{"id":5472,"date":"2006-10-17T10:40:54","date_gmt":"2006-10-17T14:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5472"},"modified":"2026-03-18T08:08:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:08:19","slug":"lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5472","title":{"rendered":"1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview<\/a> with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die<\/a><\/i>. I loved what Boxall said at the end:<\/p>\n

\u0093Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as reviews asking why I haven’t put this or that title on, I think that a second edition of the book would look different in many ways. One irate Australian man wrote a furious, but incredibly insightful letter, giving me a list of perhaps sixty great writers who I had ignored. I found that letter extremely enlightening. I have it still. So the answer is yes, the very idea of a canon of 1001 titles that is closed and complete seems a ludicrous idea. But the aim of the book, as far as I am concerned, is not to produce a finished, exclusive list, but to stimulate debate about what we read and why.\u0094<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love lists. They make me think. I always get good suggestions for further reading as well.<\/p>\n

Here are some fun lists I’ve linked to – or posted myself – with cool discussions in the comments.<\/p>\n

100 greatest novels of all time<\/a><\/p>\n

The lifetime reading plan<\/a><\/p>\n

Book list: Books I’ve read<\/a><\/p>\n

My list of favorite history\/biography\/historical fiction<\/a><\/p>\n

My list of contemporary must-read fiction<\/a><\/p>\n

My favorite fictional characters<\/a><\/p>\n

Books that made me cry<\/a><\/p>\n

I thought I had posted Thomas Jefferson’s essential reading list – he put it in a letter to a nephew, I think – “books an intelligent man MUST have read” – but I can’t find it on my blog. Hmmm. I know I have a copy of it somewhere – it’s wonderful, I’ll post it sometime.<\/p>\n

And now: JUST FOR FUN:<\/p>\n

Here is the actual list from the book 1001 Books You Must Read<\/i>.<\/a> It took me forever but I picked out the ones I read. I had to be honest and leave off books I STARTED but did not complete … and I know I read a picture book of Aesop’s Fables when I was a kid, I think we might have even had a copy – but I don’t know if that’s the “original”. I included it anyway.<\/p>\n

Things I noticed:<\/p>\n

— I just don’t read that much contemporary fiction anymore, I guess. The list itself is broken up by century (or, by decade, in the more recent years) – and I read a ton of the books in the 80s – many of the hit books, much more fiction back then, but currently not so much. (Oh – and I MUST put Geek Love<\/i> on the list. I just MUST.)<\/p>\n

— I also noticed that once I started going back in time, further and further, there were more and more books I had read. Still:<\/p>\n

There are a TON I have not.<\/p>\n

Obviously. I have 874 more I need to read before I die!<\/p>\n

I’ve read 127 of these books – I listed the ones I read below. I’m totally jet-lagged – so I might have missed some.<\/p>\n


