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Books to Read Before You Die

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Posted March 2nd 2012 at 10:58 PM by goonybug96

For my first actual blog: Books to Read (before you die)

I have a stack of books taller than me that I really want to read (and those are just the books that I own). I’ve been searching the web for a list of books that I should read before I die, and found quite a few different lists. (In fact, there is actually a book called 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die). Some lists are just American classics; others list books that go as far back as Homer’s The Iliad, and The Odyssey, along with Beowulf (Anonymous). And others are more modernized with books like Harry Potter.

I’m using (and editing just a bit) a list that I found on a blog by Wither (http://blackespresso.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/100-books-to-read-before-you-die/ )

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom – I’ve read Tuesdays with Morrie though!
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Oh no! I’ve only read 8 (well, 14 considering that Harry Potter has 7 books). How many have you read?
For my next blog I’ll have a list of Classics to read (the kind that are free for the Kindle…)

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	I've read about fourteen of those, and bits and pieces of about ten more. A lot of the ones I've read were series though, like Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, so I guess technically it's more. I've heard of most of them at least, which is a good sign. Although, seriously, War and Peace? I don't know anyone who's actually read that all the way through. Isn't it really long?
	Posted March 3rd 2012 at 02:19 AM by Storyteller.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sidhe.

Although, seriously, War and Peace? I don't know anyone who's actually read that all the way through. Isn't it really long?

Les Miserables is also very long (longer by a couple hundred pages, but that probably depends on what copy of the book you get).

I admit, I stole the list from the blog mentioned, but I did look over the titles, and cut out a few. But I would at least like to attempt all of the books on the list. I can't even count how many times I've tried to read the Hobbit.

Posted March 4th 2012 at 03:29 AM by goonybug96 goonybug96 is offline

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