The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. You may have also received this list on Facebook or through email. I took a few minutes to follow their directions: ( Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.) Some titles brought back clear memories or where and when I read the book. Others made me want to walk down the hall to my library and pick up the book to read again, right now. A few titles made me think of other titles that were obviously missing from the list.

This exercise reminded me that I had a good education that caused me to read most of the classics on this list (and before that, I read CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED versions that later sent me on to the unabridged novels). I have always been a prolific reader, and being in numerous book groups over the years has caused me to read hundreds of other books. I say "caused" rather than "forced" because I have loved so many of the books on the list below, and quite happily read them. Without a teacher, professor, or the social pressure of a book group, I might not have read some of the books. It seems an unfair list, since so many of the books listed below are from England in a certain period. (No coincidence that the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation put this list together.) Other readers would be able to check off dozens of books on a less-Anglophile list.

I have not delved into 13 books on this list. And don't plan to, except surely DUNE is classic enough that I should order it from the library. The other 5 I have not finished include Shakespeare (I've read probably 85%) and  several other books I just could not muddle through. (I am happy knowing the plot of MOBY DICK without having to wade through it, and thoroughly enjoyed AHAB'S WIFE.)  The fact that I have completely read 82 books doesn't elevate me above anyone who has chosen different books to read. I could have been improving at math or creating great artwork or finding the cure to cancer in the time I chose to read.

My "takeaway" from this exercise? The crucial thing in reading is to find the books that speak to one's soul, invigorate one's imagination, teach what one needs to know, and are just plain good reads. We each read for our own reasons, and isn't it wonderful that there are so many different genres from which to choose? You may or may not want to spend time with this list, but you might want to ponder why you read, and which books have most influenced you.

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

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 Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevs