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Writer's pictureKiki Judith

The Reading List

Updated: Dec 7, 2019



This is my list of books to read before I die. Feel free to join me on my journey into the world of words and stories. Before we start, I should let you know that there are three different subsections: fiction, nonfiction, and plays and poetry. I won't be reading in any particular order but the books will all be numbered by section to keep track of how many I need to read. It is important to note that I have already read some of these but I would like to include them because I think you should read them, too. This is mostly a list of books I want to read, not a review. However, I did research on each with the help of Google and GoodReads to decide whether or not to include it on my list. The only requirement the books had to meet was a near four-star review or greater on GoodReads or a very well worded review that made me "need" to read a specific book. Over time, I will continue to add new books to this list as I will obviously discover new books. Feel free to comment or send in recommendations. Without further ado, welcome to the best list you'll ever read.


Fiction

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

3. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood*

4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

7. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne*

8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

9. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

11. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

12. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

13. Matilda by Roald Dahl

14. 1984 by George Orwell

15. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

16. The Narrative of John Smith by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

17. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

18. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon*

20. The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas

21. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

22. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

23. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee*

24. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

25. The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blaedel

26. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

27. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

28. The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

29. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

30. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

31. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

32. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

33. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

34. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

35. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

36. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

37. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd


NonFiction

1. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

2. My Name is Mahtob by Mahtob Mahmoody

3. Becoming by Michelle Obama

4. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

5. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

6. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow*

7. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria E. Anzaldua

8. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

9. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

10. Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman

11. The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau

12. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai*

13. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

14. 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don't Do

15. The Declaration of Sentiments by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

16. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

17. The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang

18. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

19. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch*

20. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

21. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank


Plays and Poetry

An important note: poetry is marked by an author's name since the author's poetry is easier to find rather than a million books that have been translated or reworded or published too many times to count. Plays are still written in the same format used above.


1. Emily Dickinson

2. Sappho

3. Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl

4. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee*

5. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

6. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

7. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

8. Antigone by Sophocles

9. Atticus

10. Almost, Maine by John Cariani

11. Machinal by Sophie Treadwell

12. The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl

13. Rupi Kaur

14. Fugue by Laura Elizabeth Miller*

15. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

16. Sylvia Plath

17. Maya Angelou

18. Our Town by Thornton Wilder

19. Fefu and Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes

20. Rumi

21. Pablo Neruda

22. Angels in America by Tom Kushner*

23. God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza

23. Tribes by Nina Raine

24. R.H. Sin

25. Cleo Wade

26. Danez Smith

27. Morgan Nikola-Wren

28. Sarah Kay

29. Gwendolyn Brooks

30. W.B. Yeats

31. Walt Whitman



*May not be appropriate for all audiences based on having read the book and/or general reviews of it.

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