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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