The “Before You Die” List

The “Before You Die” List
   
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Twain
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Carroll
Anna Karenina Tolstoy
Anne of Green Gables Montgomery
The Bible  
Black Beauty Sewell
Black Stallion Farley
Blue Highways Wm. Least Heat Moon
The Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky 
Catcher In the Rye Salinger
The Call of the Wild London
Collected Works of William Shakespeare Shakespeare
Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe Poe
Confederacy of Dunces  
Charlotte’s Web White
Crime and Punishment Dostoyevsky
Cry the Beloved Country Paton
Death of a Salesman Miller
Diary of a Young Giri Frank
Don Quixote Cervantes
Emma Austen
The Feminine Mystique Frieden
Gift From the Sea Lindbergh
Gone With the Wind Mitchell
Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck
Green Eggs and Ham Seuss, Dr.
Great Expectations Dickens
The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald
The Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn
The Hobbit Toikien
The House at Pooh Corner Milne
Invisible Man Ellison
Jane Eyre Bronte
Jeeves Wodehouse
The Koran  
The Little Prince Antoine de St. Exupery
Loiita Nabokov
Lonesome Dove McMurtry
Lord of the Flies Golding
Lord of the Rings Tolkien
Madame Bovary Flaubert
Moby Dick Melville
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle MacDonald
My Antonia Cather
Mythology Edith Hamilton
Narnia Chronides Lewis
Of Mice and Men Steinbeck
Oh, the Places You’ll Go Seuss, Dr.
The Old Man and the Sea Hemingway
The Once and Future King White
One Hundred Years of Solitude Marquez
Peter Pan Barrie
Pride and Prejudice Austen
The Rabbit Quartet Updike
The Road Less Travelled Peck
A Sand County Almanac Leopold
The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne
The Screwtape Letters Lewis
Secret Garden Burnett
Sense and Sensibility Austen
Siddhartha Hesse
The Sun Also Rises Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury Faulkner
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman Feynman
To Kill a Mockingbird Lee
Travels with Charlie Steinbeck
Ulysses Joyce
Walden Thoreau
War and Peace Tolstoy
Washington Square James
The Wasteland Eliot
Wind in the Willows Grahame
Winnie-the-Pooh Milne
A Wrinkle in Time L’Engle
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Baum
Wuthering Heights Bronte
The Yearling Rawlings
   
* Will Manley, the author of The Truth about Reference Librarians (McFarland, 1996), has compiled this list of books that everyone should read before he/she dies. Manley invited readers of Booklist magazine, in which his column ‘The Manley Arts” appears, to submit the titles of “the five most rewarding books you have read in your lifetime” (Booklist, vol. 96 No. 9/10, 1/1/2000 and 1/15/2000). This list is a compilation of the top winners. Manley notes that the Bible and The Collected Works of William Shakespeare were the two most often mentioned in the submissions; almost 65 % of the letter-writers included at least one children’s title; and 17 % listed J.R.R. Tolkien, right behind God and Shakespeare. If you haven’t read each title on the list, it’s time to get busy!

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