Tuesday, June 5, 2012

My list of books to read before I die

Compiled from various internet articles, bestseller lists, and your recommendations. This list is a work in progress. I am publishing it here for those of you who may be interested. Of course, it only consists of books which I have not yet read.

Entering medicine has dampened my once voracious appetite for fiction, and this list will push me to keep reading good literature, in the little time I can afford, which is all otherwise spent trolling the internet and watching rom-coms. 

In no particular order:

1. A Room With A View, E.M.Forster
2. If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor
3. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
4. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
5. 1984, George Orwell
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
7. A House For Mr. Biswas, V.S.Naipul
8. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Rilke
9. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
10. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
11.  The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro.
12. Mein Kampf
13. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
14. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
15. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
16. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
17. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
18. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
19. A Song Of Ice and Fire (series), George R. Martin
20. The Longest Trip Home: A Memoir, John Grogan
21. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Waterson
22. A Short History of Nearly Everything
23. Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
24.  At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
25. Atonement, Ian McEwan
26. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
27. Kafka On The Shore, Haruki Murakami
28. Fifty Shades Trilogy, E L James
29. On The Island
30. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
31. Water For Elephants, Sara Gruen
32. The Hunger Games, Susan Collins
33. The Scent Of Rain And Lightning, Nancy Pickard
34. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
35. A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

36. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos- John Berger
37. Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Milan Kundera
38. The Night In Lisbon, Erich Maria Remarque
39. The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh

40. The Sea, John Banville

18 comments:

  1. Infinite Jest
    A Moveable Feast
    Closer

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    1. Thanks for those, and there's more than one book titled 'Closer'. Can you name the author?

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    2. Closer - The Play by Patrick Marber

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  2. That's a tempting list. Currently I am most tempted to read 'And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos' by John Berger http://www.amazon.com/And-Faces-Heart-Brief-Photos/dp/0679736565

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    1. Looks very interesting. Will go up on the list.

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  3. Blessings...
    That's quite a list but doable.

    How have you been? I trust life is treating you well and you are being good to yourself.

    Stay blessed.
    Rhapsody
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  4. You can fly through the Fifty Shades trilogy really. It's like Mills & Boon with a tiny sprinkling of BDSM! :D I finished the 3 books in like a week! But I must say, if they ever made a guy like Christian Grey, I shall sell my soul. ;)

    Everything else is pretty great stuff. :) Happy reading.

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    1. Oh well, I have never read a Mills and Boon! :D I think this was one of the few lighter books on the list, and since I want to get to know this so called Christian Grey, I will read the books :D

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    3. You got through your teenage years without reading a single M&B? That's amazing! :D My mom has this big old stack of dusty romance novels in her cupboard which she never let me read till I was like 14 or 15. It was, umm, quite enlightening, I'd say! :D But they're like a guilty pleasure. No one reads them for their literary merit anyway. My brother goes so far as to call them Penthouse for girls! :D

      That apart, mgeek is referring to the play Closer by Patrick Marber. He lent it to me once. Maddeningly great stuff! Mike Nichols even made a movie out of it, starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Natalie Portman that's remarkably faithful to the play and has Damien Rice singing that awesome song!

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    4. Well, for quite a long time my reading was supervised by siblings, who I am sure would look down upon M & B! I had even been forbidden from reading Sidney Sheldon. And well byt he time they stopped caring about what I read, I had progressed to Nora Roberts and Judith McNaught and didn't really need the M & Bs :D

      Sounds like I will have to check out Closer, the book and the movie. Love the star cast you've named!

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    5. I wish my sib had bothered to supervise my reading occasionally. I'd have skipped a whole lot of Archie comics that way. :D Unfortunately, I went from M&B to Danielle Steel before I found a way back. But Nora Roberts, huh? Never read anything by her. :D Now I'm really curious! ;)

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  5. Teehee. Love how you've just randomly stopped at 34 and left it blank! To Kill a Mockingbird is very close to my heart. :-) Did I ever mention my literary crush on Atticus Finch? (Followed closely by the ever-charming Mr. Darcy, of course...) A few of those are on my list, too. I should be intellectual-sounding and be like 'Ah yes, 1984...' (I read the book when I was 14/15. It was a CHALLENGE!) but all I can think of to say is 'YIPPIE YAY CALVIN AND HOBBES'. lol. You haven't read any of Watterson's comics before? Or do you mean you need to read all of them? You will love Calvin and Hobbes, I'm sure! :-)

    My sister finished 'A Suitable Boy' in like two weeks or something. Crazy. That book WOULD be on my list but I think I will just get too frustrated that I'm unable to complete the darn book!

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    1. No, you didn't. Now I am thinking about who could be my literary crush. Mr. darcy is always there, of course. Hmm. This needs thinking.

      I have only read Calvin and Hobbes on and off wherever I come across them, I need to read all of them, so going to sit down and do that someday.

      A lot of the books on the list are going to be difficult to read, let's see how it goes.

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    2. That's a great list. You can look the below up too

      1. Unbearable lightness of being - Milan Kundera
      2. Night in Lisbon - Eric Maria Remarque
      3. The Shadow Lines - Amitabh Ghosh
      4. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
      5. The Sea - John Banville

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  6. aayushi! to kill a mockingbird has to be top of the list!!! and also read 'the importance of being ernest ' cant remember the author..its a short play..and theres a movie on it too..its pretty much te base of modern cinema mefeels

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    1. Okay, since I have a hard copy of that book, to kill a mockingbird, that's what I am gonna read next. Will add your book to the list, too. Thanks!

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  7. modern cinema as in tht specific genre of comedy movies..umm read it, ul know wht im talking abt..and if ur a shakespeare fan,i hope uv read all the great ones by him..

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