10 books to read before you die

15 Comments on “10 books to read before you die”

1. BlankCanvas says:

   13 August 2009 at 11:24 am

   great list. although i think that ‘noughts and crosses’ and ‘The time Travellers wife’ should be there somewhere. i’ve read them both recently and they are utterly spectacular. although i must say that lord of the flies is not a book i enjoy, in my opinion of course. but a great list. some of my favourite books are up there. i.e. Jane Eyre, Great expectations and The lord of the rings. Cool list =]

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2. KingCribbage says:

   21 August 2009 at 3:57 pm

   Not a huge fan of Catch-22. Lord of the Rings isn’t great either. But other than that, not bad!

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3. bodhitree says:

   12 September 2009 at 9:37 pm

   its hard to get the list down to 10, not a bad job though.
   I think I’d probably go with the Odessy before the Iliad

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4. wolfstruther says:

   16 September 2009 at 8:15 pm

   Well, I have read Lord of the Flies, The Lord of the Rings (well, The Two Towers and Return of the King, couldn’t seem to get through the first book) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

   Am currently reading 1984 and I received half a dozen Dickens books, Great Expectations included.. so all in all, I’m almost half way there!

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5. Fallen Angel says:

   20 September 2009 at 4:37 pm

   Good list, but I agree with BlackCanvas, the ‘naughts and crosses’ series sould be there and ‘Dracula’ ’cause that book is actually really good. Also ‘The prophecy of the sisters’ is really good too.
   ‘Little Dorrit’ is also a superb Dickens book, just thought you’d want to know.

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6. Hesperus says:

   20 September 2009 at 6:39 pm

   A tremendous read is an autobiography with a difference The Story of San Michele by Axel Munte, a Swedish doctor who felt passionately about animals as well as people, was a gifted hypnotist and spent a lot of time working in Italy, doctoring in fashionable society – also in plague, earthquake and war. He built a famous house on Capri – San Michele. It’s a book that’ll make you cry all right, but laugh yourself silly as well, sometimes, and what a history lesson it is without claiming to be anything.

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7. Hawthorne says:

   23 September 2009 at 9:37 pm

   Ahhh, according to your list, I only have one more to go then my work here is done!

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8. C.P.Ghent says:

   25 September 2009 at 7:43 pm

   Why are all of the books either British or American?
   European literature is far richer than American literature.
   Here are some recommendations:

   ‘The Conformist’ – Alberto Moravia
   ‘Atomised’ – Houellebecq
   ‘The Traveler’ – Szerb
   ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’- Remarque
   ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ – Dostoevsky
   ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ – Marquez
   ‘If this is a Man’ – Levi (US title: ‘Survival in Auschwitz’)

   Just to get the ball rolling.

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9. Sylvia says:

   16 October 2009 at 10:47 pm

   I agree with your list but I think you should include ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy and ‘Lord Jim’ by Joseph Conrad,

   

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10. Weasel says:

    20 October 2009 at 7:57 am

    I agree with some of the choices Catch 22 , 1984, For Whom the Bell Tolls and with Sylvias choice of authors.

    Either Nostromo or Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Vanity Fair – William Thackerary, Sons and Lovers D H Lawrence, The Quiet American – Graham Greene just to throw in a couple of strange ones anything from the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy series Douglas Adams, Train Spotting – Irvine Welsh. All personal favourites, loads others I can’t remember

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11. skip says:

    21 October 2009 at 6:56 pm

    100 books to read before you die:

    1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen x
    2 The Lord of the Rings
    3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte x
    4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
    5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee x
    6 The Bible x
    7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte x
    8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell x
    9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
    10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens x
    11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott x
    12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
    13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller x
    14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
    15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
    16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
    17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
    18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
    19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
    20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
    21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
    22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
    23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
    24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy x
    25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
    26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh x
    27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky x
    28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
    29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll x
    30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame x
    31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy x
    32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens x
    33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis x
    34 Emma – Jane Austen x
    35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
    36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis x
    37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini x
    38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
    39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
    40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne x
    41 Animal Farm – George Orwell x
    42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
    43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez x i of course read cien anos de soledad
    44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
    45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
    46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
    47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy x
    48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
    49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding x
    50 Atonement – Ian McEwan x
    51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel x
    52 Dune – Frank Herbert
    53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
    54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen x
    55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
    56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens x
    58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
    59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon x
    60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
    61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
    62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov x
    63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
    64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold x
    65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas x
    66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
    67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
    68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding x
    69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
    70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
    71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens x
    72 Dracula – Bram Stoker x
    73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett x
    74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson x
    75 Ulysses – James Joyce
    76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath x
    77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
    78 Germinal – Emile Zola x
    79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
    80 Possession – AS Byatt
    81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens x
    82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
    83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker x
    84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro x
    85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
    86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
    87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White x
    88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Alborn x
    89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton x
    91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
    92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
    93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
    94 Watership Down – Richard Adams x
    95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
    96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
    97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
    98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
    99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl x +
    100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo x

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12. Siji A. Sowunmi says:

    31 October 2009 at 2:34 am

    A good idea would be to actually say WHY these are books to read before you die. There is no way on earth I am ever going to read War & Peace as I am simply uninterested in Historical, Romantic or Philosophically themed novels. It would be a colossal waste of time. It’s not even historical like WWII historical, it’s about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia! Thanks, but no thanks.

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13. Adam Jay says:

    13 November 2009 at 12:04 am

    I’ve read To Kill A Mockingbird over and over and over again because of English!! HAHA!
    It gets so boring after a while
    I think the Brian Jacques : Redwall series have to be read before you doe
    And also the Tiffany Aching series of Terry Pratchetts books

    Oh, and The Three Musketeers

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14. BlankCanvas says:

    10 April 2010 at 5:22 pm

    to comment on ’skip’s list, its fantastic, not all are personal favourites bit i spotted at least 20 of my favourite books there, and many others that i highly enjoyed. i also agree with Adam Jay, i am really starting to get bored of to kill a mockingbird, but it was brilliant the first time i read it lol. great books ;P

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15. Authorfiction says:

    11 April 2010 at 4:44 am

    Gregor the overlander series I love boots in this

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