I've just looked over the list of the BBC Top 100 books list again from a friend's Facebook account and am convinced whoever compiled the list was one of the 'effete intellectual snobs' now-dead V.P. Spiro T. Agnew might have accosted with that phrase during Nixon's Administration. I tallied 28 books & another 10 from movies watched. Well, here are some books/short stories/poems I have read (pronounced 'red' not 'reed' for you American-Is-My-Second-Language Folks) which I would actually suggest you read ...no particular order after #1:1. The Bible (22 times through it so far), One Author, several writers
2. Lord of the Rings (7 reads on this one), J.R.R.Tolkien (28 times on the movie!)
3. Shakespeare: Hamlet, MacBeth, Othello, Henry V, Midsummer's Night Dream, Much Ado About Nothing...all the rest as you feel up to it! ;) (Ken Branaugh does excellent versions)
4. Sherlock Holmes: All of them, Arthur Conan Doyle (Robert Downey's the man!)
5. Poe's 'Raven,' 'Tell Tale Heart,' 'Pit and the Pendulum,' "Masque of the Red Death,' & 'A Cask of Amontillado.'
6. Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne (James Mason beats Brendan Frazier)
7. Moby Dick, Herman Melville (Greg Peck/Richard Baseheart version)
8. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer
9. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
10. Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz
11. Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Union General Lew Wallace (You go, Chuck Heston!!)
12. Robinson Crusoe (unabridged with a gospel presentation), Daniel Defoe
13. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
14. Horatio Hornblower series, C.S. Forester
15. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
16. 'Gunga Din,' Rudyard Kipling (1939 RKO flick with Cary Grant/Victor McGlaughlin/Sam Jaffee)
17. Treasure Island, Robert Lewis Stevenson (1950 version)
18. Battle Cry of Freedom, James M. McPherson
19. Band of Brothers, Stephen E. Ambrose (see the HBO series, too!!)
20. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo (Les Mis 10th anniversary concert's a gas!!)
21. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
22. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
23. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
24. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas (Charley Sheen et al on dvd)
25. Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
26. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
27. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
28. Watership Down, Richard Adams
29. Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
30. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
31. The Crucible, Henry Miller
32. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (Supplement with Depp movie)
33. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Robert Lewis Stevenson (see 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen')
34. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Conner
35. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (Greg Peck movie with Robert Duvall as Boo Radley!)
36. All Quiet On the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
37. Best Short Stories, O. Henry
38. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
39. Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
40. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
41. God Caused the Civil War, Bob Sexton (Westminster ILL or get your own copy via email)
Got easy chair and coffee?
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