The List – 100 Books to read
100 Books To Read Before I Die
| Number | Title | Author | Rating |
| 1 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | J.K. Rowling | 7/07 ***** |
| 2 | Tess of the D’Urbervilles | Thomas Hardy | |
| 3 | Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck | 11/06 *** |
| 4 | 1984 | George Orwell | 11/06 ***** |
| 5 | The Princess Bride | William Goldman | 4/10 *** |
| 6 | The Woman in White | Wilkie Collins | |
| 7 | Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | |
| 8 | A Room With A View | EM Forster | |
| 9 | The Yellow Wallpaper | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | |
| 10 | The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway | Abandoned |
| 11 | A Child Called It | Dave Pelzer | |
| 12 | The Penelopiad | Margaret Atwood | 12/07 *** |
| 13 | Double Vision | Pat Barker | |
| 14 | Northanger Abbey | Jane Austen | 11/10 *** |
| 15 | The Turn of the Screw | Henry James | 03/09 ** |
| 16 | The Mermaid Chair | Sue Monk Kidd | |
| 17 | Ethan Frome | Edith Wharton | |
| 18 | David Copperfield | Charles Dickens | 01/08 *** |
| 19 | A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | |
| 20 | Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro | 12/07 **** |
| 21 | Zorro | Isabel Allende | 12/06 **** |
| 22 | Amsterdam | Ian McEwan | 3/08 *** |
| 23 | Memories of my Melancholy Whores | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | 04/08 **** |
| 24 | The Road | Cormac McCarthy | 04/08 **** |
| 25 | The Surgeon of Crowthorne | Simon Winchester | 03/08 * |
| 26 | Island of the Day Before | Umberto Eco | |
| 27 | The Monkey’s Mask | Dorothy Porter | |
| 28 | Slaughterhouse Five | Kurt Vonnegut | 04/09 **** |
| 29 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | 02/11 *** |
| 30 | Midnight’s Children | Salman Rushdie | 05/08 **** |
| 31 | Enduring Love | Ian McEwan | 2/07 **** |
| 32 | On The Road | Jack Kerouac | 01/08 no stars |
| 33 | Possession | A. S. Byatt | |
| 34 | Briefing for a Descent into Hell | Doris Lessing | |
| 35 | Time’s Arrow | Martin Amis | 11/07 **** |
| 36 | Blonde | Joyce Carol Oates | 5/12 **** |
| 37 | Girl with a Pearl Earring | Tracey Chevalier | 1/07 *** |
| 38 | The Same Sea | Amos Oz | 5/07 **** |
| 39 | In Cold Blood | Truman Capote | |
| 40 | If On Winter’s Night, A Traveller | Italo Calvino | 3/07 ***** |
| 41 | Olive Kitteridge | Elizabeth Strout | |
| 42 | Boy in the Striped Pajamas | John Boyne | 1/07 **** |
| 43 | Sleep, Pale Sister | Joanne Harris | 7/07 * |
| 44 | The Count of Monte Christo | Alexandre Dumas | |
| 45 | The Complete Polysyllabic Spree | Nick Hornby | 11/07 *** |
| 46 | The Stories of John Cheever | John Cheever | |
| 47 | Nineteen Minutes | Jodie Picoult | 1/09 **** |
| 48 | The Ringmaster’s Daughter | Jostein Gaardner | 4/07 *** |
| 49 | The Dice Man | Luke Rhinehart | 07/08 *** |
| 50 | The Stand | Stephen King | |
| 51 | Kafka on the Shore | Haruki Murakami | 08/08 ***** |
| 52 | How the Dead Live | Will Self | |
| 53 | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | Milan Kundera | 8/07 *** |
| 54 | The Outsider | Albert Camus | |
| 55 | The Woods | Harlan Coben | 9/07 * |
| 56 | Shakespeare’s Wife | Germaine Greer | |
| 57 | Mister Pip | Lloyd Jones | |
| 58 | The Virgin Suicides | Jeffrey Eugenides | |
