Before We Die.
…and another List
from the Internet. This is one made up of 100 books we’re all are supposed to read
before we die. There’s a lot of classics in there as you might expect but, at
least as far as I’m concerned a few strange ones too (World War Z?). As before
I’ve highlighted the ones I’ve read in bold and the ones I have in a pile
somewhere with italics.
The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
The Road Less Traveled – Dr. Scott M. Peck
Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
In Cold Blood –
Truman Capote
To Kill a
Mockingbird – Harper Lee
War and Peace – Leo
Tolstoy
The Great Gatsby –
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Three Musketeers
– Alexandre Dumas
Les Miserables –
Victor Hugo
World War Z – Max
Brooks
Education of a
Wandering Man – Louis L’Amour
Watership Down –
Richard Adams
The Iliad – Homer
The Little Prince –
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Color Purple –
Alice Walker
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn
Rand
Paradise Lost – John
Milton
Ulysses – James
Joyce
Dracula – Bram
Stoker
Pride and Prejudice
– Jane Austen
A Tale of Two Cities
– Charles Dickens
Brave New World –
Aldous Huxley
1984 – George Orwell
Of Mice and Men –
John Steinbeck
Gone With the Wind –
Margaret Mitchell
Shogun – James
Clavell
For Whom the Bell
Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
The Stand – Stephen
King
Lady Chatterley’s
Lover – D. H. Lawrence
Heart of Darkness –
Joseph Conrad
The Picture of
Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
War of the Worlds –
H. G. Wells
A Clockwork Orange –
Anthony Burgess
The Prince – Niccolo
Machiavelli
The Art of War – Sun
Tzu
The Scarlet Letter –
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Treasure Island –
Robert Louis Stevenson
Something Wicked
This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
Starship Troopers –
Robert A. Heinlein
Deliverance – James
Dickey
Lord of the Flies –
William Golding
The Dark Knight
Returns – Frank Miller
Season of Mists –
Neil Gaiman
The Princess Bride –
William Goldman
Eaters of the Dead –
Michael Crichton
The Pillars of the
Earth – Ken Follett
Night – Eli Wiesel
Exodus – Leon Uris
Contact – Carl Sagan
You Can’t Go Home
Again – Thomas Wolfe
On the Road – Jack
Kerouac
Blubber – Judy Blume
Foundation – Isaac
Asimov
The Stranger –
Albert Camus
The Trial – Franz
Kafka
Rabbit, Run – John
Updike
Crime and Punishment
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Lion, The Witch
and The Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis
The Long Goodbye –
Raymond Chandler
Absalom, Absalom! –
William Faulkner
Grendel – John
Gardner
Hour of the Dragon –
Robert E. Howard
The Executioner’s
Song – Norman Mailer
Cop Hater – Ed
McBain
Moby Dick – Herman
Melville
A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain
McTeague – Frank
Norris
A Game of Thrones –
George R. R. Martin
Fight Club – Chuck
Palahniuk
Titus Groan – Mervyn
Peake
Slaughterhouse-Five
– Kurt Vonnegut
Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
The Divine Comedy –
Dante
Don Quixote – Miguel
De Cervantes
Robinson Crusoe –
Daniel Defoe
Wuthering Heights –
Emily Bronte
The Wind in the
Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Charlotte’s Web – E.
B. White
One Hundred Years of
Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Magus – John
Fowles
Foucault’s Pendulum
– Umberto Eco
Middlemarch – George
Eliot
Frankenstein – Mary
Shelley
The Complete
Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Complete Shakespeare
– William Shakespeare
Rosemary’s Baby –
Ira Levin
I Am Legend –
Richard Matheson
The Compete Plays of
Aristophanes – Aristophanes
The Science of God –
Gerald L. Schroeder
The Maltese Falcon –
Dashiell Hammett
No Exit – Jean-Paul
Sartre
Alexander of Macedon
– Harold Lamb
Battle Royale –
Koushun Takami
We Have Always Lived
in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
Band of Brothers –
Stephen Ambrose
Ancient Inventions –
Peter James and Nick Thorpe
The Telltale Heart
and Other Writings – Edgar Allan Poe
The Call of the Wild
– Jack London
The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz – Frank Baum
The Canterbury Tales
– Geoffrey Chaucer
Which I guess makes me pretty poorly read....... [grin] But I am working on it - slowly.
5 comments:
World War Z and The Dark Knight Returns?! Sounds like someone is trying to 'improve' the list with their favorites.
World War Z does sound interesting,though. My library has it, but it's low priority in terms of future reads.
I think all lists - no matter their provenience - are slightly idiosyncratic and some more than others! World War Z does show up on several lists I've seen though I do think its probably in there because Zombies are in fashion ATM (and, of course, they're making a movie of it with Brad Pitt!).
Though, like you, it's not exactly high on my list..... [grin]
I'm trying to read more classics and have two coming up fairly shortly. I was considering doing a batch of 10 classics one after the other but I think that's a challenge too far for me right now.
Definitely an interesting list because of the contemporary ones sprinkled in (Game of Thrones, for ex).
Anyway, here goes:
Read:
Hobbit
The Iliad
Atlas Shrugged
Paradise Lost
Pride and Prejudice
Brave New World
1984
Of Mice and Men
War of the Worlds
A Clockwork Orange
The Prince
The Scarlet Letter
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Starship Troopers
Exodus
Contact
Foundation
Fight Club
The Divine Comedy
Rosemary's Baby
I am Legend
Have, but not read:
Catcher in the Rye
In Cold Blood
To Kill a Mockingbird
War and Peace
The Great Gatsby
Rabbit, Run
Crime and Punishment
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Complete Shakespeare (though, I've probably read half of them at one time or another)
I really feel guilty that I haven't read the ones that I have. So many books ... so little time! :-)
I've only actually read about 15. Embarrassing. As for movies, I've seen about 52 of them.
dbackdad said: I really feel guilty that I haven't read the ones that I have. So many books ... so little time! :-)
Definitely with you there on both counts. Although I do read a fair amount and know that most of it is of reasonable quality I do feel that I don't read enough 'quality' books. Maybe that's just my feeling of social inferiority? [lol]
But as you say there are *so* many books....!
v v said: I've only actually read about 15. Embarrassing. As for movies, I've seen about 52 of them.
Better numbers than me! It did make me laugh though - the discrepancy between reading classics and having seen the movie version! I'm most definitely with you on that one!!
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