1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

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Anyone seen this yet?

Apparently it's the basis for a book that tells you what books are worth reading. There are no plays or poetry, but somehow it's managed to squeeze in a few Poe short stories and "A Modest Proposal" as examples of "books."

Of course, the real purpose of such a list is to get us to compete with each other over how many we've read. I've read 72 (about half of which were for school), and there are another 18 that I've started but wasn't able to finish.

Also good for arguments about whether things like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time belong on this list at all.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 19 October 2006 14:38 (nineteen years ago)

There are some HIGHLY questionable picks on that list.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Thursday, 19 October 2006 15:12 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, thankfully. The dubious picks really upped my count.
(97. Could probably double that if I included books that I only read half of)

― Øystein (Øystein), Thursday, 19 October 2006 15:21 (nineteen years ago)

Lists are stupid. And people are stupid.

― James Herbert Dip (noodle vague), Thursday, 19 October 2006 15:32 (nineteen years ago)

65.

I'm actually a little offended at the thought of someone telling me I must read Chuck Palahniuk before I die.

― franny (frannyglass), Thursday, 19 October 2006 15:32 (nineteen years ago)

I've read 75 of them, it looks like, although maybe 15 of those I didn't finish but just made a decent dent in. I am surprised by the amount of Perec/Queaneau/Roussel on the list, though! Someone should tell this list compiler about Alphabetical Africa.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 19 October 2006 15:41 (nineteen years ago)

160 exactly.

― Meg Busset (Mog), Thursday, 19 October 2006 15:43 (nineteen years ago)

115 and now I can't believe I went through that whole list.

― wmlynch (wlynch), Thursday, 19 October 2006 16:30 (nineteen years ago)

i've read 83 of them. that list should be called *books you know you should read cuz they are good and good for you and if you would just put down that goddamn magazine for two minutes maybe you would get around to reading some of them you lazy t.v.-obsessed philistine*.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 19 October 2006 17:02 (nineteen years ago)

Observer review

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 19 October 2006 17:05 (nineteen years ago)

I would prefer to choose my own books to read before I die. Of course, I see nothing wrong with others making recommendations to me, but by framing his suggestions as an imperative my only sensible recourse is to cock a snook at this fool who thinks he knows what I "must" read.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 19 October 2006 17:12 (nineteen years ago)

Any list with Everything Is Illuminated on it is dubious.

― Mike Lisk (b_buster), Thursday, 19 October 2006 17:41 (nineteen years ago)

And no Richard Yates or Cormac McCarthy or Charles Portis?! Dumb.

― Mike Lisk (b_buster), Thursday, 19 October 2006 18:10 (nineteen years ago)

And no fewer than TEN by Coetzee, which seems a little silly to me.

I do think it's a good list of recommendations, though, so I can remember what to look for the next time I go to the library.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 19 October 2006 18:31 (nineteen years ago)

Snore......I wish i had thought of it first though, and had had the connections to get someone to pay me to make a book of it. I'll look for it in the remainder bins in a few months, and if it's big enough, i've got a door at my office that won't stay open.

― Docpacey (docpacey), Thursday, 19 October 2006 19:09 (nineteen years ago)

"1001 Books (Mostly Novels) That I Read And Liked Well Enough."

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 19 October 2006 20:51 (nineteen years ago)

[Over] 1001 Books That I Really Ought To Get Around To Reading Before I Die.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 19 October 2006 20:52 (nineteen years ago)

Some of those books are ones I'd actually regret having wasted my time on if I read them knowing I had a terminal illness.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Thursday, 19 October 2006 21:22 (nineteen years ago)

Not to mention that there are only THIRTEEN from pre-1700.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Thursday, 19 October 2006 21:28 (nineteen years ago)

I read a disapointing 60 of them, so I think this is not a very good list ;)

I am amazed that they included so many translated Dutch novels.

― Ionica (Ionica), Friday, 20 October 2006 08:06 (nineteen years ago)

190
it's a weird mix of canon and Iain Banks (who pushed up my score)/Stephen King/Anne Rice etc... Plus they do a strange thing of putting most of an author's books on - which often leads to questionable inclusions - but not grouping them together.

