Read People Read

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?


 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[X] 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[X] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[X] 6 The Bible - God (the whole thing)
[X ] 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[X] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[] 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[X] 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

[ X] 11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
[X] 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[X] 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[X ] 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
[X ] 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[X] 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[X ] 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
[X ] 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[ ] 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[X ] 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

[ ] 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[ X] 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[X ] 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[ X] 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[X] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[X] 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[X ] 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[X] 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[X] 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

[X ] 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[X] 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[X] 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[X ] 34 Emma - Jane Austen
[X ] 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
[X] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
[ ] 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[X ] 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[ ] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[X] 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
[X] 41 Animal Farm - George Orwellx
[X] 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[ X] 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[ ] 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
[X ] 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[X ] 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[X ] 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[ X] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[X] 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[ ] 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
[ ] 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[X] 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
[ ] 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[X ] 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[X ] 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[ ] 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[X] 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[] 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[ ] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[X ] 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[X ] 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[X ] 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[ ] 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[ ] 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[X] 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[X ] 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[X ] 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[X] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[X ] 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[X] 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
[X] 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[X] 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
[X] 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[ ] 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[X] 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
[X] 76 The Inferno - Dante
[X] 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[ ] 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
[X ] 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[X ] 80 Possession - AS Byatt
[X] 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[ ] 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[X] 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[X ] 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[X ] 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[ ] 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mxistry
[X ] 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[ ] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[X] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[X ] 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
[X ] 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[ ] 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[X] 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[X] 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
[ ] 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[ ] 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[X] 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[X] 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[X] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[ ] 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Keep Me Warm With Your Blank Stares

You'd expect it to happen

Not in the open, but in a shower, perhaps,

Where boys and beauty settle down together

As seed does to soul, water to skin, silently,

Without ceremony, under one's very breath

Boys  are too beautiful to let live

I get randy just thinking it

I cannot tell exactly how it starts

As though moments before I am overcome

By some devilish scheme: a puppet

With strings for life. My heart rushes

Up my throat, poised as though ready to burst

In my mouth. My eyes smear everything a brilliant

Crimson and I see the screeching of skin

Feel the music of bones snapping in my hands

Or grinding against my teeth

Or sometimes I just swish a blade, and push it

Through an artery wound like rope around a neck

Squirting, a bloody rainbow opens like a fan

People around see and are struck simply

By such murderousness, like the old woman

In church, who bequeathed tissue paper

To wipe my lusty face with. I bring my own

Thank you, twirled softly around a kitchen knife

I am possessed of so much love

Enough for all those boys to stay warm in

Instead, the bloodbath is always cold and sweet

But even I am growing tired of this constancy

And end up asking boy after butchered boy

Having killed countlessly

Did I really possess you all?

Cosmopilitan Chat Which I Do Not Do

If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away. If he doesn't want you, nothing can make him stay. Stop making excuses for a man and his behavior. Allow your intuition (or spirit) to save you from heartache.

Stop trying to change yourself for a relationship that's not meant to be. Slower is better. Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy. If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve then heck no, you can't "be friends". A friend wouldn't mistreat a friend.

Don't settle. If you feel like he is stringing you along, then he probably is. Don't stay because you think "it will get better." You'll be mad at yourself a year later for staying when things are not better. The only person you can control in a relationship is you. Avoid men who have a bunch of children by a bunch of different women. He didn't marry them when he got them pregnant, why would he treat you any differently? Always have your own set of friends separate from his. Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you. If something bothers you, speak up. Never let a man know everything. He will use it against you later.

You cannot change a man's behavior. Change comes from within. Don't EVER make him feel he is more important than you are. Even if he has has more education or in a better job. Do not make him into a quasi-god. He is a man, nothing more nothing less.

Never let a man define who you are. Never borrow someone else's man. If he cheated with you, he'll cheat on you. A man will only treat you the way you ALLOW him to treat you. All men are NOT dogs.

You should not be the one doing all the bending... Compromise is two way street. You need time to heal between relationships. There is nothing cute about baggage... Deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship. You should never look for someone to COMPLETE you. A relationship consists of two WHOLE individuals. Look for someone complimentary...not supplementary.

Dating is fun... Even if he doesn't turn out to be Mr. Right. Make him miss you sometimes... When a man always know where you are, and you're always readily available to him ~ he takes it for granted. Never move into his mother's house. Never co-sign for a man. Don't fully commit to a man who doesn't give you everything that you need. Keep him in your radar but get to know others.

Scared of being alone is what makes a lot of women stay in relationships that are abusive or hurtful: Dr. Phil says... You should know that: You're the best thing that could ever happen to anyone and if a man mistreats you, he'll miss out on a good thing. If he was attracted to you in the 1st place, just know that he's not the only one. They're all watching you, so you have a lot of choices. Make the right one. Ladies take care of your own hearts.