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1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die


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Has anyone actually read Jude the Obscure?

Does anyone plan on actually doing it?

I've not read it, but I have it waiting on my shelf. my sister (who is a non-reader) read it twice for Higher English and says she really enjoyed it. As i say, I've not read it yet, but I definitely plan to. :roll:

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I've not read it, but I have it waiting on my shelf. my sister (who is a non-reader) read it twice for Higher English and says she really enjoyed it. As i say, I've not read it yet, but I definitely plan to. :roll:

 

Well, then, that counts as a recommendation!

I've always been intrigued by its obscurity. :)

Some day, we'll compare notes.

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Has anyone actually read Jude the Obscure?

Does anyone plan on actually doing it?

 

My mother has read it (possibly twice) and recommended it to me. She really enjoyed it (even though it isn't exactly a rib-tickler of a book), so I think I will give it a go at some point.

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Has anyone actually read Jude the Obscure?

Does anyone plan on actually doing it?

Does anyone know why it is on the list?

Just asking.

 

 

I've read Jude the Obscure - it's sad but good. My personal favourite is Far From the Madding Crowd.

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Jude the Obscure is on my to-read list. Another one that I want to finish is Middlemarch. I started that about three years ago, but for some reason, I just couldn't finish it.

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Another one that I want to finish is Middlemarch. I started that about three years ago, but for some reason, I just couldn't finish it.

 

That's on my 'books I feel guilty about' list. I abandoned it during my degree (it was possible to do that with a couple of the books on the reading list) and declared it my nemisis. However years later, I used to help a retired vicar and he explained about Middlemarch to me (he had no idea that I'd once tried to read it, it was just coincidence) and then I felt instantly guilty about the novel - but it's sooo long and I've sooo many books to read . . .

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That's on my 'books I feel guilty about' list. I abandoned it during my degree (it was possible to do that with a couple of the books on the reading list) and declared it my nemisis.

 

I'm entering my junior year this fall as an English Major, and two of the classes I'm taking are English Romantic Literature and The American Novel to 1900. My reading lists are so HUGE, I'm not going to be able to get to my own to-read list. I'm trying to cram as much as possible in this summer! Good luck with yours!

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I'll be starting my 48th book from this list next - The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy - I've borrowed it from Purple Poppy (you're so kind, PP!).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wow, have I really read 92 of these??:) I think so, but I didn't count any Heinleins or Asimov, because I know I went through a phase way back somewhere in my later youth, but I couldn't remember which ones I really read, etc....anyway, somewhere around 92:), although my Doctor Faustus was the Marlowe version. Wow, this is a great list for reminding one what should be read and for patting oneself on the back for having read some seriously good books, even if I wasn't the biggest fan of The Secret History:blush:

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  • 1 month later...

Just thought I'd update and say that when I picked up on this challenge on 12 May, I had read 39 books(and left a 40th unfinished). At this point, I've now read 52 books from the list, so I think I'm adding to my "read" pile at quite a fair pace, considering I'm doing this challenge along-side several others. I'd like to have finished another half a dozen by the end of the year - i think that's a fair expectation! :lol::)

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Three months ago I'd read 28 books, with 32 on my shelf to be read and a further 97 that I want to read.

 

As of today, I've read 35, with 56 on my shelf to be read (looks like I've been buying a lot of books!) and a further 130 that I would like to read.

 

Do you intend on completing the whole list one day Kell? I don't have any particular target in mind, although those figures above seem to add up to around 20%, and I'd be happy with that as a goal :)

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I actually have the book "1001 Books", I got it as a christmas present once (then didn't take my nose out of it for the remaining holidays!) I haven't taken te toll yet as I'm feeling lazy, and not in the mood to wonder over translations. One of the downsides of reading on several different languages. Let's just let the record show that there's (embarrasingly) few books read, plenty on the TBR piles and even more on the "I can't possibly buy this 'cause I have just huge TBR piles already and no place for more books in my flat unless I do major renovations" -list. I'll get around my accurate numbers at some point, though.

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Do you intend on completing the whole list one day Kell? I don't have any particular target in mind, although those figures above seem to add up to around 20%, and I'd be happy with that as a goal :D

There are some I have no interest in whatsoever, and I've already decided that if I read one book by an author mentioned on the list and don't enjoy it, I shall not pressure myself to read the other books by the same author that might be there (personally, I find it weird that there are multiple entries for authors - although it would be difficult to narrow it down to just one in some cases, I agree!). I'd like to think I'll try most of them though, and I am trying to read at least one from the list each month, although if I can combine them with some of my other challenges (classics/modern classics/Olympic), it means I might get through more of them than otherwise. I'd like to read at least another 4 by the end of the year, and seeing as how I have almost 20 of them waiting already, that shouldn't prove too difficult! :lol:

 

Let's just let the record show that there's (embarrasingly) few books read, plenty on the TBR piles and even more on the "I can't possibly buy this 'cause I have just huge TBR piles already and no place for more books in my flat unless I do major renovations" -list. I'll get around my accurate numbers at some point, though.

