This list was compiled in the U.K. by the BBC. The average adult has read only 6 of the books on the list. I’ve read 25, 32 if I included those of abridged version. Not much but well above average at least =)

If you like to participate, just copy and paste this list of books into your own blog, and follow the instructions below, or add up the books you’ve read.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog. (This list in no way represents the top 100 books. )
* I have put books that I have read, but not the unabridged version, in [].

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 [Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte]
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 [Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte] ( want to read the real one next time)
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] (Lol I know, shame on me. To be such a fan but have not yet read them properly)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
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 (tried to watch the adaptation, didn’t go to far with it)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (It is sitting in my laptop waiting for its turn…)
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 (Oh wow, this is on the list as well??)
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 (surely if I can manage Vanity Fair, this would be possible as well??)

It is nice to see books that I love on the list. Rupert of Hentzau is not though which is a pity but they seem to be all good books, with a mix of old and new, for the young and ….. not. =P

And only one which I did not like… Hmm….

I would love to churn out long and detailed ramblings about how it feels to be finally 21, all the apprehensions, anticipations, joy, longing, uncertainty and etc but decided to leave off all that. Apart from the realisation that I ’should’ be more responsible (for lack of a better word), I am still stubbornly clinging to my childish fancies, a ruse I tell myself in pretense of staying forever ‘young at heart’. I guess I may need a few more years before ’sense’ comes knocking at my door…

For me, my 15th of July basically consisted of:

I had some lovely presents and cards from friends. Was extremely glad to hear from those as far away as Ireland and Scotland as well!!! All these simple gestures just makes my day. =) Mom came over for a visit this winter break and brought along the nicest present Ever. Haha… I am now the proud owner of the Murakami Multicolor Pochette Accessories. =) Apart from that, there was a Yard - Long Chocolate bar from those who knew my obsession with chocolates, an artistically made pen holder (made from nuts and bolts!! haha) and also Peach Sencha from Tbar!!! Omg, I have always walked past T bar and wanted to try their wonderful array of teas. Sigh, dream come true. Lol… I will post pics of them later. I have taken them but have not yet uploaded them to my computer.

On another note, exam results came out today and I can only say that the relieve I felt when seeing them was immense. I sort of felt that I was carrying a cloud over my head, a constant threat of downpour hovering over me. But after seeing my results, my sun came back and the clouds are no more (I suspect till the next finals -_-”). I scored so much better than I expected, I am still in a daze. I guess I can finally sleep tonight. -.-

As an update, I am now currently obsessed with the Twilight books and final one is being released on August 4th next monday. I have a mind to attend the launching party at Borders. Do read the twilight books. =) No other book would have been able to draw a mile long of fans at the recent ComicCon at San Diego.

I do not have a long and delicious post to make up for my long and unpardonable absence. =( Needless to say, my life has been pretty boring these past few weeks. I was totally entraped with exams and hospital visits and also a sinfully addictive new book series called Twilight (omg this is a must read!!! Final book coming out in August I can wait!!!!). Some of you might know it because I did send out copies to a few. =) Do read them and anyone who is interested can tell me. I’d happily oblige with a copy.

Diana Wynne Jones has come out with a new book =) The House of Many Ways which is connected in a way to her Howl’s Moving Castle characters. I can’t wait to get my hands on that as well.

Narnia was such an unexpectedly nice movie. It was EPIC in a totally different way compared to the first film a couple of years ago. The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe was more of a children’s film. Not surprising since Narnia is a childrens’ book but Prince Caspian was so much more grown - up and it was disconcerting to see a much older Lucy (Georgie Henly). AND the scriptwriters did an amazing job of creating such a smooth flow between events and making sense of everything because I have read the books and really they were sometimes quite confusing with bits and pieces that seemed chucked in for fun. It was turned into a much more cinematic material. Staying faithful to the book would just make the movie disappointing. Plus the song at the end of the movie was so touching. Must listen to that, The Call by Regina Spektor. I wonder how they would film Voyage of the Dawn Treader… Peter and Susan will no more be in it and a cousin of the Pevensie siblings will be in the adventure instead. In a way, that makes me sad because I would love to have all four siblings throughout the 7 books. Just when you start to feel a connection with the characters, they leave you to do other things such as Growing Up. That’s why I never really grew to love the Narnia series, I just cannot stand the fact of characters abandoning Narnia for their mundane lives although they had no choice in that matter so I guess any unkind feeling of mine should be directed at the author….. But there were quite a bit to learn from the books as well. I never really gave much thought about it when I was reading the books years ago but as I was watching the movie, something hovered just in the peripheries of my mind, how EVERY single experience teaches us a lesson. How there is always something to be gained if only we looked hard enough. Every sight, smell, sound, touch etc. The privilege of growing up is having an excuse to wonder, learn, ask questions and make mistakes. and that was what the Pevensie siblings did in their trips to Narnia. They had the additional excitement of doing it in a totally new world but I guess I just have to make do with the little world I am in right now….