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1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die


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I have just used the spreadsheet (fantastic...thank you Arukiyoma). I have read 124, definitly, albeit quite a while back, and ppossibly another ten or fifteen. There are a few on my bookshelves waiting ti be read, and quite a few I have on wish list. I am ashamed though at the number of books and authors I had never heard of.

Apparently I have to read 32 books a year (for how many years??)

 

Thanks Kylie and Arukiyoma:friends0:

 

 

Oh...huge omissions, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, all the poets. It does say books, not fiction!

 

Pp

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Apparently I have to read 32 books a year (for how many years??)

For the rest of your natural, apparently! I think it calculates the number using the average lifespan of males and females (women have more time to read them as we tend to live longer). I have to read at a very reasonable rate of 19 per year. I think that's do-able!

 

Oh...huge omissions, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, all the poets. It does say books, not fiction!
There have been quite a few comments to that effect on LT - it really should be called 1001 novels you should read before you die. I lament the lack of dramatic representation, but not the poetry - I never would have got round to reading them...
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It's not just novels, though. There are a few non-fiction books in there - like Primo Levi's If This Is A Man.

 

I can understand omitting Shakespeare, as those are really plays not books, written for the stage. And poetry is rarely originally written in book form, rather it's normally written as individual poems which later get collated. The lack of Chaucer and Milton (although I have struggled with the tiny fractions I've read of both) is a more serious omission.

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those are very impressive numbers fa l and v!!! i've read 26 that i remember reading- there are others that im sure i read but i just cant remember:blush:

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It goes up very slowly. I'm 22, and have only read 17, but still only have to read 17 year (one up from you having read 70)..

 

Also, I did literature at Uni. And was an amazingly pretentious teenager (hello Camus etc!) :)

 

I think it should consider lifestyle factors, like health insurance: Do you smoke, drink a lot alcohol, only eat fried foods etc. :) It could even combine with that How Long Are You Going To Live For site. Although that would be terrifying...

 

I think my numbers are heavily skewed by my late-teens reading through the canon of SF, and also by a lot of the 20th century Eastern European stuff.

 

Yeah, yeah, Andy. We know you're a well-read boffin :lol: No need for false modesty ;) (You know I don't really mean it Andy! :D)

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Well, of course I'm a well-read boffin.

 

It's just that I seem better read than I actually am thanks to teenage years of going through the Asimov and Heinlein and Dick and Vonnegut, and reading the entire oeuvre of JG Ballard, and probably having read more Andric and Kadare and Bulgakov and Hasek and Kafka and Pavic and so on than any normal person would.

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Well, of course I'm a well-read boffin.

 

*Bows* Well, of course sir! :lol:

 

It's just that I seem better read than I actually am thanks to teenage years of going through the Asimov and Heinlein and Dick and Vonnegut...

 

I was like that as a teenager. I was obsessed with the Manics so would prance around with lots of beat writers, existential novels, 'challenging' poetry etc. My best mate even lugged The Torture Garden around school for weeks! :) Ah, happy days...

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Andy said

think my numbers are heavily skewed by my late-teens reading through the canon of SF, and also by a lot of the 20th century Eastern European stuff.

 

Me too! Thats the thing about teens in the sixties! Unfortunately i then had an almost bookfree next twenty years!

Pp

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It'd be nice if we could somehow do a Top 100 Books list according to this forum. My maths is beyond terrible, but would it be something like everyone on the forum offering up what their Top 10 recommendations would be? I'd like to see that :lol:

 

I think we've done something similar. The trouble is that often it becomes a popularity contest, and this isn't really about which are the most popular books; rather it's more about the ones most highly recommended.

 

There are a lot of "My favourite book" type polls out there, and they'd never include 90% of the books on this list. In the past when I saw those kinds of list they'd always have two or three Jeffrey Archer novels on there. Now, I'm sure, they'd have 6 Harry Potter books on. In a way I'm happy with someone else doing the editorial on this, advising us of books that would be worth our while reading, rather than having a straight popularity contest.

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It'd be nice if we could somehow do a Top 100 Books list according to this forum.
I'm sure we did a Top 100 favourites at one point. I'll have a look around and see if I can find the thread...

