The UK's best-loved novels

Rebecca posted the top 10 of the United Kingdom's most popular novels. I am, as anyone knows who regularly reads this blog, a complete sucker for long lists of books of which I have only read a few.

She asks: "How many of the top 100 have you read?" Here's the answer.

The ones I have read are bolded:

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 a 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 Brontë
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 Philosopher's 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'Urbervilles, 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 Cristo, 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 Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's 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 Gibbons
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

Once again, the number I have read is a clear minority: 33. I have yet to determine whether this is due to sloth (you may notice the distinct escapist slant in my reading list; while I try to balance my reading with some literary fiction, much of what I read isn't going to make anyone's "best of" lists, quite frankly) or just the fact that there are so many books that no one could possibly cover them all. "[O]f making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh" (Eccl. 12:12).

Rebecca also asks, "Would an American list be different? A Canadian one?" Naturally, the American list would include more American works. While a few greats, most notably John Steinbeck, get a nod, American notables like William Faulkner, Mark Twain, or Ernest Hemingway are conspicuously absent (as are more recent luminaries such as Toni Morrison . . . meh). Beyond that I'll let the Americans deal with the Americans.

Naturally, a Canadian list would probably include Mordecai Richler, Farley Mowat, Margaret Atwood, and - if we take the gag off the English teachers - Margaret Laurence. My list of favourites, if I were to supplement the above with Canadian works, might include a number of the following Canadian novels which I have read and enjoyed, in no particular order.

• Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang, Mordecai Richler
• The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
• Life of Pi, Yann Martel
• Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Stephen Leacock
• Life After God, Douglas Coupland
• Tempest-Tost, Robertson Davies
• The Englishman's Boy, Guy Vanderhaeghe
• Owls in the Family, Farley Mowat

I should add, in the interest of full disclosure, that I grew up in the 1980s when Canadian literature had a reputation for being dreck and the library slapping a maple leaf sticker on the spine of a book signalled the kiss of death. This longstanding prejudice against Canadian literature is only recently being reformed, thus my experience is necessarily limited. I'll let some of my other Canadian friends fill in some of the lacunæ in my education. In fact, given enough good suggestions, perhaps "No Sci-Fi September" this year should focus on good Canadian books?

Postscript: Rebecca follows this list up with a list of the top 100 wonders of the world. It's a good thing Niagara Falls made the list (at #87), because otherwise I would have never seen anything wonderful at all.