1001 Books to Read Before You Die

Friday, August 29th, 2008

Following on from the food meme, here’s a meme about my other favorite thing: books!

The 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die meme (if you could even really call it a meme) is several months old. It’s based on the book of the same name which was published two years ago to much grumbling about what was included and what wasn’t. I went through the list back in May and noted which books I’d read with the intention of writing about them here, but…then I kind of forgot.

Well, better late than never, eh? What follows is not a list of all 1001 books, but rather a list of the 96 that I’ve actually read. I’ve tried to be fair and not include books that I’ve “kind of” read or just read some of—like Heart of Darkness, The Tin Drum and Ulysses, all of which I’ve started but not (yet) gotten to the end of. In some cases, I found it hard to remember whether I’d really read a particular book or just seen the movie—appalling, I know. It’s also appalling to see how many classic books I haven’t read, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or anything by Jane Austen, or indeed most anything by Dickens. Oh, the shame.

Still, I have read 96 of the 1001 books, which apparently makes me 9.59% well read—that’s not too bad, I suppose. My rate was bumped up by three main factors: that I actually read most of the books assigned to me in high school, that I studied German literature in college, and that I now read so much George Orwell, Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan (five each from the list). And I suppose the fourth main factor would be that I just like to read.

If you want to keep track of your own progress on the 1001 books, you can download a handy Excel spreadsheet from Arukiyomi. The spreadsheet will also tell you, based on your current age, how many books you need to read per year to get through all 1001 before you kick the average bucket. In my case, it’s 20—a not entirely unreasonable number if I were to dedicate myself solely to reading books off the list. Which I have absolutely no intention of doing.

So, with no further ado:

Comments

1

Where is Heidi on this list??? Okay, Foucault’s Pendulum, Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky???? Been there…read them…but I don’t see Heidi??? Where’s Heidi????

Posted by Mutti

2

I’ve read somewhere in the range of 90-110 books on the list — not sure exactly right now. The list is in no way perfect, but it’s a start on some great reading!

3

hey… thanks so much for kindly linking to my spreadsheet.

Just to let you know that with the publication of the 3rd edition of the book in March 2010, I released a brand new version of the spreadsheet.

it’s at

http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?page_id=1806

if you’re interested

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