Have you read . . .

Somewhere in the blogosphere, a list of 100 books has been circulating and it was suggested that the average American has only read 6 of the 100 books. I can’t find any proof of this, but I did find the origins of the list. The list was compiled by the BBC in 2003 by listeners’ votes. In my opinion the list is dated and overweight with Anglo-western literature, and lacking in poetry and other forms of literature.

Take a look and tell me what you think.

1. Bold the books you have already read.
2. Italicize the books you intend to read.
3. Make notes in parentheses next to note-worthy titles.
4. Add your own to the list and share them with us.

• 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

Obviously the list is lacking many great books and authors but the BBC listeners have spoken. I’d love to hear what writings you would add to this list.

A word about leaving comments:

Some of you would like to leave a comment but are not sure about sharing your information. When you leave a comment, it will ask you for your name (you can use a nickname), your web page address (not required) and your e-mail address. The e-mail is required, but it is not public to anyone except me. I will not share that information. It’s only there to discourage ‘innappropriate’ comments and to give me a way to respond to a comment directly. Unless you ask, I will not contact you by your e-mail

Kid Lit Friday: We’ll discuss your child’s reading level, assessments and how to find the right book for your young reader.

Monday: Journaling Prompts and Reading Techniques

Oh say can you see? No. Not really.

Quite literally – I can’t see. I am a very good typist so if my fingers are on the correct keys, I should be fairly coherent.

Here is it, Sunday evening and I should be preparing my post for Monday, but instead, I’m lamenting a pair of lost spectacles. This page is a blur and these letters are a blob of grey.

Tomorrow, I shall buy myself a pair of readers and return to my regularly scheduled postings by Tuesday morning.

I have compiled a list of books that are considered by many to be some of the best literature in history. But that will have to wait until Tuesday.

Until then, if you happen upon a pair of beat-up brown eye-glasses, will you let me know?

Kid Lit Friday

I’m going to level with you.

If I had a quarter for every time my kid said, “Mom, can’t I have more time to read!?” I would not be a wealthy woman.

But give me a quarter for every time my kids ask for more video games and I might be able to fix our economy.

Alas, our kids are so distracted by all the shiny-fast-fun parts of being a kid these days. But don’t you agree – to see a child curled up with a book, oblivious to the world around them is just about the most perfect vision one could set eyes upon. A flashlight under the blanket well past bedtime will not be reprimanded in our house. We all want our kids to read more, right?

Here’s the plan:

If you’re not doing this already, set aside time each night before bed for reading. Obviously, we won’t be using this time to force our kids to read, right mommy? We’ll simply be providing the opportunity.

There will be rules – yes, you heard me – RULES.

1. No toys allowed – no legos under the pillow or barbies under the bed and if I find that Gameboy one more time, I’ll feed it to the dog – you know he’ll eat it.

2. No MP3 players of any kind unless it’s Friday night and mommy and daddy want to visit with their adult friends around the dining room table and you are in your bed listening to an age-appropriate book. (might I suggest 101 Dalmatians for little ones and Harry Potter for older kids)

3. No talking because it annoys your siblings. If you have to read out loud, find a quiet spot away from independent readers.

4. No pets. Reading time is no place for an 80 pound Labrador, no matter how cute he is.

5. You don’t have to be reading, but you do have to be looking at books. This is a very clever way to get them to read it anyway. Throw any 8-year-old a picture of a grizzly bear sneaking up on a fisherman and trust me, he’ll read the caption. It was an age-appropriate magazine, I swear.

6. Have a variety of reading materials for them to choose from. Younger “readers” (toddler/preschool) need only a basket of picture books – and a warm lap is always nice. Reluctant readers will appreciate a pile of age-appropriate comic books, magazines and picture books but be sure to throw in more challenging fiction and non-fiction chapter books. The older child would like you to mind your own business so they can choose their own books (but sneak a peak at those graphic novels – some of them are BY adults FOR adults – get my meaning).

Oh, and if you haven’t yet – get a library card. It’s free and all the cool kids have one.

Next Friday: Delving into the strange and exciting world of reading levels and assessments – at what level is your child reading and how to find correlating books. I promise I won’t get too technical.

Welcome to BookMama!

I hope to bring you ideas and information about books both for you and for the children in your lives. Books have a way of bringing us out of our own problems and daily lives and allowing us to experience not only other places, but other ideas. I am going to challenge you to start reading . . . a lot! You can do this and you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. I’ll alternate posts between adult literature and children’s literature. I hope to also pique your own writing tendencies by offering you writing and journaling prompts.

But first:

Let me help you find more TIME to read. Does this sound familiar?

(insert whining voice) “I can’t find time to read. I’m just too busy.”

Let me tell you something sister – we’re all busy. So let’s tackle this ever-present barrier to our reading.

1. If you hate the book your reading- put it down and start a new one.
How many of us will waste our precious time trying to finish a book that just isn’t ‘doing it’ for us. I’m guilty of this and I’ll even admit something embarrassing – I couldn’t finish Twilight (yes, Twilight!) or To Kill A Mockingbird (which I’ve tried three times now. But have you seen the movie? Gregory Peck. Mmmmmm).

2. If you fall asleep when you read, DON’T read in bed or late at night!
You’ll get past 2 pages and fall asleep with the book on your face. Instead, try setting your alarm for 30 minutes earlier in the morning and get up, grab a cup of coffee and read before the kids wake up or the mayhem-that-is-your-life begins.

3. World’s Greatest Invention PART I.
The Library Card
That’s right. Libraries are struggling right now and what a better way to support them than to USE them. Free books. That’s all I’m saying.

4. World’s Greatest Inventions PART II.
Books on Tape/CD
I “read” a lot of books this way. They are free from the library and if you’re a PC user, you can download them for free through most libraries right onto your computer (sorry Mac users . . . not yet). I have also bought some audible books through iTunes. I upload books from CD’s onto my computer and then put them on my iPod (any mp3 player will do).

I “read” when I do dishes, laundry, driving to work, making dinner – and within a few days, I’ve read an entire Jane Austen novel and my daily chores don’t seem so mundane. . . in fact, I look forward to them – no kidding.

5. Join A Book Club
Nothing like a bit of peer pressure to get a job done. Grab some of your pals and start a book club. It’s easy to do and you may be surprised at how motivated you may become to finish the book. More about book clubs later.

6. Take Your Book Everywhere
Consider the book your most prized possession. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that book in your bag while you sit in a waiting room leafing through outdated People magazines. Raise your hand if you read while you eat lunch. Good girls!

7. Set Deadlines
Decide when you would like to be finished with a book. One month is a good goal. Divide the book into four parts and figure out how many pages a week/day you’ll need to read. Stick to it. By the way, when using this tip, it’s a good idea to recognize the difference between a 358 page book and a 1200 page book.

Now enough computer time. Get out there and read those books!

Stay tuned for next week when I’ll post a list of suggested books that should be on your list. You can test your reading prowess and see how many books you’ve read compared to the average American.