Had a friend send me a link to the Observer's top 100 books of all time.

The list anticipates a list being compiled by the BBC which will be released later this year, and is mostly comprised of the reading habits/desires of the staff at the Observer. What surprised me was the low number of these I've actually read (23). Though if you include books that I've read by some of the authors, just not the books listed, my number goes up a bit. So, if you're wondering what kind of stuff I like to/have been forced to read, here's the list replicated along with my relationship to each of the books. I may have to change my response to some of these books though if friends recommend the ones I haven't read.

So, what I've actually read, want to read, would never read...

1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes - no attraction there
2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan - read in university
3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe - ditto
4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift - ditto
(though I think it might count for extra credit to read the entire thing and not the abbridged version for these two)
5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding - nope
6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson - probably should - it's considered the first novel in English
7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne - nope
8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos - not even sure what this one's about... eek!
9. Emma Jane Austen - nope, but I think Pride and Prejudice should count
10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley - at least 3 times!
11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock - nope, but sounds interesting
12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac - no interest
13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal - no interest
14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas - abbridged version, does that count?
15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli - nope
16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens - it's on a course list for next term....
17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte - actually have never read!
18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte - yes, avoided reading it till I was forced to for a course last year and then was surprised to find I liked it!
19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray - nope
20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne - yep, American Lit
21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville - ditto - ugh! it was WAY too long!
22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert - nope, but sitting on a shelf waiting to be read
23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins - that reading list for next term again
24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll - yep, liked it
25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott - nope
26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope - nope
27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy - nope, but sounds a bit interesting
28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot - nope, but I read the 800 page Middlemarch - does that count?
29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky - nope
30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James - American Lit again
31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain - as a kid
32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson - yes!
33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome - nope
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde - yes, loved it
35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith -nope
36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy - yep, it was okay I guess
37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers - nope
38. The Call of the Wild Jack London - no, can you believe it?
39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad - nope, but I've read The Secret Agent and Heart of Darkness - might count?
40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame - no, bad eh?
41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust - nope
42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence - nope, but like Lawrence...(I've heard it's juicy, hmmm....)
43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford - nope
44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan - nope, not sure if I've ever even heard of this one
45. Ulysses James Joyce - on the shelf...the more I hear about it, the more I want to read it
46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf - nope, no desire to read it either
47. A Passage to India E. M. Forster -nope
48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald - yes, liked it
49. The Trial Franz Kafka - of course! love Kafka
50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway - nope, and probably never will, tried For Whom the Bell Tolls and hated it
51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine - nope
52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner - no, probably should though....
53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley - yes! loved it
54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh - nope
55. USA John Dos Passos - ? never heard of it or the author
56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler - nope, not a bit detective/mystery fan
57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford - nope
58. The Plague Albert Camus - yep, pretty good - read it in a class on Representations of Epidemic in Literature - cool class
59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell - yes! multiple times (also love animal farm)
60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett - nope
61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger - yep, only vague memories of it 'cause it was back in high school - couldn't have impressed me much
62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor - nope
63. Charlotte's Web E. B. White - yes, love it
64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien - this doesn't even warrant a comment - I had to buy a new copy of the books last year 'cause my old one literally fell apart!
65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis - nope, but I like what his son writes...
66. Lord of the Flies William Golding - yep, read it in high school and it spurred a whole season of interest in apocalyptic fiction
67. The Quiet American Graham Greene - nope
68 On the Road Jack Kerouac - no, but this is on a must read sometime list
69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov - ditto
70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass - nope, haven't even heard of this one either
71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe - nope, but love the poem (and poet) that the title is borrowed from - Í'd like to read this one
72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark -nope
73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee - yep, read it to help a student I was tutoring... wasn't overly impressed though
74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller - nope
75. Herzog Saul Bellow - nope
76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez - love Marquez, just haven't read this one - it's high on that must read list!
77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor - nope
78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre - nope
79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison - hmm...like Morrison, but there are other novels of hers I'd put higher on the list
80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge - nope
81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer - nope, no interest at all
82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino -nope, might be interesting though
83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul - nope
84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee - nope
85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson - nope, haven't heard of this one either
86. Lanark Alasdair Gray - nope, no interest
87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster - nope
88. The BFG Roald Dahl - love Roald Dahl! Have probably read every one of his books except this one!
89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi - nope, never heard of it before, but sounds interesting though
90. Money Martin Amis - haven't read this one, but i like the author!
91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro - nope
92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey -nope, no interest
93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera - nope
94. Haroun and the Sea af Stories Salman Rushdie - loved Rushdie's Satanic Verses, probably would put this on a reading list...
95. La Confidential James Ellroy - nope
96. Wise Children Angela Carter - love Angela Carter, haven't read this one though - I've read her revisions of fairy tales (kinda like James Garner's) and liked them alot!
97. Atonement Ian McEwan - nope
98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman - nope, no interest
99. American Pastoral Philip Roth - nope, no interest
100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald - ? never heard of him or the book

Guess I've got reading to do (whenever I might possibly have the time!