1001 Books You Must Read

[Mannoual]

I saw a list on listology of 1001 books you should read before you die and thought why not try and start one here based on books we have all read. I'm going to begin mine. If you see a book on it you agree with just repost is as is and add your own. # 1 and 2 are my all time favorite books...the rest are in no particular order.

1. War and peace
2. The brothers karamozov
3. Anna karenin
4. A clockwork orange
5. Everything is illuminated
6. One flew over the cukoos nest
7. The world according to garp
8. Shes come undone
9. I know this much is true(by wally lamb)
10. The notebook.
11. Enders game
12. I hope they serve beer in hell (for those with a sense of humor and a love of irony and sarcasm)
13. Watership down
14.The idiot.
15. Harry potter series
16. smashed
17. The portrait of a lady (slow start but it will have you hooked before you know it )
18. The hobbit.

(just for fun: Here is a list of what im planning to read this month- if you have any that you recommend I would love to know)

A brief history of time-Hawking
Ignorance-Milan kundera
A pale view of hills-Ishiguro
On beauty-Zade smith
Jonny got his gun-trumbo
Haunted- Chuck P.
The collector-fowles
1984- Orwell (i cant believe I still haven't read this)
Slow man
In search of lost time.

[dfloyd]

as your full-time reading, you wouldn't get through it in a month. As my literature professor said many years ago, "If you read Proust in bed, you wont have to worry about falling asleep right away."

[applepie]

Here's my list. I've limited it to 20 :)

1. Atlas Shrugged
2. Shakespeare's Sonnets
3. Geek Love
4. A clockwork orange
5. The Time Machine
6. The entire Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series
7. The Prince
8. Enders game
9. The Hobbit
10. A Wrinkle in Time
11. The Cask of Amontillado
12. The Cay - by Theodore Taylor
13. Titus Andronicus
14. Hamlet
15. Harry potter series - enjoyable and worth the read, but not in the same class as some of the other books mentioned here:)
16. Journey to the Center of the Earth
17. Lord of the Flies
18. Animal Farm
19. The Jungle
20. Dracula

[Mannoual]

Yeah, i might need a couple of months but I read pretty fast. I finished about 5 books last month alone. we shall see though

[Dark Muse]

In no particular order

1. Siddhartha
2. Island of the Blue Dolphins (yes it is a kids book but a marvelous story that everyone should read at least once in thier life)
3. The Magus
4. The Fountainhead
5. The Stranger
6. No Exit
7. Complete works of Edgar Allan Poe
8. Paradise Lost
9. The Inferno
10. Frankenstein
11. Still Life with Woodpecker
12. Catcher in the Rye
13. The Little Prince
14. Good Omens
15. Comeplete works of Shakespeare (I know it sounds so cliche and I almost didn't include it but I couldn't resist)
16. The Three Musketeers
17. Middlesex
18. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
19. The Odyssey
20. Notes from Underground

I could go on......but I better draw the line here, or I will get to a full 1000 single-handedly LOL

[bluosean]

Awwww, I loved Island of the Blue Dolphins.

[Dark Muse]

Hehe yes, it still retains a place among my personal faverties.

[mortalterror]

Book of Job
Be Bold by Archilochus
The Oresteia
The Oedipus Cycle
The Bacchae
Lysistrata
The Republic
The Metamorphoses
Thyestes
Satyricon
Pharsalia
Song of the Wagons by Tu Fu
Song of Unending Sorrow by Po Chu-i
Shahnameh
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The Inferno
Montaigne's Essays
Tom O'Bedlam
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Fuente Ovejuna
Life is a Dream
The Maxims of La Rouchefoucauld
Andromache by Racine
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Leopardi's Poems
Danton's Death
Pere Goriot
Ulysses (Tennyson)
A Hero of Our Times
The Three Musketeers
The Cask of Amontillado
The Scarlet Letter
Moby Dick
Walden
Flowers of Evil
Madame Bovary
The Haystack in the Floods
Les Miserables
Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Little Women
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Yellow Wallpaper
The Light that Failed
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Heart of Darkness
The Call of the Wild
The Way of All Flesh
Mending Wall
Of Human Bondage
The Wreck of the Deutschland
Winesburg, Ohio
The Second Coming
The Wasteland
The Most Dangerous Game
Mrs. Dalloway
The Great Gatsby
Steppenwolf
Journey to the End of the Night
Of Mice and Men
Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust
God Down, Moses
The Dwarf
No Exit
1984
Waiting For Godot
Lolita
On the Road
The Catcher in the Rye
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
The Old Man and The Sea
The Shield of Achilles
Howl
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Seize the Day
Catch-22
Everything that Rises Must Converge
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
The Lion in Winter
Slaughterhouse-Five
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fences
Fight Club

[mal4mac]

Why don't we follow the procedure used by "top ten". List your top ten of books you have read that you think others should read before they die *in order*.

