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1MeghanLeah
Slowly making my way through Peter Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. After comparing several lists, I have come up with my own final list of 1326 books in all the editions. I've seen others with different numbers, but hey, if I list something that's not on the list, feel free to let me know!
This is an ambitious list, since I've calculated that if I live into my 90s I will need to average 10 books a year until I retire, and after that read 20 books a year!
I'M AT 99 SO FAR - Let's go!
Pre-1700s
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1700s
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
Pamela - Samuel Richardson
Fanny Hill - John Cleland
A Sentimental Journey - Lawrence Sterne
The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1800s
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Hard Times - Charles Dickens
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Virgin Soil - Ivan Turgenev
The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Bel-Ami - Guy de Maupassant
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
1900s
The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
The House on the Borderland - William Hope Hodgson
The Inferno - Henri Barbusse
Tarzan of the Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell
The Voyage Out - Virginia Woolf
Under Fire - Henri Barbusse
The Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
Crome Yellow - Aldous Huxley
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Babbit - Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Lady Chatterly's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
Call It Sleep - Henry Roth
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
The Honorary Consul - Graham Greene
Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
The Shining - Stephen King
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
The Virgin in the Garden - A.S. Byatt
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The House of Spirits - Isabel Allende
A Boy's Own Story - Edmund White
The Sorrow of Belgium - Hugo Claus
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Hours - Michael Cunningham
2000s
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
City of God - E.L. Doctorow
Bartleby & Co. - Enrique Vila-Matas
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Islands - Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello - J.M. Coetzee
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
The Red Queen - Margaret Drabble
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Master - Colm Toibin
This is an ambitious list, since I've calculated that if I live into my 90s I will need to average 10 books a year until I retire, and after that read 20 books a year!
I'M AT 99 SO FAR - Let's go!
Pre-1700s
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1700s
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
Pamela - Samuel Richardson
Fanny Hill - John Cleland
A Sentimental Journey - Lawrence Sterne
The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1800s
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Hard Times - Charles Dickens
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Virgin Soil - Ivan Turgenev
The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Bel-Ami - Guy de Maupassant
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
1900s
The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
The House on the Borderland - William Hope Hodgson
The Inferno - Henri Barbusse
Tarzan of the Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell
The Voyage Out - Virginia Woolf
Under Fire - Henri Barbusse
The Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
Crome Yellow - Aldous Huxley
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Babbit - Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Lady Chatterly's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
Call It Sleep - Henry Roth
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
The Honorary Consul - Graham Greene
Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
The Shining - Stephen King
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
The Virgin in the Garden - A.S. Byatt
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The House of Spirits - Isabel Allende
A Boy's Own Story - Edmund White
The Sorrow of Belgium - Hugo Claus
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Hours - Michael Cunningham
2000s
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
City of God - E.L. Doctorow
Bartleby & Co. - Enrique Vila-Matas
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Islands - Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello - J.M. Coetzee
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
The Red Queen - Margaret Drabble
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Master - Colm Toibin
2gilroy
You might want to look into the group dedicated to such a challenge:
https://www.librarything.com/groups/1001bookstoreadbefo
https://www.librarything.com/groups/1001bookstoreadbefo

