This survey was done by the BBC in April 2003, so it doesn’t contain any more recent books than that, but it’s a list of the top 200 books as voted for the by public. Probably a good thing it’s from 2003 or it would most likely contain the likes of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey.

This is more of a long term target that a ‘read everything in a year’ type target, but I look forward to trying books I never would have thought to read – for example Terry Pratchett, who seems to have a lot of books on this list.

So far I’ve read 55/200.

1. JRR Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings
—a. The Fellowship of the Ring
—b. The Two Towers
—c. The Return of the King
2. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
3. Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials
4. Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
5. JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
6. Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
7. AA Milne – Winnie the Pooh
8. George Orwell – Nineteen Eight-Four
9. CS Lewis – The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
10. Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre
11. Joseph Heller – Catch 22
12. Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights
13. Sebastian Faulks – Birdsong
14. Dapne du Maurier – Rebecca
15. JD Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye
16. Kenneth Grahame – The Wind in the Willows
17. Charles Dickens – Great Expectations
18. Louisa May Alcott – Little Women
19.Louis de Bernieres – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
20. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
21. Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
22. JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
23. JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
24. JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
25. JRR Tolkien – The Hobbit
26. Thomas Hardy – Tess of the D’Urbervilles
27. George Eliot – Middlemarch
28. John Irving – A Prayer For Owen Meany
29. John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
30. Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
31. Jacqueline Wilson – The Story of Tracy Beaker
32. Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
33. Ken Follett – The Pillars of the Earth
34. Charles Dickens – David Copperfield
35. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
36. Robert Louis Stevenson – Treasure Island
37. Nevil Shute – A Town Like Alice
38. Jane Austen – Persuasion
39. Frank Herbert – Dune
40. Jane Austen – Emma
41. LM Montgomery – Anne of Green Gables
42. Richard Adams – Watership Down
43. F Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
44. Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo
45. Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited
46. George Orwell – Animal Farm
47. Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol
48. Thomas Hardy – Far From the Madding Crowd
49. Michelle Magorian – Goodnight Mister Tom
50. Rosamunde Pilcher – The Shell Seekers
51. Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden
52. John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
53. Stephen King – The Stand
54. Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
55. Vikran Seth – A Suitable Boy
56. Roald Dahl – The BFG
57. Arthur Ransome – Swallows and Amazons
58. Anna Sewell – Black Beauty
59. Eoin Colfer – Artemis Fowl
60. Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
61. Malorie Blackman – Noughts and Crosses
62. Arthur Golden – Memoirs of a Geisha
63. Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities
64. Collen McCollough – The Thorn Birds
65. Terry Pratchett – Mort
66. Enid Blyton – The Magic Faraway Tree
67. John Fowles – The Magus
68. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – Good Omens
69. Terry Pratchett – Guards! Guards!
70. William Golding – Lord of the Flies
71. Patrick Süskind – Perfume
72. Robert Tressell – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
73. Terry Pratchett – Night Watch
74. Roald Dahl – Matilda
75. Helen Fielding – Bridget Jones’s Diary
76. Donna Tartt – The Secret History
77. Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White
78. James Joyce – Ulysses
79. Charles Dickens – Bleak House
80. Jacqueline Wilson – Double Act
81. Roald Dahl – The Twits
82. Dodie Smith – I Capture the Castle
83. Louis Sachar – Holes
84. Mervyn Peake – Gormenghast
85. Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things
86. Jacqueline Wilson – Vicky Angel
87. Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
88. Stelle Gibbons – Cold Comfort Farm
89. Raymond E Feist – Magician
90. Jack Kerouac – On the Road
91. Mario Puzo – The Godfather
