BBC Top 100 Books vs. Facebook Meme

First of all there is a facebook meme running around claiming to be attached to the BBC list. But it seems to have been doctored, it took of a lot of literary books and replaced them with books that have been made into popular American Movies. I guess whoever started it didn't think Americans would read "Good Omens" by Pratchet and Gaiman, British Authors. (I did.)

Also most people on facebook probably count watching the movie as "reading" it.

Also the facebook meme contends that the "average" person would have only read 6 of the 100 listed. This is not what the BBC List is about, it was just looking for the most popular book in the UK.

I guess I'll play along and even use the Facebook list instead of the BBC original list.

Top 100 Books by BBC - X those I've read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6 The Bible - X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - x (Lower case x this time...)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger-X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell-
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy- x (Lower case X again...)
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky-
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -X
34 Emma-Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X
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 - X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - X
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 -X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -X
53 Cold Comfort Farm
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 - X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - X
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - x (Lower case X, I think everyone skims over the middle of this book.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce- X
76 The Inferno – Dante- X
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 -X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -X
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 - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - X
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 - X
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -

Ok the facebook list is stupid. It lumps a lot of things into "Series". For example, the BBC lists individual Harry Potter books and Shakespeare plays.

There are also weird inconsistencies on the list. For example, "The Complete Works of Bill" are listed as well as Hamlet. As well as The Chronicles of Narnia and the individual L,W&Wardrobe book.

I X'd 48 of them (3 of which were lower case). Drat less than half...

I decided to google this before posting, here is an interesting article on this Facebook list and its migration away from the original.

What to read after Harry Potter?

There are some people who weren't really readers before HP. They didn't know the dispair of a book release date two years in the future or the jubilation of its eventual release. Hopefully these people will become more that Harry Potter Readers, they'll become Readers, open to books that don't involve Hogwarts. (Although, I've already heard comments like "I'm done with book 7, now I won't have to read ever again.")

Well here are a few suggestions, if you liked Harry Potter you will probably find more books you like.

1) The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien - Another book for young adult readers, follow Bilbo Baggins all over middle-earth in his hunt for treasure. Followed by...

2) The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien also - You probably saw the movie but the books reads pretty differently. These are definitely written on a more adult level than the Hobbit and HP.

3) Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card - Ok, here is a book without any wizards in it, I know its shocking but you will probably love it! It does have kids and a special school, instead of a train there is a shuttle to get there. This is one of my Top 5 of all time. This book revolves around Ender Wiggin and his admittance into Battle School, were children are taught to be the military commanders of tomorrow. (I know you're thinking "Science Fiction barf!" but science fiction and fantasy are essentially the same genre, you just replace "magic" with "technology" to make miraculous things happen.)

4) The Once and Future King - T. H. White - Back to Wizards, the story of young King Arthur's rise to power. A classic. This book is so good Magneto reads it while he is in prison during X-Men 2.

5) Eragon - by Paolini - DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE... it stunk. But the book is fantastic. A young boy finds a dragon eggs, which are thought to be extinct. This book is for young adults and was written by one. (Of course some of you grown up who've only ever read Harry Potter books might consider yourself a young adult readers even if your 25.)

Well there are 5 books (if you count LotR as one which I do.). And don't give me that "how long are they" business. You just read 750 pages in one weekend!

I'll wait a few weeks before I talk about Harry Potter to allow people to read and digest.

Harry Potter: The Final Predictions

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

2 Years Ago I made Predictions about Book 7 Here is the Link

Here Are My Updated Predictions:
(BE WARNED I MIGHT SPOIL THE ENDING FOR YOU.)

1. Harry Potter - Odds of survival 50/50. I've calmed down some from my certainty 2 years ago that Harry will die. Instead, I believe he will sacrifice himself to kill Voldermort and think that he's going to die. So he gets credit for the sacrifice without having to die. A lot of people seem sure he's a horcrux and I guess that pretty likely, it explains why Lord V doesn't want anyone to kill him. Also, Harry becomes an Auror.

2. Voldermort - Dead meat... Harry will kill him with help... more on that later.

3. Ron - Gets together with Hermione finally no surprise. Ron may not have what it takes to be a Auror so he'll have to follow his dad into the ministry. But JKR will make "important" by Ron vowing to "clean it up." During book 7 he'll help by being Harrry's pal.

4. Hermoine - Get together with Ron. But she is actually helpful in her research into the horcruxes in book 7.

5. Ginny - Gets together with Harry, this is as obvious as R&H's romance. She liked him, he was oblivious. He liked her, she was oblivious. They were friends. Love is all that's left, if he survives.

6. Snape - Not a bad guy. He'll help Harry and another mystery person kill Voldermort.

7. R.A.B. - Regulus Black. They'll even give him a middle name. Serius thought he was dead but he might have died in an attempt to undermine V.

8. Wormtail - He owes a huge debt to Harry for saving his life. So what'll he do? What he does best, snivel and listen in the shadows. He will help Harry take down his boss so he can get out from under him. So the trifecta is Harry/Snape/Wormtail vs. Voldermort.

9. Neville - Will beat and likely kill Bellatrix Lestrange for killing his 'rents. He'll actually show some competence in, he showed a few signs of improvement in 5&6 and 7 will show him being really tough!

10. Quidditch - There won't be any in book 7.

I want to be a Christian Revolutionary

What is a Christian Revolutionary?

"They have no use for churches that play religious games, whether those games are worship services that drone on without the presence of God or ministry programs that bear no spiritual fruit. Revolutionaries eschew ministries that compromise or soft sell our sinful nature to expand organizational turf. They refuse to follow people in ministry leadership positions who cast a personal vision rather than God's, who seek popularity rather than the proclamation of truth in their public statements, or who are more concerned about their own legacy than that of Jesus Christ. ... They are unimpressed by accredited degrees and endowed chairs in Christ colleges and seminaries that produce young people incapable of defending the Bible or unwilling to devote their lives to serving others. And Revolutionaries are embarrassed by language that promises Christian love and holiness but turns out to be all sizzle and no substance."
~ George Barna, "Revolution"


This book offers the opening question "Worn-out on Church?" right on its cover. I see our world being filled with people who feel this way. I think me brother is one of these people, who is attracted to the ancient spiritual but put off by the modern church. Some ministers fear that they won't come to church and keep us in our jobs. Not me, I'm exited to think about what this group could do if you offered them something authentic! These people want to passionately LIVE IT! I want the parents at much church to become so involved they put me out of a job. I laugh in the face my 30 year morgage! HAHAHA Homelessness, I've been there, not that bad being Nomadic! No health insurance? Who cares I just won't get sick or I'll just die! No dental? I'll just stop smiling. Wait I don't have dental now.

Its easy to go along with the flow of church. To do things that are ok but not GREAT! To do what is expected, routine and familiar. And those things aren't bad, but sometimes you have to ask youself if your tired of a "That'll-do-attitude." If you find yourself wondering if you could be authentic in your walk with Christ, if you've just been phoneing it in for a decade and you're of being a phoney and fraud, then you just might be a Christian Revolutionary and can I stay at your house when I work myself out of a job?