 

Aha! Now, we actually did a Top 10, but the full list ran like this:

These were the books that got more than 1 mention:

1st

Kelley Armstrong - Bitten / Stolen

2nd

A A Milne - The House At Pooh Corner (Winnie The Pooh)

Joint 3rd

C S Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia

Mark Hadden - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Philippa Gregory - The Other Boleyn Girl

 

In addition, these authors recieved more than one mention, although for different books each time:

 

Stephen King

Juliet Marillier

Charlaine Harris

Dean Koontz

James Herbert

Martina Cole

Terry Pratchett

 

This was the full list:

 

A A Milne - The House At Pooh Corner

A A Milne - Winnie the Pooh

Anne Bishop - Daughter of the Blood

Anne Rice - Interview With A Vampire

Arnold Lobel - The Frog and Toad series

Arthur C Clarke - Rama Series

Ben Elton - Popcorn

Bret Easton Ellis - Less Than Zero

C S Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia

Caiseal Mor - The Circle & The Cross

Charlaine Harris - Dead To The World

Charlaine Harris - Dead Until Dark

Charles Dickens - David Copperfield

Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre

Christopher Brookmyre - The Sacred Art of Stealing

CJ Sansom - Dissolution

Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca

Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace - Are you Dave Gorman?

Dean Koontz - Life Expectancy

Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas

Dr. Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham

Enid Blyton - St Claire's series

Evelyn Waugh - Scoop

Fitzroy Maclean - Eastern Approaches

Graham Masterton - Devil In Grey

H.G.Wells - Time machine

Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird

Ian Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

Ivo Andric - The Bridge Over The Drina

J D Robb - In Death Series

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye -- by

J.K.Rowling - Harry Potter series

Jacqueline Carey - Kushiel's Dart

James Herbert - Fluke

James Herbert - The Magic Cottage

Jean M Auel - Clan of the Cave Bear

Jeannette Walls - The Glass Castle : A Memoir

Jeffrey Steingarten - The Man Who Ate Everything

John Julius Norwich - Byzantium

John Lanchester - The Debt to Pleasure

Juliet Marillier - Daughter of the Forest

Juliet Marillier - The Sevenwaters Triology

Juliet Marillier - Wolfskin

Kate Forsyth - Witches of Eilanan

Kelley Armstrong - Bitten

Kelley Armstrong - Bitten/Stolen

Kelley Armstrong - DimeStore Magic

Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows

Laurell K Hamilton - Blue Moon

Linda Fairstein - Entombed

Louisa May Alcott - Little Women

Marion Zimmer Bradley - Mists of Avalon

Mark Hadden - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Martina Cole - Faceless

Martina Cole - Two Women

Matt Ridley - Genome

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita

Minette Walters - The Sculptress

Monica Dickens - One pair of feet

Nicholas Evans - The Horse Whisperer

P C Cast - Goddess By Mistake

PD James - Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

Peter - James Host

Philippa Gregory - The Other Boleyn Girl

Primo Levi - If This Is A Man

Richard Adams - Watership Down

Richard Laymon - Body Rides

Simon Scarrow - Books 1-4 of the Eagles series

Sophie Kinsella - Can You Keep A Secret

Spike Milligan - The Book of Milligananimals

Stephen King - IT

Stephen King - Needful Things

Stephen King - The Green Mile

Stephen King - The Long Walk

Stephen King - The Shining

Stephen King - The Stand

Steve Harris - Adventureland

Sue Townsend - The Queen and I

Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising series

Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line

Terry Practchett - The City Watch series

Terry Pratchett - Death Trilogy

Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy - Tess of the Durbevilles

Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly

Trudi Canavan - The Black Magicians Triology

Wilbur Smith - River God

William Golding - Lord Of The Flies

William Goldman - The Princess Bride

 

The thread got moved to the archives a while back as it was done ages ago. It's a very different list from Peter Boxall's one and I wonder how different it would be if we tried it again now...

 

We also run the annual awards, which is why keeping a note of the books you read throughout the year is so handy. They get run in January for the previous year's books.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm onto my 46th book on the list, so I'm fairly cracking on - that's 6 more than I had when I first looked at the list on 12th May, so little over a month. Pretty good going, methinks!

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