92. Jean M Auel – The Clan of the Cave Bear
93. Terry Pratchett – The Colour of Magic
94. Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist
95. Anna Seyton – Katherine
96. Jeffrey Archer – Kane and Abel
97. Gabriel García Márquez – Love in the Time of Cholera
98. Jacqueline Wilson – Girls in Love
99. Meg Cabot – The Princess Diaries
100. Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children
101. Jerome K. Jerome – Three Men in a Boat
102. Terry Pratchett – Small Gods
103. Alex Garland – The Beach
104. Bram Stoker – Dracula
105. Anthony Horowitz – Point Blanc
106. Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers
107. Anthony Horowitz – Stormbreaker
108. Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory
109. Frederick Forsyth – The Day of the Jackal
110. Jacqueline Wilson – The Illustrated Mum
111. Thomas Hardy – Jude the Obscure
112. Sue Townsend – The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾
113. Nicholas Monsarrat – The Cruel Sea
114. Victor Hugo – Les Misérables
115. Thomas Hardy – The Mayor of Casterbridge
116. Jacqueline Wilson – The Dare Game
117. Jacqueline Wilson – Bad Girls
118. Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray
119. James Clavell – Shogun
120. John Wyndham – The Day of the Triffids
121. Jacqueline Wilson – Lola Rose
122. William Makepeace Thackeray – Vanity Fair
123. John Glasworthy – The Forsyte Saga
124. Mark Z. Danielewski – House of Leaves
125. Barbara Kingsolver – The Poisonwood Bible
126. Terry Pratchett – Reaper Man
127. Louise Rennison – Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
128. Arthur Conan Doyle – The Hound of the Baskervilles
129. A. S. Byatt – Possession
130. Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita
131. Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale
132. Roald Dahl – Danny the Champion of the World
133. John Steinbeck – East of Eden
134. Roald Dahl – George’s Marvellous Medicine
135. Terry Pratchett – Wyrd Sisters
136. Alice Walker – The Colour Purple
137. Terry Pratchett – Hogfather
138. John Buchan – The Thirty-Nine Steps
139. Jacqueline Wilson – Girls in Tears
140. Jacqueline Wilson – Sleepovers
141. Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet on the Western Front
142. Kate Atkinson – Behind the Scenes at the Museum
143. Nick Hornby – High Fidelity
144. Stephen King – It.
145. Roald Dahl – James and the Giant Peach
146. Stephen King – The Green Mile
147. Henri Charriere – Papillon
148. Terry Pratchett – Men at Arms
149. Patrick O’Brian – Master and Commander
150. Anthony Horowitz – Skeleton Key
151. Terry Pratchett – Soul Music
152. Terry Pratchett – Thief of Time
153. Terry Pratchett – The Fifth Elephant
154. Ian McEwan – Atonement
155. Jacqueline Wilson – Secrets
156. Ian Serraillier – The Silver Sword
157. Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
158. Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
159. Rudyard Kipling – Kim
160. Diana Gabaldon – Cross Stitch
161. Herman Melville – Moby Dick
162. Wilbur Smith – River God
163. Lewis Grassic Gibbon – Sunset Song
164. Annie Proulx – The Shipping News
165. John Irving – The World According to Garp
166. R. D. Blackmore – Lorna Doone
167. Jacqueline Wilson – Girls Out Late
168. M. M. Kaye – The Far Pavilions
169. Roald Dahl – The Witches
170. E. B. White – Charlotte’s Web
171. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
172. Terry Venables and Gordon Williams – They Used to Play on Grass
173. Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and The Sea
174. Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose
175. Jostein Gaarder – Sophie’s World
176. Jacqueline Wilson – Dustbin Baby
177. Roald Dahl – Fantastic Mr Fox
178. Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita
179. Richard Bach – Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
180. Antione De Saint-Exupery – The Little Prince
181. Jacqueline Wilson – The Suitcase Kid
182. Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist
183. Bryce Courtenay – The Power of One
184. George Eliot – Silas Marner
185. Bret Easton Ellis – American Psycho
186. George and Weedon Grossmith – The Diary of a Nobody
187. Irvine Welsh – Trainspotting
188. R. L. Stine – Goosebumps
189. Johanna Spyri – Heidi
190. D. H. Lawrence – Sons and Lovers
191. Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
192. Tony Parsons – Man and Boy
193. Terry Pratchett – The Truth
194. H. G. Wells – The War of the Worlds
195. Nicholas Evans – The Horse Whisperer
196. Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance
197. Terry Pratchett – Witches Abroad
198. T. H. White – The Once and Future King
199. Eric Carle – The Very Hungry Caterpillar
200. Virginia Andrews – Flowers in the Attic