― Ray (Ray), Friday, 20 October 2006 10:10 (nineteen years ago)

116 give or take a few I read as a kid.

what ray said, also short stories & novellas included as single entries alongside multi-volume novels? whatevs.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Friday, 20 October 2006 12:22 (nineteen years ago)

Jesse owns this book. It's on the coffee table right now. I've been thumbing through it, going "meh" a lot.

― this, however, is the crucial moment from the libertine's point of view (kenan), Friday, 20 October 2006 13:18 (nineteen years ago)

but not grouping them together

They seem to be listed in reverse chronological order.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 20 October 2006 14:26 (nineteen years ago)

197, but I don't agree with much of what's selected, including some of those I've read. The 19th century selection is wierd: Trollope's He Knew He Was Right but not The Way We Live Now? If it's books you must read rather than novels, what about Darwin's The Origin of Species, which whatever your view of evolution or creationism is one of the two key texts to that debate (the other probably being the bible, but that wasn't there either). Whoever compiled this list is a dunderhead.

― andyjack (andyjack), Friday, 20 October 2006 14:37 (nineteen years ago)

I count 78 that I've read - most of which were pretty good books.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 20 October 2006 14:55 (nineteen years ago)

About 70, plus maybe 5 or 6 that were so awful I could not get through them.

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:39 (nineteen years ago)

Which ones were awful?

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:45 (nineteen years ago)

No John Ashbery, no credibility.

It's so horribly literary. Where is the philosophy, the history, the social science, and that sort of thing? There may be some in there, but at a quick scan it is overwhelmingly dominated by literature.

― R_S (RSLaRue), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:51 (nineteen years ago)

I haven't read many of them.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:52 (nineteen years ago)

It's pretty much all prose fiction, I think.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 20 October 2006 15:53 (nineteen years ago)

Three of the Auster books listed were downright groanworthy (Mr. Vertigo, Timbuktu, Book of Illusions)

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Friday, 20 October 2006 16:52 (nineteen years ago)

I liked Book of Illusions, I think. I don't remember much of it. I read most of it on a plane.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 20 October 2006 17:28 (nineteen years ago)

How did The Labyrinth of Solitude slip in, a book about Mexican history and culture, from what I remember?

― R_S (RSLaRue), Friday, 20 October 2006 18:09 (nineteen years ago)

"Three of the Auster books listed were downright groanworthy (Mr. Vertigo, Timbuktu, Book of Illusions."

Yep.

― Hugo Lovelace (Hugo Lovelace), Friday, 20 October 2006 19:25 (nineteen years ago)

I read 108 of them, and, like O.Nate, I'd say they were mostly good to very good. But maybe I've read the good ones.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 20 October 2006 21:20 (nineteen years ago)

I counted 110 and yeah, they've all been pretty good. I could add about 10 I haven't been able to get through, I think.

― luna (luna.c), Wednesday, 25 October 2006 03:38 (nineteen years ago)

I counted 301 of these. While there are some odd inclusions and omissions, it's generally a pretty safe list -- not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Having said that, most of the ones I haven't read are books I've thought about reading, decided on the whole I probably don't want to, and am prettily unlikely to change my mind. So I'm not expecting to make heavy inroads into the remaining 699.

― frankiemachine (frankiemachine), Wednesday, 25 October 2006 10:41 (nineteen years ago)

25 :(

― a.b. (alanbanana), Thursday, 26 October 2006 03:58 (nineteen years ago)

281, I think - but the phone rang in the middle of my counting and I couldn't be bothered to go back and start again.

Sad how many of them sucked. But a couple of my favorites are on there, so I feel a bit redeemed. I don't think that I agree with many being "must reads," though.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, 26 October 2006 05:29 (nineteen years ago)

I'm pretty sure I posted to this thread twice yesterday, and yet today my posts seem to have vanished.

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, 26 October 2006 10:43 (nineteen years ago)

i'm too astonished that my friend Peter Manson's cut up prose work "Adjunct: An Undigest" appears on the list to add anything else right now!

― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 26 October 2006 16:08 (nineteen years ago)

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