Books to read before you die
Submitted by kenji on Sun, 03/27/2005 - 08:29
Tags:
- my favourites asterisked
- Anon- Beowulf
- Epic of Gilgamesh
- Lazarillo de Tormes
- *Mabinogi
- Mahabharata
- Nibelunglied
- Nils' Saga
- Tales of the Thousand and One Nights
- Tristan and Iseult
- Abe- Woman of the Dunes
- Achebe- Things Fall Apart
- Anthills of the Savannah
- Adams- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Aeschylus- Oresteia
- Prometheus Bound
- Aesop- Fables
- Akhmatova- Poems
- Alcott- Little Women
- Ali- The Stone Woman
- Allende- *House of the Spirits*
- Amado- The Violent Land
- Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon
- Dona Flor and her Two Husbands
- M.Amis- London Fields
- Money
- Andersen- Fairy Tales
- Andrich- The Bridge on the Trna
- Andrzejewecski- Ashes and Diamonds
- Apuleius- The Golden Ass
- Aquinas- The Imitation of Christ
- Summa contra Gentiles
- Aristophanes- The Birds
- Aristotle- Poetics
- Politics
- Asare- Sosu's Call
- Asimov- Foundation trilogy
- Atwood- The Blind Assassin
- A Handmaid's Tale
- Auden- Poems
- Augustine- Confessions
- Aurelius- Meditations
- Austen- Emma
- Persuasion
- Pride and Prejudice
- Sense and Sensibility
- Mansfield Park
- Ba- Une si Longue Lettre
- Bacon- Essays
- Ballard- Crash
- Balzac- The Human Comedy
- Old Goriot
- Banks- The Wasp Factory
- Dead Air
- Banville- The Sea
- Barker- Regeneration
- The Ghost Road
- Barnes- A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
- Bassani- The Garden of the Finzi-Contini
- Bastos- I, the Supreme
- Baudelaire- Les Fleurs du Mal
- Beckett- Molloy trilogy
- Waiting for Godot
- Bellow- Herzog
- Humboldt's Gift
- Blake- Poems
- Boccaccio- The Decameron
- Boll- The lost Honour of Katharina Blum
- Borges- *The Garden of Forking Paths* (and other fictions)
- Bowles- The Sheltering Sky
- Bradbury- Fahrenheit 451
- Bradley- Mists of Avalon
- Brecht- The Threepenny Opera
- Brodsky- Poems
- Ann Bronte- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- Charlotte Bronte- Jane Eyre
- Emily Bronte- Wuthering Heights
- Brown- The Da Vinci Code
- Browning- Poems
- Buchan- The Thirty Nine Steps
- Bulgakov- *The Master and Margarita*
- Bunyan- Pilgrim's Progress
- Burgess- A Clockwork Orange
- Burman- *The Owl Hoots Twice at Catfish Bend*
- Burnett- The Secet Garden
- Burroughs- Naked Lunch
- Butler- Erewhon
- The Way of all Flesh
- Byatt- Possession
- Byron- Poems
- Cain- The Postman Always Rings Twice
- Calasso- Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
- Calvino- Cosmicomics
- If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
- Italian Cities
- Camoes- Luciads
- Camus- *The Stranger
- The Plague
- Canetti- Autodafe
- The Voices of Marrakesh
- Capote- In Cold Blood
- Carey- The True History of the Kelly Gang
- Carroll- *Alice in Wonderland*
- Carter- The Magic Toyshop
- Cather- My Antonia
- Catullus- Poems
- Cavafy- Poems
- Celan- Poems
- Celine- Journey to the End of the Night
- Cervantes- *Don Quixote*
- Chandler- The Big Sleep
- The Long Goodbye
- Chatwin- On the Black Hill
- Chang- Wild Swans
- Chaucer- The Canterbury Tales
- Chekhov- The Cherry Orchard
- Uncle Vanya
- Christie- *Death on the Nile
- Clarke- *Jonathan Strange + Mr Norrell*
- Cocteau- Les Enfants Terribles
- Coelho- *The Alchemist*
- Coetzee- Disgrace
- Wainting for the Barbarians