Eventually we will get a list of 1001 books in order of the "best" according to LitNet. Here's my list (today!):

1. Hamlet
2. David Copperfield
3. Anna Karenina
4. Don Quixote
5. Jude the Obscure
6. The Symposium - Plato
7. Buddenbrooks
8. Point Counter Point
9. 1984
10. Notes from the Underground

Note - one book per author, one play by Shalespeare (not complete works!), one book of the Biible...

[My name is red]

By the way,it became my guide book
i'm not saying it's the perfect list but i just find it very useful as a referance book

[NickAdams]

This is a list of books that I have read and re-read, or plan on re-reading, and that will be the standard by which I will judge whether or not they are "must reads".

1. Molloy - Samuel Beckett
2. In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway
3. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
4. Inferno - Dante

I will add more later.



Note - one book per author, one play by Shalespeare (not complete works!), one book of the Biible...

I agree. We should be specific. If this is a list of books that must be read before ones death, then we should limit the amount of time spent with a single author.

[Scheherazade]

101 Things to Do in Hell

Judgement Day for Dummies

[Desolation]

I know it's not really the same, but I made a list of 20 authors that I have not read and that do not particularly interest me, but I feel are essential to read at some point for a comprehensive knowledge of literature:

Oscar Wilde
Ernest Hemingway
William Shakespeare
Homer
Victor Hugo
Alexander Dumas
Dante
John Milton
William Faulkner
Pushkin
JD Salinger
Mark Twain
Jack London
Gustave Flaubert
John Steinbeck
The Bible
Charles Dickens
Miguel de Cervantes
Honore de Balzac
Ovid

Well, some of those do interest me quite a bit, actually. Just not as much as certain other authors. I'm hoping that I get most of them out of the way through college classes.

[toni]

1) Hamlet
2) Tess of the D'Urbervilles
3) Portrait of a Lady
4) Hard Times
5) Oscar Wilde's plays
6) The Bible
7) Lord of the Flies
8) Tales of Mystery and Terror

Will come back after browsing through my collection ;)

[DanielBenoit]

Excellent first choice!

[toni]

It's bordering on obsession :p

[DanielBenoit]

Been bording on obsession for me ever since first reading it.

[mal4mac]

I agree. We should be specific. If this is a list of books that must be read before ones death, then we should limit the amount of time spent with a single author.

That wasn't my reason for limiting the list. I just didn't want to fill it with one author. Why should we limit the amount of time we spend with Shakespeare? A.N. Wilson reads King Lear once a month!



6) The Bible


Not allowed :D One book please...

[mortalterror]

Mal4mac we did that already. The vote lasted for months and we came up with http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40711 It's stuck on the top of the General literature forum.

[snowshoes]

1 the chronicles of Narnia. CS Lewis
2 Worlds end series. Upton sinclair 8 volumes over 7000 pages but one story. Very important read to be able to understand politics in the world today.
3 The Bible
4 War and peace. Tolstoy
5 The rise and fall of the third Reich
6 The Grapes of wrath. Stienbeck
7 And no birds sang. Mowat
8 For whom the bell tolls. Hemmingway.
9 The adventures of Sherlock Holms
10 The history of WW2 Winston Churchill

[NickAdams]

I know it's not really the same, but I made a list of 20 authors that I have not read and that do not particularly interest me, but I feel are essential to read at some point for a comprehensive knowledge of literature:

Oscar Wilde
Ernest Hemingway
William Shakespeare
Homer
Victor Hugo
Alexander Dumas
Dante
John Milton
William Faulkner
Pushkin
JD Salinger
Mark Twain
Jack London
Gustave Flaubert
John Steinbeck
The Bible
Charles Dickens
Miguel de Cervantes
Honore de Balzac
Ovid

Well, some of those do interest me quite a bit, actually. Just not as much as certain other authors. I'm hoping that I get most of them out of the way through college classes.

It is an interesting list; thanks for sharing it.


That wasn't my reason for limiting the list. I just didn't want to fill it with one author. Why should we limit the amount of time we spend with Shakespeare? A.N. Wilson reads King Lear once a month!


If that one author is worth reading than why not? Because Shakespeare is neither the center, nor the only writer.

I don't know who A.N. Wilson is, but what does it matter if he reads it once a month when you still ranked Hamlet as your Shakespeare must read.

Faulkner read Don Quijote once a year and David Foster Wallace's top ten are:

1. The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
2. The Stand - Stephen King
3. Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
4. The Thin Red Line - James Jones
5. Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
6. The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
7. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
8. Fuzz - Ed McBain
9. Alligator - Shelley Katz
10. The Sum of All Fears - Tom Clancy

These things are merely curiosities and I'm only curious because I think both Faulkner and Wallace are damn fine writers, but my opinion comes before theirs. I read In Our Time every couple of months and some might see that as waste of time.


Mal4mac we did that already. The vote lasted for months and we came up with http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40711 It's stuck on the top of the General literature forum.

I could have guessed that Crime and Punishment would top the list. I'm going to have to read it this year.

[Griffith]

15. Harry potter series


I can´t imagine myself dying without reading this masterpiece. This work exceeds The Bible in complexity and wisdom. :rolleyes:

[mal4mac]

I don't know who A.N. Wilson is, but what does it matter if he reads it once a month...


