1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

D_Ivana Dickenside

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i've only read 14 books out of the 1,001 books on the list.

Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus
 

hud01

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Discontent - You're welcome, dude (was actually your posts and responses to people that gave me that impression - rather than the list). :p

Hud01 - I didn't spot The Third Man (and I was looking, lol). Great film, too.
Yes it was. I did it the lazy way. I copied the list to Word and went down the list deleting the ones I didn't read.
 

Phil Ayesho

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let's see--

Counting the ones I have read... but not the ones I tried to read and never finished like war and peace or Doctor Zhivago...

Not too bad... 117.

Panning thru the list, tho, I had nearly nothing in the top half.
Sheesh... all I read anymore are users manuals

But- I gotta say the guy who put this list together knows nothing of science fiction...
2001? The crappy book written after the fact to try and explain the the movie no one understood? That thing was shit.
1 book by Dick? why ? Cause of Blade runner? 1 book by Robert Heinlien and its the crappy populist one? No 20,ooo leaguse under the sea?, No from the earth to the moon?
No Invisible man?

Weird to think that the vast majority of what I have read doesn't even show up on the list...
 

Northland

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So I found this list of 1001 books you "must" read before you die, "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" | Listology. The list is actually taken from:
"1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: A Comprehensive Reference Source,
Chronicling the History of the Novel
Preface by Peter Ackroyd, General Editor Peter Boxall
ISBN 1-84403-417-8"

Anyway, I thought it'd be interesting...


...I hope to read them all one day, and luckily for me, I found several of the books on this list at a used book store. I have about 7 lined up to read as of right now.

So, how "well-read" are you?


No idea how many, I'll just list them with occasional comments.




303-The World According to Garp – John Irving, either before or after reading Hotel New Hampshire also by Irving.
320-Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice-read it in the bathtub, was bothersome as I had to keep draining the water and filling with fresh hot water. Eventually I got out of the tub and finished the book in other areas of my apartment.

340-Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.-did I read it? Not sure, I have it on the shelf though.
375-Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.-see my above comments on Breakfast of Champions. Honestly, Voneegut is hard to read.
387-Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
388-The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
425-Herzog – Saul Bellow
434-One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn-Read it first in 9th grade for World Regions class.
437-A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess #437
445-Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger-In fairness, I only read about 2/3 of it.
451-Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
464-Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow

494-The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien-took the whole Tolkien series out of the library when I was about 10 or 11, never read them, never wanted to. Had no idea that years later it would become so popular.

521-The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway-read several times.
547-Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell-read at least parts of it.
552-Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton-I have tried several times, cannot make it through. It's been an ongoing task since a 1976 English class.
564-Animal Farm – George Orwell-wonderful the first time, not so much the second run through. though still good.

587-For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
592-The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck-At least I began to. Never finished the movie either, too damned depressing.
622-Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner

640-Call it Sleep – Henry Roth #640-one of the best books I've ever read, excellent author describes immigrant life in the early 1900s in superb detail, can actually feel the character (a young boy) as he goes through the streets and start to wish you were alive in NYC back then (even with its grim and gray palor).
649-Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
663-A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
689-The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
747-Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs-selected as a gift book after sixth grade graduation.

752-Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton-A fairly short book I read it over a weekend in high school; was scolded by the English teacher on Monday for having read it too fast (other students were still in the first 10 pages).




From the 1800s:
790-The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
797-The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
799-Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
831-Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
851-Erewhon – Samuel Butler
857-War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy #857
861-The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky #861
867-Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
875-Silas Marner – George Eliot
879-The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot-I actually made mention of it here a while back:
What is it about the horse?

From the 1700s:
963-Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
 

D_Sherian_LaNeige

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I've read 64 of the books listed... but of those I thought several were dreadful (e.g. Middlesex, A Kestrel for a Knave, Captain Corelli).

I'd recommend (books I feel strongly about are in purple):

The Bell Jar
The Wasp Factory
Choke
The World According to Garp
A Prayer for Owen Meany
The Color Purple
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Catch 22
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lolita
Brave New World
The Yellow Wallpaper (a short story that will proper mess you up!)
Cloud Atlas
The God of Small Things
The Crow Road
Smilla's Sense of Snow (called Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow here)
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

PLUS all Douglas Adams' novels!


I agree with what someone here said about American Psycho - my bloke WON'T LET ME READ IT as there are things in it that I just don't want in my head.
 

D_Sherian_LaNeige

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Books that weren't on the list that I think are fab:

Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder
This Book Will Save Your Life - A.M. Homes
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Whit - Iain Banks
A Son of the Circus - John Irving
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin

These are books marketed for teenagers but which can be enjoyed by adults (well, The Hobbit was on the list!!):

How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff
His Dark Materials (a trilogy) - Phillip Pullman
 

D_Sherian_LaNeige

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Oh, and I'm eagerly awaiting the publication of the third in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, which is brilliant if you like a bit of a mystery/thriller (way out of Dan Brown's league!!!).

Somebody shut me up!!! I could post in this thread all day recommending stuff hehe...
 

StormyB

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wow, lots of great books in that list!

The Great Gatsby, To kill a Mockinbird, The Grapes of Wrath, and Gone With the Wind are personal favorites of mine :smile:
 
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Considering making a list of books to read after I die, :p
 

Zeuhl34

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I didn't read through the entire list, but I'm shocked that neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey is on that list.
 

Phil Ayesho

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Lots of stuff missing and lots of stuff that don't belong there.
No Atlas Shrugged?
No Beowulf?

No poetry other than Maya Angelou?
NO SHAKESPEARE?
 

DiscoBoy

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I didn't read through the entire list, but I'm shocked that neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey is on that list.

Lots of stuff missing and lots of stuff that don't belong there.
No Atlas Shrugged?
No Beowulf?

No poetry other than Maya Angelou?
NO SHAKESPEARE?
The list was meant only for books. The Iliad and the Odyssey are both epic poems. Since Shakespeare only wrote plays, nothing by him was included either.