A quick literacy test.

Since my lady posted this, I figured I’d list my own for posterity’s sake, even though I swear I’ve done this before.

The average is six, which in my opinion is pretty pathetic, but keep in mind, I am an English major.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Bible – Council of Nicea

Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 
Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 

Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot (Worst. Book. EVER.)
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan 
Life of Pi – Yann Martel 
Dune – Frank Herbert

Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker

The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce 
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

 

Not bad, not bad. I consider some of these choices questionable at best, and others I feel shame for not having read yet. But at the very least, I’m well above average.

Log in to write a note
November 1, 2012

I am embarassed. I’m not the most avid reader there is, but I have not read a single book on this list. Unbelievable!

November 1, 2012

Oh wait, I’ve read the Bible. Of course if “The Bible” by Council of Nicca is a novel, than I have not read that one either.

You have a lady now?! what?? Also, I never quite enjoy these kinds of posts. Ya, it’s interesting, but meh. Movies would be MORE interesting.

November 2, 2012

I think I got about 46 last time I read this list. Working on Catch-22. Not enough fantasy on this list though. There are some big-selling fantasy authors with seminal works and they’re just not on the list! Very biased.

Tux
November 2, 2012

23

51…and you say 6 is the average?? OUCH, dude. Freakin’, major, it hurts my head and hurt…OUCH. *sadly shakes my head*