillbertini.livejournal.com]

I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school and really loved it. I have no idea how it would stand up to my memory, but if it's on this list, I'm guessing it's still good ;).

Likewise, totally loved Lord of the Flies. I'm surprised you made it through high school without reading either of these!

Those are my two votes. Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is a fast read, although I have one friend who felt the violence was gratuitous. There is one particularly violent scene in that book; the subsequent books aren't as violent.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

My high school's English department had an approach to the classics that I've never heard of elsewhere. Three times per year the class was divided into four groups, each of which read one book on a particular theme and then taught a class on the book we'd read. Both To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies were books that other people in my class read. I know that the latter was part of the "Death of Innocence" unit that also included Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace, which is the one I actually read.