50 books to read before you die discussion

1 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien
2 1984 by George Orwell
3 Pride and 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
19 The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
20 Ulysses by James Joyce
21 The Quiet American by Graham Greene
22 Birdsong by Sebastian 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 Antony Trollope
35 The Outsider by Albert Camus
36 The Color 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 Man without Women by Ernest Hemingway
41 Gulliver´s Travels by Jonathan Swift
42 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens I love this story.
43 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This one is also a favorite.
44 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe
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

I never dreamed that I would get through Moby Dick and to be fair I didn't read it read it. I audiobooked it. It was still a slog through that. However, when I could get past the ramblings about nothing sometimes I really enjoyed this book. I detested the ending. It was so anticlimactic for such a build up. May that was the point for the author. I just felt that I sat through hours of whale and ship faring to the last fifteen minuets of THE whale. It effectively uses a literary device to take you on a prolonged search for the whale yourself in the story. I did like aspects of this book as I said. Melville is actually dryly funny. I also was fascinated by some of the old whaling information and what we know of it now. The fact that he scoffs at whales ever possibly being hunted to extinction shows how little they knew of the environment and how great human impact was at the time.

Currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I went into reading this book with lowish expectations. Honestly it just didn’t seem like my cup of tea. I tend to like epic sweeping quest type adventurous books. I am about to start part two and am pleasantly surprised with this book so far. It feels a little like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, both are books I love. So far this book is promising.

After reading Animal Farm I promised myself I would not subject myself to another story by George Orwell. So I am probably not going to read 1984. However, I hate to leave a list unfinished if I get close to checking everything off so that could change later on down the road if I get through these other books. I will probably read it dead last.

1984 is arguably the best book on this list.

Seriously?! Sigh I might reconsider, but yeesh I really loathed the one book I read of his.

I've read several of Orwell's books, on the basis of 1984. None of the others measure up. 1984 is the only book I've ever read more than twice. It sets the standard for dystopian novels - scary.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

I finished To Kill a Mockingbird. I loved it. I really should not judge a book by the hype. I have a tendency to put off reading books that lots of people love. I know that sounds weird, but I sometimes feel some of those books are overrated. Those books rarely are overrated, but when they are I get so disenchanted.