- Collins- The Moonstone
- The Woman in White
- Confucius- Analects
- Conrad- Heart of Darkness
- Lord Jim
- Nostromo
- Cooper- Last of the Mohicans
- Cortazar- Hopscotch
- Couto- Terra Sonambula
- Crane- The Red Badge of Courage
- cummings- *poems*
- Cunningham- The Hours
- Dafydd ap Gwilym- *Poems
- Dahl- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- James and the Giant Peach
- Matilda
- Dante- Divine Comedy
- Darwin- On the Origin of Species
- De Assis- *Dom Casmurro*
- De Beauvoir- The Second Sex
- De Bernieres- Captain Corelli's Mandolin
- Defoe- Moll Flanders
- Robinson Crusoe
- Delillo- Underworld
- White Noise
- Descartes- Discourse on Method
- Meditations
- Dick- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- Dickens- Bleak House
- A Christmas Carol
- David Copperfield
- Great Expectations
- Hard Times
- Little Dorrit
- *Our Mutual Friend*
- A Tale of Two Cities
- Dickinson- *Poems
- Diderot- Encyclopédie
- *Jacques le Fataliste*
- The Nun
- Dinesen- Anecdotes of Destiny
- Out of Africa
- Doblin- Berlin Alexanderplatz
- Dostoevsky- The Brothers Karamazov
- Crime and Punishment
- The Idiot
- Donne- Poems
- Dos Passos- USA
- Doyle- *The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes*
- The Hound of the Baskervilles
- Dreiser- An American Tragedy
- Dumas- La Reine Margot
- *The Count of Monte Cristo
- The Three Musketeers
- Dumas fils- The Man in the Iron Mask
- Du Maurier- Rebecca
- Duras- Lovers
- Moderato Cantabile
- Eco- *Foucault's Pendulum
- The Name of the Rose
- G.Eliot- Danile Deronda
- Middlemarch
- Mill on the Floss
- Silas Marner
- T.S.Eliot- Poems
- Ellis- American Psycho
- Ellison- The Invisible Man
- Elytis- Poems
- Emerson- Nature
- Self-Reliance
- Endo- Silence
- Esquivel- Like Water for Chocolate
- Espriu- Poems
- Eurypides- Alcestus
- Bacchae
- *Medea
- Faiz- poems
- Farrokhzad- Poems
- Faulkner- Absalom, Absalom!
- *As i Lay Dying
- The Sound and the Fury
- Faulks- Birdsong
- Fielding- *Tom Jones*
- Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby
- Tender is the Night
- Flaubert- L'Education Sentimentale
- *Madame Bovary*
- St Julien l'hospitalier
- Fo- Accidental Death of an Anarchist
- Follett- Pillars of the Earth
- Fontane- Effi Briest
- Forster- Howard's End
- A Passage to India
- A Room with a View
- Fowles- Magus
- The French Lieutenant's Woman
- Frank- Diary
- Frazer- Golden Bough
- Freud- The Interpretation of Dreams
- Frisch- Andorra
- Frost- Poems
- Fuentes- The Death of Artemio Cruz
- Gao- Soul Mountain
- Gaskell- Cranford
- North and South
- Ghalib- Ghazals
- Ghosh- The Glass Palace
- *The Hungry Tide*
- Gibran- The Prophet
- Gibson- Neuromancer
- Gide- L'Immoraliste
- Goethe- Faust
- Gogol- Dead Souls
- Golden- Memoirs of a Geisha
- Golding- Lord of the Flies
- Goldman- The Princess Bride
- Goldsmith- The Vicar of Wakefield
- Gorki- The Lower Depths
- Mother
- Grahame- *The Wind in the Willows*
- Grass- The Tin Drum
- Greene- Brighton Rock
- The Heart of the Matter
- The Power and the Glory
- The Quiet American
- Grimm- Fairy tales
- Guevara- El Diablo Cojuelo
- Guimaraes- The Devil to pay in the Backlands
- Haddon- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
- Hafiz- Poems
- Hammett- The Maltese Falcon
- Hamsun- Hunger
- Hardy- *Jude the Obscure*
- Far from the Madding Crowd
- The Mayor of Casterbridge
