Throughout my life I have always thought about certain books and looked up what was regarded as classics or must reads. At the back of my mind there has always been certain books I felt like I needed to read. I have completed some of that task but lately I felt I wanted more challenges and wanted to make sure I actually achieved this goal. So, I came up with a new 50 before 50 list.
When I made the list, I hadn’t read any of the 50, I wanted a full list to look forward to and I decided that an author could not be repeated to allow for a good range of books to enjoy.
I have now finished a few of the books which you will see below (in bold and soon to have a short review/opinion). You will also see it’s technically not 50 books, it’s more than that, as I’ve added a few book series which I am counting as just one.
Progress = 4/50
50 Before 50 – Book Selections
- The King in Yellow – Robert W. Chambers
- The Shinning – Stephen King
- Jaws – Peter Benchley
- American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
- War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
- The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatoria, Paradiso) – Dante Alighieri
- The Iliad – Homer
- The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
- Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
- Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
- 1984 – George Orwell
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy – J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Art of War – Sun Tzu
- Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
- Pride & Prejudice – Jane Austen
- Madam Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
- Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
- The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
- The Bell Jar – Sylvia Path
- The Children of Men – P.D. James
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- Carmilla – Sheridan Le Fanu
- Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
- The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
- Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
- The Satanic Versus – Salman Rushdie
- Moby Dick – Herman Melville
- The Colour Purple – Alice Walker
- The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
- Vanity Fair – William M Thackery
- The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Secret History – Donna Tartt
- The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
- Death Note – Tsugumi Ohba
- Perfume – Patrick Suskind
- The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
- Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
- Ulysses – James Joyce
- The Woman in Black – Susan Hill
- The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
- Picnic at Hanging Rock – Joan Lindsay
- Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
- Psycho – Robery Bloch
- Phantom of the Opera – Gaston Leroux
- Strangers on a Train – Patricia Highsmith
- Hannibal Lecter Novels (4) – Thomas Harris
- The Flowers of Evil – Charles Baudelaire
- The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
What books would you have on your own 50 before 50 list? Or do you already have one and how far along are you?
Are there any books you think should have been on this list?
Let’s discuss the must read books for all of us!