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Books to Read Before You Die
The British librarian's organization -- "Museum, Libraries and Archives Council" -- has put together a List of Books to Read Before You Die.
I have a pretty good start on the list. Of the ones I haven't read yet, I have four on my bookshelves at home, so I'll probably get to them someday.
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Bible
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
- 1984 by George Orwell
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
- His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
- Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
- Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
- Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
March 6, 2006, 2:44 PM | « Previous | Next »
Keywords: books, literature, reading, book, novels, lists
Comments
1 On Mon, Mar 6, 2006, mike said:
Wow. I've already read eleven of them, with about six others on my reading list right now. All I can say is thank goodness there's no Faulkner on the list. Sheer torture, he is.
2 On Mon, Mar 6, 2006, Steph Mineart said:
Yeah, it seems like they tried to be accessible to people who read for pleasure by not putting too many high-flying, torturous tomes on the list. On my "god, please no" list are Hemingway and friggin' Moby Dick. I wish someone would do an abridged "Moby Dick: Just the Good Stuff" version where they cut out all the crap about whaling industry. That's always where I get bogged down and stop reading.
3 On Tue, Mar 7, 2006, Kris said:
Sheesh! I haven't even read a third of those. The Alchemist is wonderful, if you haven't read it. I will venture to say they should have included Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, as well.
4 On Sat, Jun 10, 2006, EN said:
I've read twelve (and a third of LOTR), and I'm only seventeen. I hope that's not a bad omen ;-) Does anyone else find it sad that they've misspelled "quiet"?
Oh, and there is an edited Moby-Dick that cuts out the parts about the whaling industry. Not sure where to get it--I read the unabridged version.