The Joy of Reading & the Top 100 Books

I love books.

I typically have several books that I am reading at once; one by my bed, one in my "go everywhere bag" (aka diaper bag), and a few others scattered in various rooms of my living quarters. I feel lost if I don't have a book close at hand.

In a nutshell, books are my friends and I love to be surrounded by them.

I am pleased that both of my daughters seem to have inherited the "bookworm gene."

What’s their favorite toy? Usually it's a book.

In fact, as I am writing this, Amanda is in the next room reading a book to herself while Eva naps. It is completely quiet, except for the occasional sound of a page being turned. This is music to my ears. Another of my secret delights is hearing Amanda reading to Eva. Priceless...

Dave and I began reading to Amanda when she was just a newborn, and incorporated it into her bedtime routine from the very beginning.

Amanda - 6 months old

When Eva was born, we tried to follow along the same path, although regrettably, not as diligently as we had with Amanda. Though Eva's interest grew a bit more gradually, she now fully embraces reading and always has to have a book in her hands when she's riding in the car.

Eva - 16 months old

Today, both Amanda and Eva adore reading. If I sit down on the floor with a book, it is only a matter of seconds until one or both of them inevitably plop down in my lap, patiently waiting for me to begin the story. These days, when it's bedtime and the final story has been read, Eva resists just as much as Amanda does.

"But I'm not tired. Just one more story... please?"

One of our favorite places to go is the library - for StoryTime, playing, reading, or selecting books to take home. We are fortunate to have several libraries within a 15 miles radius, so there's plenty of variety! When we walk in the door of our local library, the librarians now know me by sight and have my pile of "items on hold" ready and waiting before I can even pull out my library card.

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The reading gene could have been passed down through either my mother or my father, but it's probably a combination of the two, as they are both avid readers.

As a child, however, it was my mother who influenced me the most. (You would not believe the number of books she owns. Just ask my brothers, who have had to move those books numerous times!)

During the summers off from school, my mom would trudge my brothers and I to our town library, 10 miles away. I can remember entering the library on a hot, summer day... and scampering off to my favorite shelves, eager to choose a new stack of books. To me, happiness was (and still is!) a pile of unread books, just sitting there waiting for me. I think it's all about the anticipation of what is inside.

My mother is now a Reading Specialist, and it thrills me when I get an email from her with a book recommendation. Sometimes it is a book idea for me, but many times it's a book that one or both of the girls would like. Either way, her suggestions are always welcome.

I came across a list of "Top 100" books from The Big Read. (In case you haven't heard of it, The Big Read is 'an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture.')

The Big Read predicts that the average adult has only read six of the following books.

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Top 100 Books
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 

6 The Bible (...but not cover to cover)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot21 Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37.The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

To Amanda and Eva:
I hope your excitement toward reading will continue to grow as you do. Before you are able to read independently, I promise to read for as long as and as often as you'd like. And I promise not to roll my eyes if you request "Mouse Soup" (Amanda) or "Goodnight Moon" (Eva) for the 80th time.

I promise to nurture your love and curiosity, and provide you with easy access to any books/libraries you desire throughout your entire childhood. And as you enter adolescence and adulthood, I hope that you will work your way through this "Top 100" list. That would truly make my heart swell with pride.

I'll be reading right along with you, and maybe one day, we can have our own book discussions and trade recommendations. 

Just like I do now with your Grandma Jo.