- Return of the Native
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles
- Harris- Silence of the Lambs
- Hasek- Good Soldier Svejk
- Havel- The Garden Party
- Hawking- A Brief History of Time
- Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter
- Heaney- Poems
- Heller- Catch 22
- Hemingway- A Farewell to Arms
- For whom the Bell Tolls
- The Old Man and the Sea
- The Sun also Rises
- Herbert- Dune
- George Herbert- Poems
- Zbigniew Herbert- Poems
- Herodotus- Histories
- Hesse- The Glass Bead Game
- Narcissus and Goldmund
- *Siddhartha
- Steppenwolf
- Hoban- The Mouse aned his Child
- Hoeg- *Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
- Holderlin- Poems
- Holub- Poems
- Homer- Iliad
- *The Odyssey
- Hopkins- Poems
- Horace- Odes
- Hornsby- High Fidelity
- Hosseini- The Kite Runner
- Houellebecq- Platform
- Hrabal- Closely Observed Trains
- *Cutting it Short*
- Hsueh Chin- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Hugo- The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Les Miserables
- Hurston- Their Eyes were Watching God
- Huxley- Brave New World
- Ibsen- A Doll's House
- Ghosts
- Hedda Gabler
- Ibuse- Black Rain
- Ionesco- Rhinoceros
- John Irving- A Prayer for Owen Meany
- The World according to Garp
- Washington Irving- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
- Ishiguro- *Never Let me Go
- Remains of the Day
- When we were Orphans
- Izuma- Chusingura
- James- The Ambassadors
- The Golden Bowl
- Portrait of a Lady
- Turn of the Screw
- Jami- Poems
- Jansson- Finn Family Moomintroll
- *Summer Book*
- Jerome- Three Men in a Boat
- Jimenez- Platero and I
- D.Jones- In Parenthesis
- J.Jones- From Here to Eternity
- Jonson- The Alchemist
- Volpone
- Joyce- Dubliners
- Finnegan's Wake
- Portait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Ulysses
- Juvenal- Satires
- Juster- The Phantom Tollbooth
- Kadare- Chronicle in Stone
- General of the Dead Army
- *The Palace of Dreams
- Kafka- The Castle
- *Metamorphosis
- The Trial
- Kant- Critique of Pure Reason
- Kawabata- Beauty and Sadness
- *Snow Country*
- Sound of the Mountain
- A Thousand Cranes
- Kazantzakis- The Last Temptation of Christ
- Zorba the Greek
- Keats- *Poems*
- Keillor- Lake Wobegon Days
- Keneally- Schindler's Ark
- Kerouac- On the Road
- Kesey- One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Khayyam- Rubaiyat
- Kierkegaard- The Stages on Life's way
- Either/Or
- King- The Green Mile
- It
- Misery
- Kingsolver- The Poisonwood Bible
- Kipling- Jungle Books
- Kim
- Kis- Clessidra
- Koestler- Darkness at Noon
- Kundera- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
- Ignorance
- *The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Laclos- *Dangerous Liaisons
- La Fontaine- Fables
- Lagerlof- Gosta Berling's Saga
- Lahiri- Interpreter of Maladies
- Lampedusa- The Leopard
- Lao Tsu- Tao Te Ching
- La Rochefoucault- Maxims
- Laxness- Independent People
- Lawrence- *The Rainbow
- Sons and Lovers
- Women in Love
- Le Carré- Smiley's People
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- H.Lee- To Kill a Mockingbird
- L.Lee- Cider with Rosie
- Le Guin- The Dispossessed
- Lem- Solaris
- Leopardi- Poems
- Lessing- The Golden Notebook
- Levi- Christ Stopped at Eboli
- The Truce
- Levi-Strauss- Tristes Tropiques
- C.S. Lewis- Chronicles of Narnia
