Monday, August 29, 2011

Towering (and Ambitious) Bedside Book Stacks


The other day a member of the Houston Writer’s Guild sent me an email with a list of the “top 100 books to read before you die”. As I perused the list, I realized that there are many books on it that I’ve always mean to read but never got around to. There are even more books that I read so long ago that I barely remember them (or "read" for summer homework in high school when I was more interested in going to the beach). So, I’ve decided to take on a new project.

I plan on reading (or rereading) every book on this list that I haven’t opened in the last five years. Even the ones that I really hated the first time (that’s right Hemmingway – I’m talking to you).

For those of you who are interested, here’s the complete list. Furthermore, if there are any books not on the list that someone feels should be, I welcome the addition. I personally find it inexcusable that Dante’s Inferno, Paradise Lost and The Zombie Survival Guide are missing – but that’s neither here nor there. So for now, these are the books that will be adorning my nightstand for the next few months...

Top 100 Books to Read Before You Die:
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
 
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
 
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
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
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
 
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
 

34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemmingway  
 
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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.
 
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
 
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
 
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
 
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
 
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
 
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
 
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
 
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce 
 
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
 
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt.
 
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 
 
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 
 
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
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
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

27 comments:

  1. My first thought...who came up with this list? My second thought...knowing you and your knowledge of the written word, I'd like to see (and would seriously consider) your list of what to read before kicking the proverbial bucket:)

    Just glanced over the list but don't think I saw The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Would also add The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

    Go for it:)

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  2. Dagny Taggart is one of my favorite female characters of all time. Great suggestion Terry! I have not yet read The Help though - I will add it to my list!!

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