I think you'll find many of us here are in the same situation! :eek2: My husband has effectively banned me from buying any more till I've whittled down my TBR pile a little, but it doesn't seem to stop me from acquiring books anyway! I think the only reason I get away with it as that I sell on, swap or pass on through mooches, many of the books I've read, so they don't end up staying in the flat and taking up more space (although they build up more quickly than I get rid of them, i'll admit!).

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I've got the 1001 list bookmarked but haven't bought the book, I'd rather spend the money on books to read.

 

I totted up the list a couple of weeks ago and I have read about 95 of the books on the list. I decided this year that I would try and read 25 books from the list, or more if I could manage it. I have read 16 so far and have 19 on my TBR list and I think that will be more than enough for 2007.

 

I'm not forcing myself to read all of them, there are some I know I would have to force myself to read but it has given me some great ideas for more modern literature to try.

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(although they build up more quickly than I get rid of them, i'll admit!).

 

They do! I think they reproduce. You look under the bed or behind the sofa and there's little book babies...

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  • 7 months later...

Heres my list. Have read more than I thought.

 

Don Quixote - Cervantes

Candide - Voltaire

Danerous Liaisons - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Sense & Sensibility - Jane Austen

Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen

Mansfield Park - Jane A

Emma - Jane A

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Oliver Twist - Dickens

Nicholas Nickleby - Dickens

Martin Chuzzlewit - Dickens

The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

Vanity Fair - William M. thackeray

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

David Copperfield - Dickens

Hard Times - Dickens

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

The Woman in white - Wilkie Collins

The Mill on the Floss - George Elliot

Great Expectations - Dickens

Silas Marner - George Elliot

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Uncle Silas - Sheridan le Fanu

alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

Theresa Raquin - Emile Zola

Little Women - Louisa May alcott

the Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

Around the World in 80 days - Jules Verne

Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

Anna Karenina - tolstoy

Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy

Nana - Emile Zola

the Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy

The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Tess of the d'Urbervilles - thomas Hardy

The Time Machne - H G Wells

The Forstye Saga - John Galsworthy

The Old Wives Tale - Arnold Bennett

A Room with a view - E M Forster

Howards End - E M Forster

Sons & Lovers - D H Lawrence

Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham

Women in Love - D H Lawrence

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

A Passage to India - E M Forster

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fiztgerald

Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh

Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Thank you Jeeves - P G Wodehouse

Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

A handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh

Gond with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

The Razors Edge - Somerset Maugham

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

1984 - George Orwell

Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford

The Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger

The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

The Lord of the Rings - Tolkein

The Midwich Cuckoos - John Wyndhamn

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - Alan Sillitoe

Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee

One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest - Ken Kesey

The Collector - John Fowles

In cold Blood - Truman Capote

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

100 years of solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The French Lieutenants Woman - John Fowles

The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan

Schindlers Ark - Thomas Keneally

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

Perfume - Patrick Suskind

The Handmails Tail - Margaret Atwood

Oranges are not the only fruit - Jeanette Winterson

Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro

London Fields - Martin Amis

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel

Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

Possession - A S Byatt

Wild Swans - Jung Chang

Hideous Kinky - Esther Freud

The Crow Road - Iain banks

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwod

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides

The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

The Shipping News - Annie Proulx

Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink

The Unconsolved - Kazuo Ishiguro

American Pastorl - Philip Roth

Enduring Love - Ian McEwan

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

The God of Small Thngs - Arundhati Roy

Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho

The Hours - Michael Cunningham

Amsterdam - Ian McEwan

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

Under their Skin - Michael Faber

White Teeth - Zadie Smith

The Devil & Miss Prym - Paulo Coelho

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

Atonement - Ian McEwan

Dead Air - Iain Banks

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Unless - Carol Shields

Fingersmith - Sarah Walters

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time - Mark haddon

The Colour - Rose Tremain

On Beauty - Zadie Smith

Saturday - Ian McEwan

Never Let me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

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O'h my goodness! What horror!!! I thought that I was relatively well read (although I want to read more classics), but you all seem to have read so much more than me.....;)

 

I am going to work out exactly how many of these that I have read and then start reading from the list. I know that quite of few of my TBR books at home will match up with the list of TBRs from this list.

 

I had better get a move on......:irked:

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