He's a well known British critic (in Britain!) I wasn't criticising him for doing this, I just found it an amazing level of re-reading. Maybe it's justified in Shakespeare's case. Maybe I'll try it...

There's another list to make! Who do you re-read obsessively? Or have you any examples of obsessive re-reading? Harold Bloom re-reads "Pickwick Papers" once a year and "A Tale of a Tub" three times a year.

[NickAdams]

There's another list to make! Who do you re-read obsessively? Or have you any examples of obsessive re-reading? Harold Bloom re-reads "Pickwick Papers" once a year and "A Tale of a Tub" three times a year.

Now we're getting somewhere. This is far more interesting and tells a great deal about its reader. Those are two books that Bloom has mentioned, but it's safe to say that there are others that he re-reads (particularly poetry).

[DanielBenoit]

I could have guessed that Crime and Punishment would top the list. I'm going to have to read it this year.

You are in for a paranoid and delerious ride :nod:.

Though if you've already read Dostoyevsky you already knew that.


Also, I have made it a goal to re-read Ulysess every year (starting Bloomsday), I held this tradition the first two years but missed my chance this year.

[papayahed]

101 Things to Do in Hell

Judgement Day for Dummies

:lol::lol:

They're at the top of my list.

[Taliesin]

You know reading books before death is all nice and stuff but I think that we are in grave need (no pun intended) for a topic called `Books you should read after you die`.

[mal4mac]

You know reading books before death is all nice and stuff but I think that we are in grave need (no pun intended) for a topic called `Books you should read after you die`.

Dante's inferno - or is it better not to know?

[Scheherazade]

`Books you should read after you die`.Teleportation for Dummies

Angels Are From Heaven, Ghouls Are From Hell

How to Haunt Your Enemies in 10 Lessons

[Eggys]

1. The War of the Worlds
2. The Bible
3. The Myst Reader (sounds silly, but give it a chance)
4. Atlas Shrugged
5. The Sherlock Holmes series
6. The Lord of the Rings Series
7. Slaughterhouse-Five
8. The Great Gatsby
9. The Jungle
10. Dracula
11. The Time Machine
12. Les Misérables
13. The Scarlet Letter
14. The Crucible
15. Frankestien
16. The Pilgrim's Progress
17. Angels and Demons
18. The Da Vinci Code
19. Don Quixote
20. The Kite Runner
Oh, and how can I forget Dune?

[NickAdams]

You are in for a paranoid and delerious ride :nod:.

Though if you've already read Dostoyevsky you already knew that.


Also, I have made it a goal to re-read Ulysess every year (starting Bloomsday), I held this tradition the first two years but missed my chance this year.

I've read Notes From the Underground ... Ok, I read the first part of it. I have to read it before the years out ... I'll read it this month!:nod:

Ulysses is another book I HAVE to read. I sat have to, because I attended a Bloomsday event a year or two ago (because Stephen Colbert was going to be reading a chapter), and I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read it. There are so few literary events. I thought I might start with a chapter a week, or every two weeks. Do you think that's realistic?

[Sancho]

Nick, if you get a chance, you'd probably enjoy the Literary-Pub-Crawl in Dublin. It takes you to a bunch of Joyce’s old hang-outs as well as by many of the places he wrote about in Ulysses. Like your Bloomsday event, I did the crawl then read the book. Now I’ve gotta do the crawl again. Yay!

[DanielBenoit]

I've read Notes From the Underground ... Ok, I read the first part of it. I have to read it before the years out ... I'll read it this month!:nod:

Ulysses is another book I HAVE to read. I sat have to, because I attended a Bloomsday event a year or two ago (because Stephen Colbert was going to be reading a chapter), and I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read it. There are so few literary events. I thought I might start with a chapter a week, or every two weeks. Do you think that's realistic?

Omg :eek:! That was probably the funniest thing ever! Did he really come? That better be on youtube :lol:.

Yeah sure it sounds realistic. I've always found it much better to absorb a great novel than rush through it. I'm planning to read Finnegans Wake soon, and will probably do something of the same thing.

Though I must warn you, don't get out a magnify glass and start analyzing each and every word that Joyce says, just read and enjoy the music of it.

By the way, it might be better if you read Dubliners first, then Portrait of an Artist. Though it doesn't really matter, I didn't :D.

[kingoflombards]

1. "Dr. Franklin's Island" is a good psychological scifi.
2. "The Giver" Gets you thinking about what is ethical.
3. "Brave New World" It is a creepy *** book. Even scarier when you read "Brave New World Revisited".
4. "The Dunnwich Horror" is a mind gnawing horror by HP Lovecraft. It doesn't seem scary at first.....

[Drkshadow03]

There is only one correct answer to this, of course. Anything I manage to publish in the future! :brow:

[kingoflombards]

Rock on dude! :banana::banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:
:banana::banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:

[mal4mac]

Ulysses is another book I HAVE to read...

Me to.

I'm reading "Ulysses and us" by Declan Kiberd at the moment and am finding it very motivating - read the first thirty pages in the book shop!

