Let's make our OWN list of the top stories of all time!

So, there is a note travelling through Facebook claiming that the BBC believes that the average person will only have read 6 books off a list of 100 very important books. Most of my friends and I scored at least 15, so I guess we’re doubly as well-read as the BBC claims we should be.

However, I have to say, I was very confused by some of the books on the list. Now, I am not doubting the merit of any of the books, particularly given that most of those that I raised an eyebrow to were among the nearly 70 I hadn’t read, but still…. I am uncomfortable with Bridget Jones’ Diary following the Color Purple.

Thus, since you all know how I love to solicit feedback and talk about the great books, I want to collaborate with you all on our own list of the 100 most important or relevant or exciting books/short stories/plays of all time.

Now, since this is my blog, I am going to be a tyrant and contribute heavily to the start of this endeavor—but please add as you see fit! Here we go, in no particular order. I am trying to restrict it to one book per author for the sake of fairness. Three or four millennia is a lot of fodder for picking a list!

1. King Lear—William Shakespeare
2. A Prayer for Owen Meany—John Irving
3. To Kill a Mockingbird—Harper Lee
4. The Dead—James Joyce
5. Native Son—Richard Wright
6. Ender’s Game—Orson Scott Card
7. The Hobbit—JRR Tolkein
8. Dune- Frank Herbert
9. Roots—Alex Haley
10. 1984- George Orwell
11. The Hunchback of Notre Dame—Victor Hugo
12. Indian Killer—Sherman Alexie
13. The Handmaid’s Tale—Margaret Atwood
14. It- Stephen King
15. The Turn of the Screw—Henry James
16. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
17. The Once and Future King—TH White
18. Emma—Jane Austen
19. Little Women—Louisa May Alcott
20. All the Kings Men—Robert Penn Warren
21. Cry the Beloved Country—Alan Patton
22. Love in the Time of Cholera—Gabriel Garcia Marquez
23. The Odyssey—Homer
24. Catcher in the Rye—JD Salinger
25. The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald
26. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—CS Lewis
27. The Lovely Bones—Alice Seabold
28. The Glass Castle—Jeanette Walls
29. Lord of the Flies—William Golding
30. On the Road—Jack Kerouac
31. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest—Ken Kesey
32. The Aeneid—Virgil
33. Beowulf
34. Dracula—Bram Stoker
35. The Color Purple—Alice Walker
36. Beloved—Toni Morrison
37. Ceremony—Leslie Marmon Silko
38. Of Mice and Men—John Steinback
39. Fahrenheit 451—Ray Bradbury
40. Things Fall Apart-- Chinua Achebe

So what else shall I add?

Think about it, and think about trying the lamb, eggplant skins at Joe Squared this week. That place is truly my muse!