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-book ... ad-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 33 books I've read (kinda sad) were mostly read in my junior high and high school years.

So yes, I've read 33 at last count.

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.

Hmm...interesting list. I went through it, and I've read 51 of the books. That's kinda sad 51/1001, but at the same time, there were so many books that did not make the list. Just off the top of my head: The Odyssey, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Angela's Ashes, The Pearl, The Diary of Anne Frank, anything by Shakespeare. I'm thinking this is a list of novels as opposed to drama and poetry (which would explain the omission of Homer and Shakespeare) but there were still a lot of great books missing. Thanks for sharing! I book marked the site for future reference.

Does it count if you saw the movie?

It is an odd list. Granted you can't include everything, but why are several of Poe's short stories listed separately?

The list also seem fairly heavy on Russian authors with a number by Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; not that that is bad, and I am especially a fan of The Brothers Kamarazov though.

Also, it suffers one major flaw, none of my books are listed. Pity.

stahrwe wrote:Also, it suffers one major flaw, none of my books are listed. Pity.

A major flaw indeed!

You both touch on a lot of the discussions I've seen surrounding this list. While it is comprised of a good variety of literature, it is lacking some major books and has a few odd quirks, such as those listed by Stahrwe. It's also heavily weighted in the 20th and 21st century writing. If you read a lot from then, you're good, because 785 of the books are written after 1900. For those like me, however, who are used to reading books pre-1900, the list is slightly limited. And I think it is there where a lot of good works of literature are left out. almost 800 books to basically one century. And then 200 books to two centuries full of very influential writers. It is a shame they didn't include plays, and thus, left out the likes of Shakespeare.

Still, it is an interesting reference, and gives me a nice list to turn to when I am looking for something to read.

There are so many billions of books out there...so many of them worth reading, so many not so much. So many classics that don't interest me, so much pulp that I'd rather stay away from, so many books that just call to me for no rhyme or reason and aren't sanctioned by any "must read" list in the world.

I think I'll be my own judge of which 1001 books I should read before I die, compiled from many sources and suggestions and my own personal connection to authors, themes, and styles. I don't like editors/publishers/"famous authors" telling me what books I HAVE to read. Usually anything I am told I HAVE to read seriously disappoints me for one reason or another, whereas books I come upon totally randomly bring me more pleasure than I would ever expect.

While I appreciate the idea behind books such as these, I tend to have to come to things on my own terms and not be told what to read/watch/do. In other words, I like to learn the hard way, whether I want to or not.

Wooow, lots of books I haven't heard of... Don't even think I've read 1001 books! And of the books I've heard of, I couldn't get through some of them (ex: House of Leaves, American Psycho)

I've only read 11! (Give or take, I just skimmed through the list and I may have missed a couple.)


And I'm reading "The English Patient" right now, but only a little at a time. Of course there's a bunch on the list I've been meaning to read.


Also, there's a lot of books I would add. My "Must-Read" books list would be very different - and very shorter.

I can't say my list would be shorter, but it would certainly be different.

Don't know about you, but I can't think of 1001 books off the top of my head, let alone books I've read. My 'shelf' on Facebook has almost 500, but that's about it.

I have read 34 of the list.

Since I have no life, am incredibly curious, and am obsessive-compulsive/anal retentive, I decided to go through the entire list and pick out which books I have read, plan to read, or have not read but seen as a movie or musical. The results are as follows:

Books I have read (61):
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
She – H. Rider Haggard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Emma – Jane Austen
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

Books I Own/Plan to Read (21):
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
V. – Thomas Pynchon
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Justine – Marquis de Sade
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Books I've Seen as a Movie or Musical (23):
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Shining – Stephen King
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
The Graduate – Charles Webb
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Candide – Voltaire


So, out of that list, I have either read, plan to read, or have seen a movie version of 105/1001 "Books to read before I die."

I'd say that I'm doing pretty well, all things considered.

I also didn't realize how well-read I am...and those aren't even all the books I've read! That makes me feel proud and excited and ready to read more books!