Having tried to "just read" Ulysses before (a dismal failure) I think I need a guide. Kiberd's excellent "motivator" doesn't seem sufficient for that. He recommends Stewart Gilbert. But other guides get recommended by others (Gibson, Wilson, Burgess, even Cliff Notes...)

Has anyone a favoured step-by-step guide to Ulysses?

P.S. Beware of the Oxford Classics Edition, the size of the print is incredibly small. The Penguin is a nice paperback edition.

[NickAdams]

Sooooooooooooooooooo frustrated: I just wrote a long post, but the log ing failed and I lost it.:rage:

I'll cool down and try again later.

[Adagio]

As easy as it sounds a books-to-read-before-death list is pretty hard to formulate, as I yet have to read alot. Of what I've read:

Shakespeare's tragedies
The poetry of John Keats
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Translations - Friel
Howards End - Forster
Wuthering Heights - Bronte
As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
Les Miserables - Hugo
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck

Out of all I have read, I'd say, those are essential reading. Shakespeare is an obvious choice. The rest need be read because they all present us with what it is to be human; what the Bard famously termed as 'full sound and fury'.

[NickAdams]

Physics anyone?


As easy as it sounds a books-to-read-before-death list is pretty hard to formulate, as I yet have to read alot. Of what I've read:

Shakespeare's tragedies
The poetry of John Keats
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Translations - Friel
Howards End - Forster
Wuthering Heights - Bronte
As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
Les Miserables - Hugo
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck

Out of all I have read, I'd say, those are essential reading. Shakespeare is an obvious choice. The rest need be read because they all present us with what it is to be human; what the Bard famously termed as 'full sound and fury'.

I picked up Keats yesterday.:thumbs_up

[mal4mac]

Physics? Check out "physics forum". They have even more lists than this forum! Careful though, you might get drowned in recommendations for advanced textbooks on Quantum Field Theory. For those who just want a quick overview:

"A Briefer History of Time" by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow (update & simplification of "Brief")

I've a physics degree but I didn't find this too simplistic, and I would give it to friends who gave up physics at 14. Difficult to think of a better recommendation for a quick, overall view of the state of play in physics & cosmology for "everyman". Might give you a feeling that you have a "reasonable" grasp of these matters before you die. Still lots of unanswered questions though :D

[Janine]

I keep seeing this thread crop up and I say to myself in answer - "all of them!"..I really mean all the classics I have heard mentioned on this forum. I am not sure I can achieve all of that at my age....haha....

[Three Sparrows]

Why does everyone keep talking about Uysses? Is it really a must read? I admit, all this talk is getting me curious.
Anyway, the only book you need to read before you die is the Bible-other wise you will need that Guide Book to Hell.
Just sayin'...

[NickAdams]

Physics? Check out "physics forum". They have even more lists than this forum! Careful though, you might get drowned in recommendations for advanced textbooks on Quantum Field Theory. For those who just want a quick overview:

"A Briefer History of Time" by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow (update & simplification of "Brief")

I've a physics degree but I didn't find this too simplistic, and I would give it to friends who gave up physics at 14. Difficult to think of a better recommendation for a quick, overall view of the state of play in physics & cosmology for "everyman". Might give you a feeling that you have a "reasonable" grasp of these matters before you die. Still lots of unanswered questions though :D

Thanks. Have you read The Second Creation?

I attempted to post a lone recommendation on a Ulysses guide in which I quoted from The Art of James Joyce, but The Bloomsday Book by Harry Blamires might be worth looking into.

[mortalterror]

Ulysses might be on that list if anyone had ever managed to finish it. I'm still waiting for the English translation.

[NickAdams]

Ulysses might be on that list if anyone had ever managed to finish it. I'm still waiting for the English translation.

:lol:

[Scheherazade]

Ulysses might be on that list if anyone had ever managed to finish it. Or it might be the probably cause of death for those who attempt to finish it.

[NickAdams]

Nick, if you get a chance, you'd probably enjoy the Literary-Pub-Crawl in Dublin. It takes you to a bunch of Joyce’s old hang-outs as well as by many of the places he wrote about in Ulysses. Like your Bloomsday event, I did the crawl then read the book. Now I’ve gotta do the crawl again. Yay!

Pub?! You've said the magic word.:nod:


Omg :eek:! That was probably the funniest thing ever! Did he really come? That better be on youtube :lol:.

Yeah sure it sounds realistic. I've always found it much better to absorb a great novel than rush through it. I'm planning to read Finnegans Wake soon, and will probably do something of the same thing.

Though I must warn you, don't get out a magnify glass and start analyzing each and every word that Joyce says, just read and enjoy the music of it.

By the way, it might be better if you read Dubliners first, then Portrait of an Artist. Though it doesn't really matter, I didn't :D.

He canceled at the very last minute, but there were a group of older men reading the Cyclops episode and that made up for it.

I don't bring out the magnifying glass until the second read, at least. I attempted analyzing three books on my first read and I never completed them (Notes From the Underground, Midnight's Children and Portrait of an Artist). I usually read the book in its entirety, then focus on chapters, then paragraphs, then sentences and only then do I focus on the individual words; I've only done that to In Our Time.

