1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

[Penelope]

No, I think it's because Capote intended In Cold Blood to be received as a "novel" right from the start, not as a just a case of reportage.

[Movielover]

I see it differently. I see them as two separate works of nonfiction. It's true that one was designed to heighten dramatic tension and the other had no idea it would ever be published, but they are still works of nonfiction.

Either way, I guess the response is that The Diary of Anne Frank was not included because it was autobiographical, and not a work of nonfiction from a third party?

[Penelope]

Um, not exactly; Anne Frank was there, Truman Capote was not.

[Movielover]

It's just as fictional as In Cold Blood.

[Sonic Youth]

You're not implying that it's fiction, are you?

[Movielover]

Anyone think it's strange that The Diary of Anne Frank is not on the list?

[Okri]

Who here has read Middlesex? I think that could be adapted into a really good movie like the Virgin Suicides was, given the right screenwriter. It's a terribly good book, one of the very few I've payed full-price for with the hardcover version after reading a couple of pages.

I really enjoyed Middlesex, but I think it would definitely be a challenge for even a talented screenwriter, because there's a lot there.

[Movielover]

49 for me - I'm impressed with my almost 24-year-old self!


The Bridge on the Drina
The Blind Assassin
Like Water for Chocolate
Cat's Eye
Nervous Conditions
The Passion
Enigma of Arrival
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Handmaid's Tale
The Lover
Shame
The House of the Spirits
Broken April
A Bend in the River
Petals of Blood
Autumn of the Patriarch
Surfacing
In a Free State
Ada
One Hundred Years of Solitude
In Cold Blood
The River Between
Arrow of God
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
To Kill a Mockingbird
Things Fall Apart
The Lonely Londoners
Kingdom of This World
Ficciones
Of Mice and Men
Miss Lonelyhearts
Brave New World
Lady Chatterley's Lover
The Sun Also Rises
A Passage to India
The Secret Agent (do they mean The Secret Sharer?, because that's what I read)
Heart of Darkness
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Return of the Native
Great Expectations
A Tale of Two Cities
A Christmas Carol
Emma
Pride and Prejudice
The Monk
A Modest Proposal
Oroonoko
The Interesting Narrative

[Franz Ferdinand]

Who here has read Middlesex? I think that could be adapted into a really good movie like the Virgin Suicides was, given the right screenwriter. It's a terribly good book, one of the very few I've payed full-price for with the hardcover version after reading a couple of pages.

[Okri]

Is there going to be any more actual discussion of the books or is everyone going to just list what they've read? Because that's, um, boring, folks.

Well, there are 1001. Pick a book.

Reza, including foreign films and television series, I'd peg it around 267 at least (blame the BBC and their countless adaptations). Those were the ones I knew of. I also included things that were still coming up (The Black Dahlia, Atonement).

[Reza]

How many of these have been adapted into a film?

[flipp525]

Is there going to be any more actual discussion of the books or is everyone going to just list what they've read? Because that's, um, boring, folks.

[Franz Ferdinand]

[quote="anonymous"][/quote]
Oh God, I have read 90 of these. So that's where my 23 years have gone! Elizabeth Costello by Coetzee is a must-read over Saramago's Blindness?? That's news to me....

2000s
Saturday – Ian McEwan
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
The Sea – John Banville
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
White Teeth – Zadie Smith

1900s
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
The Cider House Rules – John Irving
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The World According to Garp – John Irving
Fateless – Imre Kertész
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
Ulysses – James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

1800s
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
Middlemarch – George Eliot
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Adam Bede – George Eliot
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
Villette – Charlotte Brontë
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Emma – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen


1700s
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

Pre-1700
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Metamorphoses – Ovid

[MovieWes]

I've read 28.

Watchmen, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Shining, Breakfast of Champions, The Godfather, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Catch-22, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Once and Future King, The Lord of the Rings, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Lord of the Flies, Casino Royale, The Catcher in the Rye, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Of Mice and Men, The Hobbit, Nostromo, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The War of the Worlds, Dracula, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Frankenstein

[abcinyvr]

Yes, this list is ‘naff’…but I’ve read 83! I was expecting to be around 20...I rarely read fiction anymore, and little of it from recent times - other than J.K. Rowling or Sue Townsend.

There seem to be a lot of authors mentioned again and again. That is kind of overkill when it takes the spot of someone overlooked.
Where is Carson McCullers?
Where is The Lottery?
Winnie The Pooh?!

Still, most of my favorites are on here - with one glaring brutal omission, How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn.

Very surprised by:
Two Hanif Kureishi choices
Three John Wyndham, although Chocky before The Chrysalids? And why Wyndham and not Ray Bradbury?
Two Richard Brautigan! Had I not re-read Willard And His Bowling Trophies just last month I would have questioned it's inclusion over The Abortion.
Four Orwell's, including my preferred, Keep The Aspidistra Flying.
Billy Liar. If you haven't read Keith Waterhouse...this is his best, and has a hilarious sequel.
James Baldwin. Brilliant, but I would choose any of his other novels over the ones listed here.
Nice to see Pat Barker. Her style is so surgically precise. No unnecessary dialogue or meandering storyline. Very refreshing.
e.e. cummings. Oh ya!

As for The Graduate. It’s not like Midnight Cowboy or Trainspotting. When I read the book it felt like I was reading the script.