BBC Top 100 Books, revisited

After really looking at the list of books as shown in Loth’s post and the original book list, I decided to do a comparison. Both lists share 58 of their 100 books. The other 42 differ significantly. The original list was the top 100 best-loved novels — seeing the Bible show up in the meme list amuses me to no end. I mean, *I* consider it to be a novel but I’m sure that wasn’t the intention of the person who decided to add it to the meme before passing it on. 😉

Books that only appear in the meme list:

1. A Confederacy of Dunces
2. A Fine Balance
3. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
4. Atonement
5. Charlotte’s Web
6. Chronicles of Narnia
7. Cloud Atlas
8. Complete Works of Shakespeare
9. Count of Monte Cristo
10. Dracula
11. Germinal
12. Grapes of Wrath
13. Hamlet
14. Harry Potter series (appears as 4 separate books in the BBC list)
15. Heart of Darkness
16. Jude the Obscure
17. Les Miserables
18. Life of Pi
19. Lolita
20. Madame Bovary
21. Moby Dick
22. Notes From A Small Island
23. Oliver Twist
24. Possession
25. Sense and Sensibility
26. The Bell Jar
27. The Bible
28. The Color Purple
29. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
30. The Da Vinci Code
31. The Faraway Tree Collection (appears as a single book in the BBC list)
32. The Five People You Meet In Heaven
33. The Handmaid’s Tale
34. The Kite Runner
35. The Little Prince
36. The Lovely Bones
37. The Remains of the Day
38. The Shadow of the Wind
39. The Three Musketeers
40. The Time Traveller’s Wife
41. The Wasp Factory
42. Vanity Fair

Books that only appear in the real BBC list:

1. Artemis Fowl
2. Black Beauty
3. Double Act
4. Girls In Love
5. Good Omens
6. Goodnight Mister Tom
7. Gormenghast
8. Guards! Guards!
9. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets  (appears as the series in a single entry in the meme list)
10. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire  (appears as the series in a single entry in the meme list)
11. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone  (appears as the series in a single entry in the meme list)
12. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban  (appears as the series in a single entry in the meme list)
13. Holes
14. I Capture The Castle
15. Kane And Abel
16. Katherine
17. Magician
18. Matilda
19. Mort
20. Night Watch
21. Noughts And Crosses
22. Perfume
23. The Alchemist
24. The BFG
25. The Clan Of The Cave Bear
26. The Colour Of Magic
27. The Count Of Monte Cristo
28. The God Of Small Things
29. The Godfather
30. The Grapes Of Wrath
31. The Magic Faraway Tree (appears as the collection in the meme list)
32. The Magus
33. The Pillars Of The Earth
34. The Princess Diaries
35. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
36. The Shell Seekers
37. The Stand
38. The Story Of Tracy Beaker
39. The Thorn Birds
40. The Twits
41. Treasure Island
42. Vicky Angel

My books read count would increase if I used the meme list. So, if you’ve done the meme list yourself, try checking the real BBC list and see how many of those books you’ve read.

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BBC’s Top 100 Books

Via Loth (who I came to via her comment in XUP‘s blog), I came across the BBC’s top 100 books, a survey from April 2003 to determine the nation’s best-loved novel (the nation being the UK, of course). The initial survey resulted in a top 200 list, a top 100 list, a top 21 list, and a final single winner, The Lord of the Rings. A total of approximately 750,000 votes were received over the course of the search for the top book.  (Note: this survey is not to be mistaken for the Guardian’s Top 100 Books of All Time from 2002 or subsequent surveys by other groups.) 

The list below comes directly from the BBC page — some of the entries vary slightly from those in Loth’s post and the books are in a slightly different order, but otherwise are essentially the same. She says (quoting the post that inspired hers) that “The BBC say the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on their list.” but I haven’t yet come across a news article that actually says that. The original BBC page linked to above certainly doesn’t mention it and none of the people perpetuating this meme link to any source page. Unless otherwise corrected, I’m going to presume that the originator of the meme made up the statistic out of whole cloth, as it reads like your typical email meme.

Writing a romance

Watching the BBC Time Shift episode “How to Write a Mills and Boon” (which chronicles author Stella Duffy‘s attempts to write a romance book for Mills and Boon, the UK arm of Harlequin/Silhouette) today reminded me of my days of reading romance novels.

I started reading romances when I was in my teens, nearly 30 years ago. A friend of the family had a pile of old books that she passed on to my mother and I. They were the stereotypical 70s romances: tall, dark, handsome, wealthy, and cynical (always cynical) man, sometimes a widower with a child, meets young, 18-19 year-old virgin who comes to work for him as a governess, nurse, or secretary. Not at all what I was looking for myself even back then but it was titillating reading for a teenager. Later, Silhouette in particular started publishing racier fiction that featured more experienced, stronger women and slightly less overbearing tall, dark, handsome, wealthy, and cynical heroes. At one point, my mother and I belonged to the monthly book club for several of their imprints, going through dozens of books a month. (Romances are light reading.) Some have stayed with me through the years.

I stopped reading romances years ago, when it became apparent that I was no longer in their target audience. I’m not interested in stories about estranged or separated married couples, single parents, babies, children, families, etc. That’s not my life nor is it my fantasy life. But that seemed to be most of what was being published.

I see now that Harlequin again has a number of imprints for fantasy-type story-lines. One of those imprints is Silhouette Nocturne, which specializes in paranormal fiction involving creatures like vampires and werewolves. Another is Luna, which features more fantastical, magical stories. I was quite surprised to see that Mercedes Lackey, one of my favourite fantasy writers, is actually writing a series for Luna called A Tale of Five Hundred Kingdoms.

I had always thought that my history of reading romances and my love for writing would make me a good romance writer myself. Maybe it’s time to consider that more seriously.