I love Dubliners, particularly the stories of youth, but when I say that I immediately think of the other stories I enjoyed: Little Cloud, Two Gallants, Grace ... I love Dubliners.:lol:

[mal4mac]

Thanks. Have you read The Second Creation

No. And I'm not going to. I'm in pursuit of aesthetic value. The standard of writing in most popular physics books isn't very good, and I already know most of the physics. So reading popular physics isn't my idea of fun.

[DanielBenoit]

I love Dubliners, particularly the stories of youth, but when I say that I immediately think of the other stories I enjoyed: Little Cloud, Two Gallants, Grace ... I love Dubliners.:lol:

Oh yes me too. If ever were there to be a short story collection that would be ranked highest among 20th century literature, it would be Dubliners. There are so many subtle moments that say so much about life. But that's just my opinioin.

[kingoflombards]

Read "the Pearl" by John Steinbeck. It is a sad book, but engaging.

Has anyone here read "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer? It's a good one.

[balehead]

The Portarit of a Lady
The Secret Agent
The Hobbit
Crime and Punsihment
The Ill-Made Mute
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
American Psycho
Moby Dick
Wuthering Heights
A Tale of Two Cities
---
And many, many more ......

[blazeofglory]

There are numbers of books I want to read and of course the Mahabharata, war & peace, Ulysses, the Manusmriti, the Bible top the list and indeed there are plenty of other books I choose to read and now I am on Dostoevsky and there are books by Kafka. I am a bookworm and the number of books I want to read is innumerable in point of fact. It is an endless length. I can stretch the list infinitely

[nocturnal_90s]

Awwww, I loved Island of the Blue Dolphins.

OMG, I read this book such a long time ago. I remember I loved it too, but I forgot what it was about...NO!!!:flare:

[Inka]

All Kuprin
All Dostoevskyi
All Tolstoi
All Esenin
All Gorkyi
All Byron
All Paustovskyi
All Yeats
All Bunin
All Bradbury
All London
and more, and more, and more.....
I'm sorry that most of them are Russian writers but I can do nothing since they're the best.
In fact I strongly believe that there're so many books you should read before you die that one just can't list all of them, therefore the question seems to be incorrect to me
IMHO :)

[mal4mac]

All Kuprin
I'm sorry that most of them are Russian writers but I can do nothing since they're the best.

Shakespeare? Goethe? Proust? Dante? Ibsen?


In fact I strongly believe that there're so many books you should read before you die that one just can't list all of them, therefore the question seems to be incorrect to me
IMHO :)
Good point. Surely the question should be: "Which are the best books, in order from best to worst?" Then you can start reading from the top...

Obviously, critics differ, in detail, about 'best' and 'worst', but there seems to be a reasonabale consensus aboout who appears high up the list - and it doesn't matter if Hamlet is top of critics A list, and War & Peace is the top of critic B's list. 'ciuase you will have time to read both (read Hamlet first if you are a very slow reader or have only a month to live :)

I disagree with you recommending people to read "All Tolstoy, All..." Critics seldom seem to recommend that you read all of anyone, which makes sense. Why would you read works that were, say, apprentice works, works quickly produced for money, works affected by senility/decline, hurried letters, unpolished works, incomplete works, failed experiments... All major authors have produced works in one or more of these categories. Would you recommend Shakespeare's least acclaimed play before the best works of all other authors you might read before you die?

[Mockingbird_z]

+ 1 to read Ulysses (Joyce's) but I am afraid I won't be able to read it in English - too difficult.
10 books I'd recommend to read
1. Dostoevsky's The Devils
2. Shakespeare - Hamlet
3. Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath
4. Chechov - (well his short stories and plays - won't take much time ;)
5. The Bible
6. Salinger The Catcher in the rye
7. Orwell 1984
8. Ray Bradbury Dandellion Wine
9. Garcia Marquez A Hundred years of Solitude
10. The Little Prince

[Inka]

Shakespeare? Goethe? Proust? Dante? Ibsen?
they're in "and more, and more, and more"))


hurried letters, unpolished works, incomplete works, failed experiments...
"Peter 1" by A. Tolstoy is an incomplete work. So, do you offer me not to read it?.... or letters or memories of an any writer?
Of course one should distinguish a good work from a failure, moreover in most cases a failed experiment is obvious. Thus, we mustn't put letters, drafts or incomplete woks aside cos sometimes they may conclude some interesting thoughts which may be censored while publishing. Or you may find an interesting information about characters.


Would you recommend Shakespeare's least acclaimed play before the best works of all other authors you might read before you die?
I would, but why not?

[mal4mac]

"Peter 1" by A. Tolstoy is an incomplete work. So, do you offer me not to read it?.... or letters or memories of an any writer?
Of course one should distinguish a good work from a failure, moreover in most cases a failed experiment is obvious. Thus, we mustn't put letters, drafts or incomplete woks aside cos sometimes they may conclude some interesting thoughts which may be censored while publishing. Or you may find an interesting information about characters.


