100 books to read before you die
It’s a shame to say - I am really bad with reading. I haven’t always been though. Back in school and through the university I’d go through several books a month and I loved it. Still do but… we didn’t have Netflix then or social media to that extent (scrolling instagram is my biggest time-waster these days, sadly).
So every year over the past few years my biggest New Year resolution is: READ MORE BOOKS. Being locked down for most of the year in 2020 did help but still not as much as I wished. And so this year, right at the beginning of it, I’ve stumbled upon this list and got excited with the challenge: BBC’s top 100 books of all time. I’m all in.
There are a lot of versions of this list circulating on the internet but I’ve found the original list in the BBC online archives here. Below you can find my own simplified version (i.e. all Harry Potter books under one point, etc.) and the little ticks will appear next to the ones I have read already.
Here we go.
100 books to read before you die
current score: 22/100
The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen ✓
His Dark Materials, Phillip Pullman
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Harry Potter, JK Rowling ✓
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee ✓
Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne ✓
1984, George Orwell ✓
The Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis ✓
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott ✓
Capitan Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien ✓
Tess Of The D’Ubervilles, Thomas Hardy
Middlemarch, George Eliot
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll ✓
The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Dune, Frank Herbert
Emma, Jane Austen ✓
Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery ✓
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald ✓
The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Animal Farm, George Orwell ✓
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens ✓
Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett ✓
Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck ✓
The Stand, Stephen King
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy ✓
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky ✓
Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden ✓
A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
Mort, Terry Pratchett
The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
The Magus, John Fowles
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
Perfume, Patrick Süskind ✓
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Matilda, Roald Dahl
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding ✓
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
Ulysses, James Joyce
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
The Twits, Roald Dahl
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
Holes, Louis Sachar
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Magician, Raymond E Feist
On The Road, Jack Kerouac
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho ✓
Katherine, Anya Seton
Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot ✓
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
The Beach, Alex Garland
…and 100 more!
It turns out, the original list consisted of 200 instead of 100 titles. If I’m ever done with the list above…. The list of the top 200 is here.