\nThe 127 I read off that main list<\/b><\/p>\n

Atonement \u0096 Ian McEwan
\nHouse of Leaves \u0096 Mark Z. Danielewski
\nThe Hours \u0096 Michael Cunningham
\nUnderworld \u0096 Don DeLillo
\nThe Shipping News \u0096 E. Annie Proulx
\nTrainspotting \u0096 Irvine Welsh
\nThe Stone Diaries \u0096 Carol Shields
\nThe Robber Bride \u0096 Margaret Atwood
\nPossessing the Secret of Joy \u0096 Alice Walker
\nWritten on the Body \u0096 Jeanette Winterson
\nThe English Patient \u0096 Michael Ondaatje
\nAmongst Women \u0096 John McGahern
\nThe Things They Carried \u0096 Tim O\u0092Brien
\nPossession \u0096 A.S. Byatt
\nSexing the Cherry \u0096 Jeanette Winterson
\nRemains of the Day \u0096 Kazuo Ishiguro
\nA Prayer for Owen Meany \u0096 John Irving
\nCat\u0092s Eye \u0096 Margaret Atwood
\nOscar and Lucinda \u0096 Peter Carey
\nThe Black Dahlia \u0096 James Ellroy
\nThe Passion \u0096 Jeanette Winterson
\nThe Bonfire of the Vanities \u0096 Tom Wolfe
\nBeloved \u0096 Toni Morrison
\nThe Drowned and the Saved \u0096 Primo Levi
\nOranges Are Not the Only Fruit \u0096 Jeanette Winterson
\nThe Cider House Rules \u0096 John Irving
\nLess Than Zero \u0096 Bret Easton Ellis
\nContact \u0096 Carl Sagan
\nThe Handmaid\u0092s Tale \u0096 Margaret Atwood
\nWhite Noise \u0096 Don DeLillo
\nDictionary of the Khazars \u0096 Milorad Pavi?
\nThe Lover \u0096 Marguerite Duras
\nThe Unbearable Lightness of Being \u0096 Milan Kundera
\nWaterland \u0096 Graham Swift
\nThe Color Purple \u0096 Alice Walker
\nConfederacy of Dunces \u0096 John Kennedy Toole
\nThe Hitchhiker\u0092s Guide to the Galaxy \u0096 Douglas Adams
\nThe Cement Garden \u0096 Ian McEwan
\nThe World According to Garp \u0096 John Irving
\nThe Virgin in the Garden \u0096 A.S. Byatt
\nDelta of Venus \u0096 Ana\u00efs Nin
\nThe Shining \u0096 Stephen King
\nInterview With the Vampire \u0096 Anne Rice
\nRagtime \u0096 E.L. Doctorow
\nSurfacing \u0096 Margaret Atwood
\nFear and Loathing in Las Vegas \u0096 Hunter S. Thompson
\nSlaughterhouse-five \u0096 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
\nThe French Lieutenant\u0092s Woman \u0096 John Fowles
\nThe Godfather \u0096 Mario Puzo
\nCancer Ward \u0096 Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
\nThe Master and Margarita \u0096 Mikhail Bulgakov
\nIn Cold Blood \u0096 Truman Capote
\nOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u0092s Nest \u0096 Ken Kesey
\nFranny and Zooey \u0096 J.D. Salinger
\nThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie \u0096 Muriel Spark
\nCatch-22 \u0096 Joseph Heller
\nThe Violent Bear it Away \u0096 Flannery O\u0092Connor
\nThe Country Girls \u0096 Edna O\u0092Brien
\nTo Kill a Mockingbird \u0096 Harper Lee
\nBreakfast at Tiffany\u0092s \u0096 Truman Capote
\nThe Once and Future King \u0096 T.H. White
\nThe Lord of the Rings \u0096 J.R.R. Tolkien
\nLolita \u0096 Vladimir Nabokov
\nLord of the Flies \u0096 William Golding
\nThe Old Man and the Sea \u0096 Ernest Hemingway
\nWise Blood \u0096 Flannery O\u0092Connor
\nThe Catcher in the Rye \u0096 J.D. Salinger
\nThe Rebel \u0096 Albert Camus
\nNineteen Eighty-Four \u0096 George Orwell
\nMagic Mountain\u0096 Thomas Mann
\nThe Plague \u0096 Albert Camus
\nAnimal Farm \u0096 George Orwell
\nThe Little Prince \u0096 Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry
\nFor Whom the Bell Tolls \u0096 Ernest Hemingway
\nThe Grapes of Wrath \u0096 John Steinbeck
\nFinnegans Wake \u0096 James Joyce
\nAt Swim-Two-Birds \u0096 Flann O\u0092Brien
\nThe Hobbit \u0096 J.R.R. Tolkien
\nBrave New World \u0096 Aldous Huxley
\nA Farewell to Arms \u0096 Ernest Hemingway
\nLady Chatterley\u0092s Lover \u0096 D.H. Lawrence
\nThe Sun Also Rises \u0096 Ernest Hemingway
\nThe Great Gatsby \u0096 F. Scott Fitzgerald
\nA Passage to India \u0096 E.M. Forster
\nUlysses \u0096 James Joyce
\nThe Age of Innocence \u0096 Edith Wharton
\nA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man \u0096 James Joyce
\nEthan Frome \u0096 Edith Wharton
\nHowards End \u0096 E.M. Forster
\nA Room With a View \u0096 E.M. Forster
\nThe Jungle \u0096 Upton Sinclair
\nThe Awakening \u0096 Kate Chopin
\nDracula \u0096 Bram Stoker
\nThe Yellow Wallpaper \u0096 Charlotte Perkins Gilman
\nTess of the D\u0092Urbervilles \u0096 Thomas Hardy
\nThe Picture of Dorian Gray \u0096 Oscar Wilde
\nThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn \u0096 Mark Twain
\nThe Brothers Karamazov \u0096 Fyodor Dostoevsky
\nAnna Karenina \u0096 Leo Tolstoy
\nMiddlemarch \u0096 George Eliot
\nThrough the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There \u0096 Lewis
\nLittle Women \u0096 Louisa May Alcott
\nCrime and Punishment \u0096 Fyodor Dostoevsky
\nAlice\u0092s Adventures in Wonderland \u0096 Lewis Carroll
\nNotes from the Underground \u0096 Fyodor Dostoevsky
\nGreat Expectations \u0096 Charles Dickens
\nA Tale of Two Cities \u0096 Charles Dickens
\nMadame Bovary \u0096 Gustave Flaubert
\nMoby-Dick \u0096 Herman Melville
\nThe Scarlet Letter \u0096 Nathaniel Hawthorne
\nWuthering Heights \u0096 Emily Bront\u00eb
\nJane Eyre \u0096 Charlotte Bront\u00eb
\nThe Pit and the Pendulum \u0096 Edgar Allan Poe
\nA Christmas Carol \u0096 Charles Dickens
\nOliver Twist \u0096 Charles Dickens
\nFrankenstein \u0096 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
\nPride and Prejudice \u0096 Jane Austen
\nSense and Sensibility \u0096 Jane Austen
\nA Modest Proposal \u0096 Jonathan Swift
\nGulliver\u0092s Travels \u0096 Jonathan Swift
\nThe Pilgrim\u0092s Progress \u0096 John Bunyan
\nAesop\u0092s Fables \u0096 Aesopus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I loved what Boxall said at the end: \u0093Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,28],"tags":[1001,81,967,630,930,2628,87,265,914,931,1057,983,102,104,697,836,992,1588,244,105,264,98,576,249,233,840,872,99,231,1002,855,2465,92,1006,2535,932,1608,85,262,996,259,685,82,227,247,856,239,96,977,241,629,1095,78,1007,229,822,876,823,815,209,2042,1017,1053,676,821,263,888,917,652,853,713,643,2466,2643,907,2514,80,566,1005,1602,1042],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5472"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169846,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5472\/revisions\/169846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}