Good point on "incomplete works" - i don't know "Peter 1", but I couldn't miss Dickens' Edwin Drood off the list! I guess when I said "incomplete works" I meant something like "very rough first drafts".

Surely even great writers have written a lot of trivial letters. Why would you want to read them all? If you are a scholar writing a biography of a particular writer then you would want to, have to, read everything - in fact you should do this to save everyone else having to wade through the trivia :)

I guess if you become obsessed by a writer who seems like a soul mate it's understandable that you should want to read everything by them, but it shouldn't be encouraged. You may end up reading Tolstoy's laundry list when you haven't yet read all of Chekhov's Tales...

[Inka]

mal4mac

Tolstoy's laundry list
you know, since Tolstoy's laundry list can show us what were people wearing in the end of the 19th century, so why not, moreover it would show us what were his pupils wearing in Yasnaya Polyana (a school founded by Tolstoy for peasant children))


I guess if you become obsessed by a writer who seems like a soul mate it's understandable that you should want to read everything by them
This is a good point, I totally agree with you

Only while reading even trivial letters we may learn more about writers, about their characters, for example, I read Mozart's biography and there the author qouted some of Mozarts trivial letters, so that the readers would learn about his nature and life.


"Peter the First" is a novel by one of Russian writers - A. Tolstoy (not Leo Tolstoy). It describes life of the Russian tzar Peter 1, but unfortunately the author died without completing the story.

[mal4mac]

mal4mac
This is a good point, I totally agree with you.

But don't forget what else I said! In general I don't think this it would be a good thing to try and read everything by anyone, even your soul mate.

Point taken about reading the odd trivial letter by Mozart in a collection (severely) edited by a biographer. But this is not reading *all* letters. You might want to read Mozart's laundry list once, but for every week?

[Inka]

mal4mac
ok, now we both are overdoing a little. Don't rush into extremes. I didn't mean we should read even trivial letters and when I wrote it I was thinking only about their works. Nevertheless it's a history which we should know, moreover it always helps us to learn the writer's personality, to learn about his life , in additional it's a good supply of information about the time which he lived in, that is why everything is important :)

[mal4mac]

mal4mac
I didn't mean we should read even trivial letters and when I wrote it I was thinking only about their works. Nevertheless it's a history which we should know, moreover it always helps us to learn the writer's personality, to learn about his life , in additional it's a good supply of information about the time which he lived in, that is why everything is important :)

You did say "All ...". That must be taken as including their letters, as letters are definitely an accepted form of literature. I agree it is good to know something of the history of the writer, and some of that can be obtained from some letters. But, surely, one should turn to the best biography of the writer concerned for this?

I'm reading Ellman's wonderful biography of James Joyce at the moment, which is about 800 pages long and contains many extracts from Joyce's letters. Although I'm really getting into Joyce, I don't think I'll read anything more than this biography and his three main works (and maybe Finnegan's Wake if I'm feeling brave enough :) There are too many great works by other great writers I haven't read, and why should I read (say) Joyce's complete poems & letters rather than, say, Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain?

We only have finite lives, you need to know when to skip.

What really put me off this "read it all" path was reading George Orwell's 1984 and thinking 'I must read all of Orwell's novels'. Unfortunately I followed this whim. I was warned by the critics! They say his other novels aren't up too much. They are right.

[Inka]

mal4mac
you know, everything is so interesting and important that it's hard for me to choose smth. I know that they read letters or memories or anything of the like and they become really knowledgeable and I believe it's possible for everyone, only it's hard as any hard work.
The question itself is strange. I was thinking if I had a chance to survive in nuclear war and to take a few books with me, which books would I choose? Actually, this question is similar to the title of this topic. I was trying to answer this question many times by myself and came to the conclusion that there's no book I'd like to throw out. Even culinary books. It's hard to choose - every knowledge is important. IMHO :)

[Dinkleberry2010]

I'm 62, and there are still a number of books that for one reason or another I have not been able to read but I want to before I kick the old proverbial bucket; among them are Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, A Farewell To Arms, Look Homeward Angel, Of Time And The River, Absalom, Absalom!, Requiem For A Nun, Magister Ludi, The Naked And The Dead, and Gravity's Rainbow.

[IceM]

My top 15:

1) Crime and Punishment
2) The Inferno
3) The Illiad
4) Catch-22
5) Macbeth
6) The Sound and the Fury
7) The Idiot
8) The Brothers Kamakarasov*?
9) The Mismeasure of Man
10)The Red Badge of Courage
11) Hamlet
12) The Metamorphosis*
13) Faust
14) The Stranger
15) Go Tell It on the Mountain


Mega fiction buff.

[Patrick_Bateman]

Sorry if already mentioned

American Psycho
Fahrenheit 451
Crime and Punishment
For Whom the Bell Tolls
A Farewell To Arms
Slaughterhouse 5
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Stalingrad
Rise and Fall of The Third Reich
Bright Lights, Big City
1984

[blazeofglory]

The Upanishads, War and Peace, the Mahabharata,

Divine Comedy by Dante

[cookiesandmilk]

Mans search for meaning: Viktor E. Frankl
The Shack: William P.Young
Paradise Lost: John Milton
A Handmaids tale: Margaret Atwood

just a few that come to mind

[MarkC]

The list as per my preferrence:-
1.About a Boy - Nick Hornby (1998)
2.Advise and Consent - Allen Drury (1959)
3.The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (1921)
4.The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho (1988)
5.Ali and Nino - Kurban Said (1970)

Best of Luck...:-)

[ennison]

Not long finished "The Garden of The Finzi Continis". Bit of a disappointment but I can't help feeling that it would read very differently in Italian. Maybe someone who has read it in the original could confirm .... or deny.

[IJustMadeThatUp]

I actually started reading my way through the list, but have lost my way :lol: It seemed like a good list to start with, and my reading list has branched out just like I planned.

Anybody elsed one the same? Have you counted how many of the books you've read out of the 1001?

[kingoflombards]

Anyone read "The Catcher in the Rye"? 'Tis a fair book to read.

[Senior2315]

I looked around for another thread referring to this book but didn't find one, so I hope I'm not making a duplicate.

I'm not sure how many of you have seen the list of '1001 books you must read before you die.' The list was published as a book in 2006, and while it is clearly missing some classics and doesn't contain any of the more recent books, it does contain quite a collection of literature published in the past 3 centuries (including a handful of books published before 1700). The link to the list is: http://www.listology.com/list/1001-books-you-must-read-you-die

I was just wondering how many books from the list y'all have read. I have a lot of books on my plate right now, but I'd like to eventually mosey my way though this list and try to read what I can, since the books I've read were mostly read in my junior high and high school years.

For those of you who'd like to keep track of what you've read, there's also a nice little interactive spreadsheet that can be downloaded and can keep track of the books you've read. It takes a while to go through all 1001, but it's convenient for later referrals. The spreadsheet can be found here: http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?page_id=1806 . I downloaded the free lite version.

[Patrick_Bateman]

Less Than Zero is on the list.

Says it all

no thought went into compiling it at all.

I love Easton Ellis but that novel is trash.

and 4 Salman Rushdie books??

The Satanic Verses is convoluted and unreadable.

Needs more Hemingway and Balzac and where is Arthur Koestler's 'Darkness At Noon' ??

The list got better as I scrolled lower

[Alexander III]

It doesn't have Hamlet....

[Patrick_Bateman]

I've probably vented on this already.

[keilj]

only 1 book by Twain? - what a complete farce

[OrphanPip]

Idk about ranking works on the basis that everybody must read them. I can rank my own top favourites though, but that's just entirely the ones I like and I realize that has no real bearing on what others MUST read.

In drama:

1. The Tempest (my favourite Shakespeare)
2. Hedda Gabler (my favourite Ibsen)
3. Mrs. Warrens Profession - Shaw
4. Waiting for Godot - Beckett
5. Glass Menagerie - T. Williams (this one is less important than the others but simply a personal preference).

In novels:

1. Emma by Jane Austen (I dare you to mock me for picking Austen as my favourite ;) )
2. The Sound and The Fury by Faulkner
3. Howards End by Forster
4. Great Expectations by Dickens
5. Anna Karenina (I prefer this to War and Peace)
6. The Stranger by Camus (I've read this over a few times since high school)
7. An honorable mention goes to Dostoevsky's The Idiot for turning me onto literary fiction after I encountered it at 13 in the school library, though after going through most of Dostoevsky's novels in high school, my love for him has diminished a great deal over the years.
8. If on a winter's night a traveler by Calvino, a real gem but I haven't had a chance to explore Calvino's other work.

I suppose that's what I've got, I don't read novels as much as I used to.

Poetry: Very hard to rank relatively for me, so here's a list of poets I like.

Donne
Pope
Cummings
Keats
I'm currently working through the poems of Ben Johnson.

Short fiction: In no particular order.

Flannery O'Connor
Hemingway
Faulkner
Alice Munro
Guy de Maupassant
Edgar Allan Poe

These authors and works clearly reflect my anglo-centric perspective, I read French fluently but I'm not a big partaker in French literature, I suppose that arises from having to learn French out of necessity rather than desire. Moreover, the list simply reflect my personal preference and are in no way a judgment of the significance or influence of the works.

[keilj]

In drama:

1. The Tempest (my favourite Shakespeare)
2. Hedda Gabler (my favourite Ibsen)
3. Mrs. Warrens Profession - Shaw
4. Waiting for Godot - Beckett
5. Glass Menagerie - T. Williams (this one is less important than the others but simply a personal preference).




Pip, I only started reading Shaw. What do you think of The Apple Cart or Man and Superman??

PS - I'd have to throw a play by Arthur Miller into any drama list

[OrphanPip]

Pip, I only started reading Shaw. What do you think of The Apple Cart or Man and Superman??

PS - I'd have to throw a play by Arthur Miller into any drama list

I haven't read Man and Superman, I like The Apple Cart alright, but I'm not sure it's anything too great.