- S.Lewis- Babbitt
- Lindgren- Pippi Longstocking
- Li Po- *Poems*
- Llosa- The City of Dogs
- Storyteller
- The Time of the Hero
- The War at the End of the World
- Locke- Essay concerning Human Understanding
- Treatises on Government
- London- Call of the Wild
- Lorca- *Poems
- Lowry- Under the Volcano
- Lu Xun- Diary of a Madman
- Maalouf- *The Rock of Tanios
- Samarkand
- Macchiavelli- The Prince
- Macha- Poems
- Mahfouz- Cairo trilogy
- Mailer- The Executioner's Song
- The Naked and the Dead
- Mandelstam- *Poems
- Mann- Buddenbrook
- Death in Venice
- Doctor Faustus
- The Magic Mountain
- Marcheta- Looking for Alibrandi
- Marlowe- *Dr Faustus
- Tamburlane the Great
- Marquez- Chronicle of a Death Foretold
- The General in his Labyrinth
- *Love in the Time of Cholera*
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Martel- *Life of Pi*
- Martinson- Poems
- Matthiessen- At Play in the Fields of the Lord
- *Snow Leopard*
- Marx- The Communist Manifesto
- Das Kapital
- Maugham- Of Human Bondage
- The Moon and Sixpence
- Maupassant- Bel Ami
- Short Stories
- Mayakovsky- Poems
- McCall Smith- The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Stories
- McCarthy- All the Pretty Horses
- McCullers- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
- McCullough- Thorn Birds
- McEwan- Atonement
- Melville- Moby Dick
- Mérimée- Carmen
- Mickiewicz- Pan Tadeusz
- Mill- On Liberty
- The Subjection of Women
- Miller- *The Crucible
- Death of a Salesman
- Milne- Winnie the Pooh
- Milosz- Poems
- Milton- *Paradise Lost
- Mishima- Confessions of a Mask
- The Sea of Fertility
- *Sound of the Waves
- Temple of the Golden Pavilion
- Mistra- A Fine Balance
- Mitchell- Gone with the Wind
- Miyazawa- *Tales*
- Moliere- *Tartuffe
- Montaigne- Essays
- Montgomery- Anne of Green Gables
- Moravia- The Conformist
- Mori- The Wild Geese
- Morpurgo- *Kensuke's Kingdom
- Morrison- Beloved
- Song of Solomon
- Murakami- *The Wind up Bird Chronicle*
- *A Wild Sheep Chase
- Murasaki- The Tale of Genji
- Murdoch- The Black Prince
- The Sea, The Sea
- Nabokov- *Lolita
- Pale Fire
- Speak, Memory
- Naipaul- A Bend in the River
- A House for Mr Biswas
- In a Free State
- Neruda- *Poems
- Nietzche- Beyond Good and Evil
- Genealogy of Morals
- Niffenegger- The Time Traveller's Wife
- O'Connor- Wise Blood
- Okri- Astonishing the Gods
- The Famished Road
- Ondaatje- The English Patient
- O'Neill- Long Day's Journey into Night
- Ortega- The Revolt of the Masses
- Orwell- Animal Farm
- *Homage to Catalonia
- *1984*
- Ovid- Metamorphoses
- Pagnol- Jean de Florette/ Manon des Sources
- Marseille trilogy
- Paine- The Rights of Man
- Palahniuk- Choke
- Fight Club
- Pamuk- My Name is Red
- Snow
- Pascal- Pensées
- Pasternak- Dr Zhivago
- Paton- Cry, the Beloved Country
- Pavese- Luna e il Falo
- Poems
- Paz- The Labyrinth of Solitude
- Poems
- Peake- Gormenghast
- Titus Groan
- Perez- Nazarin
- Pessoa- *The Book of Disquiet
- Petrarch- Letters
- Poems
- Petronius- Satyricon
- Pierce- *Tom's Midnight Garden
- Pinter- The Caretaker
- Pirandello- Six Characters in Search of an Author
- Pirsig- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Plath- The Bell Jar
- Poems
- Plato- Dialogues
- The Republic
- Plautus- The Pot of Gold
- Plutarch- Twelve Illustrated Lives
- Po Chu-i- *Poems*
