50 books to read before you die

50 books to read before you die

50 books to read before you die is another reading challenge. A reading challenge I found on a bookmark made of metal, bought in a bookstore. And I of course intend to complete the list of 50 books to read before you die. I have set up a few rules for myself though.

If you like reading challenges as much as I do, feel free to read along with me and let me know how you’re doing! You can also check out my progress in my other reading challenges. The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge and the Reading The World Challenge. It’s going to take a while for me to complete all these challenges inbetween moodreading, reading current and new works and having time for review copies as well.

I’ll make sure to update this list with my reviews as I go along!

Rules for my 50 books to read before you die challenge

  1. First rule is, that previously read works do not count. I have to read every book on my bookmark anew.
  2. The 50 books must be read in the order they appear on the bookmark and not by convenience to me
  3. I cannot miss a single book even if I know or suspect that I will not enjoy it.
  4. It can take me as long as I need to finish
  5. I may not buy new books in the process – I have to procure the books by borrowing or otherwise gaining free copies. (Most of the older ones should be available as free e-books due to their age).
  6. I can only read physical books or e-books, no audiobooks will count in this challenge.
  7. The bookmark must be used when reading each book

Let’s get started on this reading challenge!

Now that the rules are in place and I’ve announced publicly that I’ll throw myself into yet another reading challenge, there is no way back. This one should be fun though. In all fairness, some of these books will also be on the Rory Gilmore reading list, but I’ll only read them once and according to the above rules. Some of them are series and the list also includes the Bible (Christian Bible I assume), so I will have plenty of reading material.

Are you ready to read 50 of the modern western world’s great classics? (According to a metal bookmark I found somewhere in a bookstore that shall not be named).

Let’s get to the list of books to read!

List of 50 books to read before you die

*This list is organized in the same manner as the bookmark, and not alphabetically

  1. “The Lord of The Rings Trilogy” by J.R.R. Tolkien
  2. “1984” by George Orwell
  3. “Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen
  4. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
  5. “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
  6. “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
  7. “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte
  8. “A Passage to India” by E.M. Forster
  9. “The Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
  10. “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare
  11. “A Bend in the River” by V.S. Naipaul
  12. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  13. “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger
  14. “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath
  15. “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
  16. “The Diary of Anne Frank” by Anne Frank
  17. “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes
  18. “The Bible” by Various (*This is how it is stated on the bookmark)
  19. “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer
  20. “Ulysses” by James Joyce
  21. “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene
  22. “Birdsong” by Sebastion Faulks
  23. “Money” by Martin Amis
  24. “Harry Potter” series by J.K. Rowling
  25. “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville
  26. “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame
  27. “His Dark Materials Trilogy” by Philip Pullman
  28. “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy
  29. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll
  30. “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier
  31. “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” by Mark Haddon
  32. “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac
  33. “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad
  34. “The Way We Live Now” by Anthony Trollope
  35. “The Outsider” by Albert Camus
  36. “The Colour Purple” by Alice Walker
  37. “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel
  38. “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley
  39. “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells
  40. “Men Without Women” by Ernest Hemingway
  41. “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift
  42. “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
  43. “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
  44. “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe
  45. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey
  46. “Catch 22” by Joseph Heller
  47. “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas
  48. “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden
  49. “The Divine Comedy” by Alighieri Dante
  50. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde