Friday, April 26, 2013

Books to Read Before You Die (2013)



Last year I posted this list of Books to Read before you die and I wanted to update it for 2013. I read 11 books in 2012 including the Twilight Series and Hunger Games series. I loved both! However, I must say that my favorite of all of the books of 2012 was Jane Eyre. The Classics are "Classics" for a reason and I am discovering that the more and more that I read them.

Okay, here's the intro from before explaining where I got my list:

The BBC created a list of 100 books that everyone should read (from user submissions) They believe that most people will have read only 6 of the 100! What?! Well, I decided to create my own list. I actually read 21 of the  BBC list when I first created my list but felt there were some books not listed that should be on it. Here's my comprehensive list I created from google searches and Barnes and Noble's Classics. The list contains books that I have read and think everyone should read OR books that I want to read at some point. If you have any books that you think should be on here, let me know and I may add it.  

P.S. This list is mostly fiction and does not include personal growth books or straight non-fiction. I'd have way too many listed here if it did. :) Also, they are in NO PARTICULAR ORDER (from my perspective, if they were, the Bible would be Numero Uno!) Check back periodically for updates :) It'll take me a while to read all of these. If I read 10 a year then it'll take me a DECADE to finish this list! And I don't anticipate 10 a year :) But you never know...
How many have you read?

 I read 70! :)
Strikethrough- those books I've read in their entirety,
Italics- the ones I started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. (most likely I just read and excerpt, I generally don't start a book and not finish it)
* Asterisk- I have seen the movie (I know, it doesn't count but at least I know about the story for pop culture references)

What Am I Currently Reading???

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

Books I Read in 2013 so far...

Uncle Tom's Cabin (AMAZING!)
The Great Gatsby ( can't wait to see Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie!)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The Hobbit
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows


Books I Read in 2012
Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
The Hunger Games Trilogy: 
Hunger Games
Mockingjay
Catching Fire
The Twilight Series (4 books):
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte


The Bible

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 
2       Fellowship of the Ring*
3      The Two Towers*
4      Return of the King*

5 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte *

6 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone*
7 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets*
8 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*

9 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*
10 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix*
11 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince*
12 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows *

13 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *

14 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *

15 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 

16 1984 - George Orwel

17 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens*

18 Great Expectations- Charles Dickens

19 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

20 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *

21 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott *

22 Complete Works of Shakespeare:
               Romeo and Juliet*
               Hamlet*
               Much Ado About Nothing*
               A Mid Summer Night's Dream*

23 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

24 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

25 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

26 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

27 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger*

28 Middlemarch - George Eliot

29 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*

30 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*

31 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

32 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

33Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

34 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*

35 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*

36The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

37Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

38 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

Chronicles of Narnia - - CS Lewis
39        Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe*
40         Prince Caspian*
41         The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*
42        The Silver Chair
43         The Horse and His Boy
44         The Magician's Nephew
45         The Last Battle

46 Emma -Jane Austen*

47 Persuasion - Jane Austen

48 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

49 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

50 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

51Animal Farm - George Orwell

52 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

53 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

54 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

55 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

56 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*

57 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

58 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

59 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*

60 Atonement - Ian McEwan*

61 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

62 Dune - Frank Herbert

63 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

64 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*

65 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

66 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

67 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

68 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

69 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

70 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

71 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

72 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

73 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

74 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

75 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

76 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

77 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

78 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding*

79 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

80 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

81 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

82 Dracula - Bram Stoker 

83 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett*

84 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

85 Ulysses - James Joyce

86 The Inferno - Dante

87 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

88 Germinal - Emile Zola

89 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

90 Possession - AS Byatt

91 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*

92 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

93 The Color Purple - Alice Walker*

94 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

95 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

96 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

97 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White*

98 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

99 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

100 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

101 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

102 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

103 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

104 Watership Down - Richard Adams

105 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

106 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

107 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas *

108 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

109 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

110 The Odyssey- Homer

111 The Iliad- Homer
  
112 Common Sense- Thomas Paine

113 Beowulf 

114 Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

115 Treasure Island- Robert Louis Stevenson

116 Bleak House- Charles Dickens

117 Grimm's Fairy Tales

118 Republic - Plato 

119 The Federalist- Alexander Hamilton

120 The Jungle- Upton Sinclair
121 A Thousand and One Arabian Nights- Anonymous

122 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne

123 Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
124 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway

125 Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rosmond 

126 The Simarillion - J.R.R. Tolkein

127 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain

128 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

129 Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls

130 The Crucible Arthur Miller 

131 Quo Vadis Henry Seinkewicz*

132 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

133 Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky

134 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea- Jules Verne*
135 Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
Twilight Series by Stephanie
136      Twilight*
137      New Moon*
138      Eclipse*
139      Breaking Dawn*
The Hunger Games Series:
140      The Hunger Games*
141      Catching Fire
142      Mockingjay
143 The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks*

The Left Behind Series: by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
144 Left Behind
145 Tribulation Force
146 Nicolae
147 Soul Harvest
148 Appollyon
149 Assassins
150 The Indwelling
151The Mark
152 Desecration
153 The Remnant
154 Armageddon
155 Glorious Appearing

156 Rachel Did It - By E.L. Bailey

157 Tin Walls - By E.L. Bailey

158 Reunion: Ties of Blood- by Fianna Leighton

159 Utopia- Thomas More
160. One Thousand and One Nights

161. Mansfield Park-Jane Austen

162. Northanger Abbey

163. One flew over the cuckoos -by Ken Kesey

164. Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka

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7 comments:

  1. I read a lot but I haven't read a lot of those. I'll have to keep the list in mind when I'm choosing my next book. Thanks for sharing.

    Visiting from SITS

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  2. I have read many of those too. I cannot believe you haven't read Anne of Green Gables! Totally a must:) I try to keep track of my books on Shelfari. I adore reading!!

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  3. Great choices! I'm a Jane Austin nut. I've read most of her books and have seen all of the movies (Sense and Sensibility was the best--Alan Rickman is awesome!)

    I've tried Tolstoy, but I couldn't get though any of his books. The Time Travelers Wife and The Notebook are both great contemporary romance novels. If you haven't already, read the books before you watch the movies.

    This just got me thinking, you should start a blogger book swap! I keep seeing bloggers swap coffee mugs and nail polish, this would be really interesting. I would totally participate in something like this.

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  4. Hey Reese! I LOVE Jane Austin! I can watch Pride and Prejudice every time it's on! I have a couple of her books left to read yet though. You NEED to read Jane Eyre if you haven't yet though. I actually liked it better *gasp* than Austin's books...and I LOVE those! I saw the Time Traveler's Wife and the Notebook...they made me cry so those two have moved toward the bottom...lol....Maybe I SHOULD start a blogger book swap...will have to consider that...do you mean sending people actual books?

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  5. I actually started it with my 3rd grader but it was a little too advanced with the language they use so we put it off. I HAVE seen the movies. My aunt used to actually work for Colleen Dewhurst (one of the main actresses). Will def have to read it at some point

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  6. Hey...thanks for stopping by! It's a long list....I'm happy I started reading through it...so far none of the books have disappointed me yet! :)

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  7. One flew over the cuckoos nest by Ken Kesey

    and Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka definitely need to be added to the list

    ReplyDelete

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