- Poe- Tales
- Polo- Travels
- Popa- Poems
- Pope- Poems
- Potaki- The Saragossa Manuscript
- Potter- *The Tale of Peter Rabbit
- Pound- Cantos
- Powell- A Dance to the Music of Time
- Pratchett- Mort
- Night Watch
- Prévost- *Manon Lescaut*
- Proust- Remembrance of Things Past
- Pullman- His Dark Materials
- Pushkin- Eugene Onegin
- Poems
- Puzo- The Godfather
- Pynchon- Gravity's Rainbow
- Queiros- The Sin of Father Amaro
- Rabelais- Gargantua and Pantagruel
- Racine- Andromaque
- *Phedre*
- Ramos- Barren Lives
- Rand- Atlas Shrugged
- Fountainhead
- Ransome- Swallows and Amazons
- Remarque- All Quiet on the Western Front
- Rhys- Wide Sargasso Sea
- Rice- Interview with the Vampire
- Richardson- Clarissa
- Pamela
- Rilke- *Poems
- Rojas- La Celestina
- Rostand- Cyrano de Bergerac
- Roth- The Human Stain
- I Married a Communist
- Portnoy's Complaint
- Rousseau- Confessions
- The Social Contract
- Rowling- Harry Potter series
- Roy- The God of Small Things
- Rulfo- Pedro Paramo
- Rumi- Poems
- Rushdie- Midnight's Children
- Ryonosuke- Rashomon
- Saadi- Gulistan
- The Orchard
- Sacher- Holes
- Sagan- Bonjour Tristesse
- Saikaku- The Life of an Amorous Woman
- Salih- Season of Migration to the North
- Salinger- Catcher in the Rye
- Saramago- Baltasar and Blimunda
- *Blindness*
- Seeing
- The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
- Sarashina- As i Crossed the Bridge of Dreams
- Sartre- The Age of Reason
- Being and Nothingness
- Nausea
- Schopenhauer- The World as will and Idea
- Scott- Ivanhoe
- Sebold- The Lovely Bones
- Seferis- Poems
- Seifert- Poems
- Selden- *The Cricket in Times Square*
- Seneca- Moral essays
- Senghor- Poems
- Seth- A Suitable Boy
- Seton- Katherine
- Sewell- Black Beauty
- Shakespeare- Antony and Cleopatra
- *Hamlet
- Henry V
- Julius Caesar
- *King Lear*
- *Macbeth*
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Othello
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- The Tempest
- Titus Andronicus
- Sonnets
- Shaw- Pygmalion
- Shelley- Frankenstein
- Shonagon- *Pillow Book*
- Shono- *Evening Clouds*
- Silverstein- *The Giving Tree
- Skvorecky- The Bass Saxophone
- The Cowards
- Adam Smith- The Wealth of Nations
- Betty Smith- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- Dodie Smith- I Capture the Castle
- *One Hundred and One Dalmatians
- Zadie Smith- On Beauty
- White Teeth
- Snicket- A Series of Unfortunate Events
- Solzhenitsyn- A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
- Cancer Ward
- Gulag Archipelago
- Sophocles- Oedipus Rex
- Soseki- Kokuro
- Soyinka- Ake: the Years of Childhood
- The Interpreters
- Spark- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- Spengler- Decline of the West
- Spinoza- Ethics
- Steinbeck- Cannery Row
- East of Eden
- The Grapes of Wrath
- Of Mice and Men
- Stendhal- Charterhouse of Parma
- The Red and the Black
- Sterne- *Tristram Shandy*
- Stevens- Poems
- Stevenson- Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
- Kidnapped
- *Treasure Island*
- St Exupery- *The Little Prince*
- Stoker- Dracula
- Strindberg- Father
- Miss Julie
- Styron- Sophie's Choice
- Suetonius- Lives of the Twelve Caesars
- Suskind- Perfume
- Svevo- Zeno's Conscience
- Swift- Gulliver's Travels
- Tacitus- Annals
- Histories
- Tagore- Poems
- Tanizaki- The Key
- The Makioka Sisters
- Tarkington- The Magnificent Ambersons
- Tartt- Secret History
- Tennyson- *Poems*
- Thackeray- Vanity Fair
- Dylan Thomas- *A Child's Christmas in Wales*
- *Poems
- *Under Milk Wood*
- Edward Thomas- *Poems
- R.S.Thomas- *Poems*
- Thompson- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Thoreau- Walden
- Tolkien- The Hobbit
- Lord of the Rings
- Tolstoy- *Anna Karenina*
- War and Peace
- Toole- A Confederacy of Dunces
- Tressell- The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
- Tu Fu- *Poems*
- Turgenev- Fathers and Sons
- Twain- *Huckleberry Finn
- Undset- Kristin Lavransdatter
- Updik- Rabbit, Run
- Vallejo- Poems
- Vasilikos- Z
- Vatsayama- Kama Sutra
- Verga- The House by the Medlar Tree
- Little Novels of Sicily
- Verlaine- Poems
- Verne- *Around the World in 80 Days
- 20,000 Leagues under the Sea
- Vesaas- The Boat in the Evening
- The Ice Palace
- Virgil- The Aeneid
- Voltaire- Candide
- L'Ingénu
- Lettres Philosophiques
- Vonnegut- *Cat's Cradle
- *Slaughterhouse Five*
- Walcott- Poems
- Walker- The Color Purple
- Wallace- Ben Hur
- Warren- All the King's Men
- E.Waugh- Brideshead Revisited
- A Handful of Dust
- L.Waugh- Hearing Birds Fly
- Wells- The Time Machine
- The War of the Worlds
- Welsh- Trainspotting
- Wharton- The Age of Innocence
- Ethan Frome
- The House of Mirth
- E.B.White- Charlotte's Web
- T.H.White- The Once and Future King
- Whiteley- *Nature Diary*
- Whitman- Collected Poems
- Wilde- The Importance of Being Earnest
- A Picture of Dorian Gray
- Williams- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
- A Steetcar Named Desire
- Wollstonecraft- Vindication of the Rights of Woman
- Woolf- Mrs Dalloway
- Orlando
- To the Lighthouse
- Wordsworth- Poems
- Wright- Black Boy
- Native Son
- Yates- The Art of Memory
- Yeats- *Poems*
- Yevtushenko- Poems
- Yourcenar- Memoirs of Hadrian
- Zafon- *Shadow of the Wind*
- Zola- La Bete Humaine
- Germinal
- Nana
- Therese Raquin
Author Comments:
Please mention any obvious ones i've missed + your suggestions
One suggestion for Max Frisch would be Homo faber.
Excellent list, btw.
Well- unlike with my film lists- i must admit i haven't actually read most of them! And quite a few i've no intention of reading, but i'm still using it as a sort of mixed guide and canon.
Come on, who has read all of these works? Nobody!
However, I do recommend Frisch's novels and plays.
I have good reason to believe that a certain elderly lecturer at Ulan Bator, originally from a family of yak herders, who was determined to better himself, has read all but 3 of the books listed. There's also a woman in Colombia who's very close behind.
I believe I have read more that 50% of these books, maybe 80% :) Well, I am not an elderly lecturer, mind you. What is puzzling is what Dan Brown is doing on this list.
I do recommend Anna Akhmatova, anything you can find. Of course preferably you should read her in Russian.
Oh and i've added Homo Faber. I presume it's the same Frisch. Anyway, we read his play Andorra when i was at school but my recollections are very hazy, apart from first interesting me in the little country!
Sure, sure: It is the same Frisch.
BTW, this list would be a nice aim for life...
It'd be easier to read this if you prefixed each capitalized author's name with an underscore character so they don't receive a bullet.