| 59 | The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith | Thomas Kenneally | 10/07 *** |
| 60 | Life of Pi | Yann Martel | |
| 61 | One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch | Alexander Solzhenitsyn | |
| 62 | The Outsider | Albert Camus | |
| 63 | The Trial | Franz Kafka | |
| 64 | The Red Queen | Margaret Drabble | |
| 65 | Like Water for Chocolate | Laura Esquivel | |
| 66 | Orlando | Virginia Woolf | |
| 67 | On Beauty | Zadie Smith | 12/07 **** |
| 68 | The Green Man | Kingsley Amis | 02/10 *** |
| 69 | This Boy’s Life | Tobias Wolff | |
| 70 | Hangover Square | Patrick Hamilton | |
| 71 | An Uncommon Reader | Alan Bennett | 02/09 *** |
| 72 | An American Tragedy | Theodore Dreiner | |
| 73 | Bleak House | Charles Dickens | |
| 74 | Dracula | Bram Stoker | |
| 75 | Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | 12/11 ***** |
| 76 | A Thousand Splendid Suns | Khalid Hosseini | 09/08 **** |
| 77 | The Name of the Wind | Patrick Rothfuss | 05/10 ***** |
| 78 | Helen of Troy | Margaret George | |
| 79 | Voss | Patrick White | |
| 80 | The Invention of Hugo Cabret | Brian Selznick | |
| 81 | Twilight | Stephanie Meyer | 12/08 **** |
| 82 | Beyond the Deepwoods | Paul Stewart | |
| 83 | On a Pale Horse | Piers Anthony | 01/08 *** |
| 84 | Under the Net | Iris Murdoch | |
| 85 | Doctor Faustus | Thomas Mann | |
| 86 | Brideshead Revisted | Evelyn Waugh | |
| 87 | Through the Looking Glass… | Lewis Carroll | |
| 88 | King of the Steppes | Ivan Turgenev | |
| 89 | Ivanhoe | Sir Walter Scott | |
| 90 | Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | |
| 91 | Dangerous Liasons | Pierre Choderlos de Lacios | |
| 92 | Tom Jones | Henry Fielding | |
| 93 | Gulliver’s Travels | Johnathon Swift | |
| 94 | Moll Flanders | Daniel Defoe | |
| 95 | March | Geraldine Brooks | 07/09 **** |
| 96 | The Castle of Crossed Destinies | Italo Calvino | |
| 97 | A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth | |
| 98 | The Other Queen | Phillipa Gregory | |
| 99 | A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L’Engle | |
| 100 | Eucalyptus | Murray Bail | 02/09 *** |
Aug 04, 2009 @ 09:04:33
wow
May 29, 2012 @ 10:56:48
Some interesting book choices, where did this list of 100 come from? Recommendations? What about Lord of the rings? Noah barleywater runs away? Monster blood tattoo series? Captain Corelli’s mandolin? Jasper Fforde’s books which I know you have read based on the title of your blog, the secret river, Dragon tattoo series, one day, 300 graphic novel and Maus graphic novel, the godfather, jasper jones, bartimeus trilogy, and the book thief by Markus Zhelvis
May 29, 2012 @ 22:12:34
Hi Benn, I’ve read most of those, so I didn’t put them on the list. Or, they weren’t published when I made it! Interestingly, I have lost focus on the list since I started the blog in 2006 – there’s always something new to read! Plus work dictates a proportion of it. At the time I made the list, it was literally just 100 books I wanted to read at the time. But I have promised myself I will get through them, so I still tick them off, but it doesn’t dominate my reading choices anymore.
May 29, 2012 @ 22:20:32
Although, I haven’t read Noah Barleywater Runs Away – if its good I will add it. I tried Maus – I don’t like his style of illustration and have read better graphic novels. Persepolis for instance. I liked the concept though.