I think I left Miller off there because I put Williams on the list, and it felt like two post-war American dramatist was lacking diversity. Death of a Salesman is a brilliant and iconic piece of theatre though.

[keilj]

I haven't read Man and Superman, I like The Apple Cart alright, but I'm not sure it's anything too great.

I think I left Miller off there because I put Williams on the list, and it felt like two post-war American dramatist was lacking diversity. Death of a Salesman is a brilliant and iconic piece of theatre though.

I loved the first act of Man and Superman - but then it fell off into a kind of cold philosophical book.

I felt like The Apple Cart was almost totally cold philosophy. (good, and sometimes brilliant philosophy - but still - not much heart) I guess I was curious if most of Shaw's stuff is characterized by this.


thanks Pip

[OrphanPip]

I loved the first act of Man and Superman - but then it fell off into a kind of cold philosophical book.

I felt like The Apple Cart was almost totally cold philosophy. (good, and sometimes brilliant philosophy - but still - not much heart) I guess I was curious if most of Shaw's stuff is characterized by this.


thanks Pip

He has a well earned reputation for direct, didactic passages. Mrs. Warren's Profession is less philosophy and abstract political commentary, but it is certainly trying to push Shaw's ideological views on the issue of prostitution and woman's independence. (edit: It has more of a typical dramatic plot)

Shaw also had this tendency of publishing explanations of all his plays, not shy at all about telling readers what he intended.

[DanielBenoit]

My list in no particular or complete order of the best of the best of the best of my favorites:

Shakespeare's King Lear, Hamlet, Henry IV
Joyce's Ulysses, Dubliners, Finnegan's Wake
Eliot's The Waste Land, Four Quartet's
The Book of Genesis
The Book of Job
The Book of Ecclesiastics
Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching
Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling
Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Gay Science
Spensers' Epithalamium
Milton's Paradise Lost
Emerson's Experience
Montaigne's Experience
Kafka's The Judgement
Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Homer's Illiad
Whitman's When Lilac's in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Endgame
Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, Notes from the Underground
Keats' Odes
Any numerous works of Dickinson, Wang Wei, Du Fu, Rumi, Donne, Pope, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Shelly, etc., etc., etc.. . . . . . .

King Lear and Hamlet are probably my most cherished literary works, while Ulysses probably provided me with the greatest reading experience.

I do indeed believe that everyone should read at least one of the works of Shakespeare and Montaigne before they die, along with the Tao Te Ching (whether as an religious or irreligious reading). Don Quioxte would probably be on the list too, but alas I have yet to read it :( Hopefully I don't die tomorrow. :eek2:

I also desperately need to read Dante, Proust, Goethe, etc......

[Rores28]

It doesn't have Hamlet....

yeah newsflash.... Hamlet sux

[MadcapLaugher]

Crime and Punishment
Infinite Jest
Fight Club
The Crying of Lot 49
Gravity's Rainbow
Candide
Uylsses
Nausea
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Old Man and the Sea
Notes From The Undergound
Catcher In The Rye
The Great Gatsby
1984
Animal Farm


That's all I got for now.

[Serena03]

The thing is, majority of the books I read are usually non-fiction. But here are some favorites off the top pf my head in no order:

War and Peace-Tolstoy
A History of English Speaking Peoples(series)-Churchill
The Odyssey-Homer
Decent of Man-Darwin
Chronicles of Narnia-Lewis
David Copperfield-Dickens
Oliver Twist-Dickens-Complete Sherlock Homes-Doyle
Uncle Tom's Cabin-Stowe
Candide-Voltaire
A Christmas Carol-Dickens
Lord of the Rings Trilogy-Tolkin
The Canterbury Tales-Chancer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer-Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-Twain
Beowulf
Interpretation of Dreams-Freud
Animal Fam-Orwell
1984-Orwell
Complete Essays-Orwell
A Treatise of Human Nature-Hume
Apology-Plato
Beyond Good and Evil-Nietzsche
Island of Dr. Monreau-Wells
Alice in Wonder Land/Through the Looking Glass-Carroll
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz-Baum
Anything by Shakespeare
The Second World War-Churchill


The list goes on and on.....

[OrphanPip]

I'm surprised people still read Darwin, although the major ideas were sound, he lacked a great deal of knowledge and most of his ideas are a bit antiquated.

Apparently, my alma mater, McGill, still receives letters addressed to our former principal, Sir John Dawson, for his ardent anti-Darwinian arguments, made roughly 160 years ago.

[Patrick_Bateman]

The thing is, majority of the books I read are usually non-fiction. But here are some favorites off the top pf my head in no order:


Candide-Voltaire

The Second World War-Churchill




I was given a pristine first edition collection of this by my Granddad. I haven't read them yet because I always though Churchill would be too verbose and grandiloquent with the pen, like he was with his tongue.

Can it be a slog sometimes reading him?


I also have an early edition of some Voltaire works

I read a third of Candide and found it utterly interminable.
Should I re-visit?

[bouquin]

I have read more than 120 of the books on the list. Right now I'm on Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia (#184 the last time I looked).