The 100 Greatest books, according to the BBC (fake list)

[Kai]

It sounds like someone just picked a best sellers list and decided that was a good indicator of "best".

[Richter]

I've got ~30 off that list. 

Gave up tallying Sherlock Holmes adventures and Shakesperes I'd read.
Too redundant, too focused for a "Best works period." list.  If they hadn't included "The Little Prince", I'd have given them the benefit of the doubt on meaning "Best of English Lit. since 1600's".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

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 (wtf?)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (wtf?)
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 Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 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 – (wtf?)
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 Zafon
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

I dunno, there are a few others that I might have read. The thing is, I've read between four and five thousand books so far, and yet missed a ton of the ones on that list. I'm not sure what relevance everyone else's favorite books have to anything.

[Mangrove]

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 (wtf?)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (wtf?)
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 Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 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 – (wtf?)
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 Zafon
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

This is why a) I quit English Lit at university
                b) I mostly read non-fiction

[Thurnez Isa]

couldn't the Priory of Sion prevent Dan Brown's piece of shit to make the list

[Sheered Völva]

It sounds like someone just picked a best sellers list and decided that was a good indicator of "best".

If so, they left off some of the best-selling books of all time such as 毛主席语录 and القرآن
(Translated, Quotations from Chairman Mao and The Qur'ān.)  And if you go only by books written in English, the list still doesn't include many of the all-time best sellers, such as The Book of Mormon.

Like some of you, I wondered at the authenticity of this list when I saw Shakespeare's complete works and Hamlet both on the list. But then again, I saw a "authoritative" list of the greatest rock musicians of all time, and the Beatles and Paul McCartney and John Lennon were all on the list, as were The Police and Sting....

EDIT: Also it's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They got those names wrong. Alice and Hitchhiker's author Douglas Adams are both Discordian saints.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My understanding was that they let people write in for their favorites, and those are the 100 books with the most votes, which explains the redundancies.

[AFK]

No Ray Bradbury.

List is fail. 

[Sheered Völva]

That's the list from 2003.

yes it is.

And your list comes from where?

Internet fakers.  My apologies, I just did some research.  Either way, its an "interesting" list.

My understanding was that they let people write in for their favorites, and those are the 100 books with the most votes, which explains the redundancies.

See above post by Cain. The actual 2003 BBC list linked earlier in this thread has correct spellings and doesn't have the redundancies.

[A.N. Other]

This is more of a list of 100 greatest "those were okay" books. None of there are all that stellar, or, at least, none of the ones I've read that are on this list are.

[Bu🤠ns]

In April 2003 the BBC's Big Read began the search for the nation's best-loved novel, and we asked you to nominate your favourite books.

so this is what the BBC public nominated.

[LMNO]

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
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
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

That's about 33, I think.

Only redeeming part of this is A Confederacy of Dunces.

[hooplala]

A Christmas Carol hardly counts as a book.

[LMNO]

Neither does The DaVinci Code, but who's counting?

[hooplala]

TOO TRUE!  TOO TRUE!

For clarity, I wasn't shitting on the quality of A Christmas Carol, I love it... its just more of a novella.