Read the Top 100 books from the BBC The Big Read List

7. Winnie the Pooh
Have read it before when at uni and didn’t really remember it and honestly after reading it again this time I’m sure in a few months I won’t remember it. It is the most unmemorable book, written for “kids” as a story told by a parent and has terrible spelling in it on purpose. Quite silly, nonsense stories that have no moral or point and give children quite a bad view on a lot of things (spelling, behaviour, ways of thinking about others). All in all not a book I would really recommend to anyone.

58. Black Beauty
Terribly sad, beautifully written little story. Written from a horses perspective, nice short little chapters, easy for beginner readers. Good moral story fitting with the times but very sad to read. Even though Black Beauty finally has a moderately okay ending still saddening the plight of horses and the nature of humans. Recommended read.

18. Little Women
I really do like this book and would have thought from memory it was a great book and would recommend it to anyway but….upon reading it again! I love the first half of the book. Great moral sort of coming of age story where although old fashion is still entertaining and imparts lots of little life lessons to the reader.
The second half however is a complete fail! It tries to follow too many people’s stories, gets way to preachy about things and altogether lost me as a reader and I only by considerable effort pushed myself to read it. No idea what age bracket I would recommend this book to as the second part is so beyond the age intended for the first part I must assume they expect the reader to put the book down mid way and pick it up in 5years time. Disappointing end to a great beginning,

51. The Secret Garden
Wonderful story for any age! Read it as a child and still loved it reading it as an adult. Paints a very vivid picture with descriptive but not overly lengthy passages, even though older language it would still be easily read by a younger child. Great motto throughout of positive thinking leads to positive things. “Where a rose is cultivated, a thistle cannot grow”. Gets a tiny bit preachy towards the end but sums the story up nicely. Love how they write in the cockney English so helps you read the other characters with the inflection they may have had in their speaking.
Highly recommended book!

30. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Very outdated language and phrasing. Plugs “lessons” and morals all the time. The story tangents randomly and often and while amusing it was actually quite a hard book to get interested in. Definitely not for the young reader of this age. While the story is vaguely interesting in an imaginative kind of way the language is so outdated it’s hard to follow and with the numerous branches away from the storyline with irrelevant side tracks just becomes painful to read. Strange “summary” at the end too. Instead of just waking up and realising it was a dream feels the need to sum it up, explain it all and then try to wrap a nice little bow around it. Not a book I’d recommend to many.

81. The Twits
Great little book. Just knocked if off in half an hour. Another one I have already read heaps of time.
Hilarious book, definitely written for kids. Funny, entertaining, uses some great language, meter and rhyming. Gets you thinking about things ands talk to the reader as if a friend telling a story. Good vs evil thing with good of course winning. Roald Dahl is truely a great writer. Definitely a must read book!

92. The Clan of The Cave Bear
Have read it heaps of times but read it again and still a Fantastic book! By far the best of the whole series. Very descriptive, paints an amazing picture of life in nomadic times and immediately captures you into the plight of the little girl called Alya as she grows up in a world that is both harsh and amazing. Highly recommended book!

I was glancing through that list and I have actually already read nearly half of those books! (and some I have read so much I know almost off by heart! like To Kill a Mockingbird, Magician, The Lion, the With and the Wardrobe, Little Women, The Twits, etc. lol)
I’m going to re-read and write a small review on each but it’s time to get started! Will start with ones I own and then start visiting the libraries :)

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie