The internet meme about 100 books everyone should read, put together by BBC audiences and of which supposedly an average person (in the UK?) would have read 6, actually includes a list from a different source. Actually, this is the list the BBC came up with, though the BBC never made the claim about people having read 6 of them.
I have read all the books on the other list. Here's how I do on the real BBC list:
| Book | Author | Read? |
| 1 The Lord of the Rings | JRR Tolkien |
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| 2 Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen |
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| 3 His Dark Materials | Philip Pullman |
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| 4 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams |
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| 5 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | JK Rowling |
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| 6 To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
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| 7 Winnie the Pooh | AA Milne |
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| 8 Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell |
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| 9 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | CS Lewis |
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| 10 Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë |
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| 11 Catch-22 | Joseph Heller |
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| 12 Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë |
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| 13 Birdsong | Sebastian Faulks |
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| 14 Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier |
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| 15 The Catcher in the Rye | JD Salinger |
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| 16 The Wind in the Willows | Kenneth Grahame |
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| 17 Great Expectations | Charles Dickens |
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| 18 Little Women | Louisa May Alcott |
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| 19 Captain Corelli's Mandolin | Louis de Bernieres |
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| 20 War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy |
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| 21 Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell |
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| 22 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone | JK Rowling |
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| 23 Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets | JK Rowling |
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| 24 Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban | JK Rowling |
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| 25 The Hobbit | JRR Tolkien |
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| 26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles | Thomas Hardy |
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| 27 Middlemarch | George Eliot |
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| 28 A Prayer For Owen Meany | John Irving |
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| 29 The Grapes Of Wrath | John Steinbeck |
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| 30 Alice's Adventures In Wonderland | Lewis Carroll |
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| 31 The Story Of Tracy Beaker | Jacqueline Wilson |
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| 32 One Hundred Years Of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez |
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| 33 The Pillars Of The Earth | Ken Follett |
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| 34 David Copperfield | Charles Dickens |
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| 35 Charlie And The Chocolate Factory | Roald Dahl |
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| 36 Treasure Island | Robert Louis Stevenson |
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| 37 A Town Like Alice | Nevil Shute |
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| 38 Persuasion | Jane Austen |
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| 39 Dune | Frank Herbert |
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| 40 Emma | Jane Austen |
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| 41 Anne Of Green Gables | LM Montgomery |
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| 42 Watership Down | Richard Adams |
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| 43 The Great Gatsby | F Scott Fitzgerald |
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| 44 The Count Of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas |
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| 45 Brideshead Revisited | Evelyn Waugh |
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| 46 Animal Farm | George Orwell |
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| 47 A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickens |
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| 48 Far From The Madding Crowd | Thomas Hardy |
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| 49 Goodnight Mister Tom | Michelle Magorian |
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| 50 The Shell Seekers | Rosamunde Pilcher |
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| 51 The Secret Garden | Frances Hodgson Burnett |
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| 52 Of Mice And Men | John Steinbeck |
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| 53 The Stand | Stephen King |
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| 54 Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy |
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| 55 A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth |
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| 56 The BFG | Roald Dahl |
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| 57 Swallows And Amazons | Arthur Ransome |
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| 58 Black Beauty | Anna Sewell |
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| 59 Artemis Fowl | Eoin Colfer |
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| 60 Crime And Punishment | Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
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| 61 Noughts And Crosses | Malorie Blackman |
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| 62 Memoirs Of A Geisha | Arthur Golden |
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| 63 A Tale Of Two Cities | Charles Dickens |
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| 64 The Thorn Birds | Colleen McCollough |
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| 65 Mort | Terry Pratchett |
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| 66 The Magic Faraway Tree | Enid Blyton |
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| 67 The Magus | John Fowles |
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| 68 Good Omens | Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman |
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| 69 Guards! Guards! | Terry Pratchett |
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| 70 Lord Of The Flies | William Golding |
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| 71 Perfume | Patrick Süskind |
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| 72 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists | Robert Tressell |
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| 73 Night Watch | Terry Pratchett |
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| 74 Matilda | Roald Dahl |
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| 75 Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding |
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| 76 The Secret History | Donna Tartt |
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| 77 The Woman In White | Wilkie Collins |
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| 78 Ulysses | James Joyce |
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| 79 Bleak House | Charles Dickens |
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| 80 Double Act | Jacqueline Wilson |
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| 81 The Twits | Roald Dahl |
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| 82 I Capture The Castle | Dodie Smith |
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| 83 Holes | Louis Sachar |
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| 84 Gormenghast | Mervyn Peake |
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| 85 The God Of Small Things | Arundhati Roy |
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| 86 Vicky Angel | Jacqueline Wilson | |
| 87 Brave New World | Aldous Huxley |
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| 88 Cold Comfort Farm | Stella Gibbons |
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| 89 Magician | Raymond E Feist |
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| 90 On The Road | Jack Kerouac |
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| 91 The Godfather | Mario Puzo |
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| 92 The Clan Of The Cave Bear | Jean M Auel |
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| 93 The Colour Of Magic | Terry Pratchett |
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| 94 The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho |
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| 95 Katherine | Anya Seton |
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| 96 Kane And Abel | Jeffrey Archer |
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| 97 Love In The Time Of Cholera | Gabriel García Márquez |
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| 98 Girls In Love | Jacqueline Wilson |
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| 99 The Princess Diaries | Meg Cabot |
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| 100 Midnight's Children | Salman Rushdie |
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I have read 99 of them.