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Dec 30, 2008

101 Books to Read Before You Die

So, yesterday I was looking for a list of book to read before I die. I was specifically looking for a 41 book list that my English teacher had brought into class that she was working through, but I found this longer 101 book list instead. I found this on another blog I found on Google called Carlo's. This list is apparently from South Africa, so a few titles are written in Afrikaans so omit (or try) the ones by Dalene Matthee. I'll let you know if I can find those in an English translation. I'll also let you know if any of the others are in Afrikaans that were not mentioned on the other blog.

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Kite-Runner - Khaled Hosseini
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
4. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
5. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
6. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
7. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
8. LIfe of Pi - Yann Martel
9. The Da Vinci Code- Dan Brown
10. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
11. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
12. Spud - John van de Ruit
13. The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
14. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
15. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
16. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
18. The Catcer in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
20. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
21. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
23. My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
24. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
25. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
26. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
27. The Pillars of the EArth - Ken Follett
28. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchel
29. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
30. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
31. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
32. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
33. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
34. Atonement - Ian McEwan
35. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
36. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
37. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
38. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
39. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
40. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
41. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
42. I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb
43. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
44. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
45. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
46. The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel
47. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
48. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
49. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
50. Possession - A.S. Byatt
51. Perfume - Patrick Suskind
52. The House of Spirits - Isabel Allende
53. Chocolat - Joanne Harris
54. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
55. Q & A - Vikas Swarup
56. Dune - Frank Herbert
57. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
58. Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
59. River God - Wilbur Smith60. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
61. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
62. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
63. Mort - Terry Pratchett
64. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
65. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
66. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
67. The Name of Rose - Umberto Eco
68. The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
69. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
70. The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
71. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
72. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
73. The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
74. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
75. Animal Farm - George Orwell
76. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
77. Watership Down - Richard Adams
78. Magician - Raymond E. Feist79. Middlemarch - George Eliot
80. The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
81. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
82. The Magus - John Fowles
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk
85. The Cout of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
86. The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
87. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
88. The Beach House - James Patterson
89. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
90. Kringe in 'n Bos - Dalene Matthee
91. The World According to Garp - John Irving
92. Northern Lights - Phillip Pullman
93. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
94. Shades - Marguerite Poland
95. Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer
96. Fiela se kind - Dalene Matthee
97. Story of an African Farm - Olive Schreiner
98. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
99. The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton
100. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
101. Winnie the Pool - A.A. Milne

Carlo's Blog mentioned that this list was from Exclusive Books. I have no idea what that is, but that's where this was originally found.
I have already read the Harry Potter Series, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I must say all three (or technically 9) books deserve to be on this list.
The Harry Potter Books are beautifully written and exceptionally well imagined.
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was a remarkably imaginitive piece, and it was very symbolic (as my mother never fails to remind me after we have finished watching the movie) of the story of Christ's sacrifce. I prefer to look at this book as an entertaining tale, not a recreation of my bible, but others may see it as my mother does.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was terribly humerous, and truelly painted a picture in ones mind of the scenes that were described and later carried out in movie form.
I am starting to plow through this list with Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, and I must say I was up until 1:30 this morning reading this book, it is enthralling and very picturesque.
I prompt you to read through this list as well and let me know of progress and you're thoughts on the books. Bon chance!