There are so many lists out there that let me know me all of the books that I need to read in my lifetime…but they’re either unrealistically long, way too short, or I’ve already read half of them. So I decided to have some fun (yes, this is what I call fun ) and come up with my own Books to Read Before I Die list, made up of all books that I personally want to eventually read.
Some of my choices are for fun, some of my choices are classics, and two of them are poetry. But these are the things that I wanted to put on my personal book bucket list. I can’t wait to get started on this list and be able to cross some of them out!
Books to Read Before I Die:
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- White Oleander by Janet Fitch
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Shack by Wm. Paul Young
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- Cinder by Marissa Meyer
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Crank by Ellen Hopkins
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve
American Gods by Neil Gaiman- Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
- The Stand by Steven King
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
- Just One Day by Gayle Forman
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Dead Poets Society by N.H. Kleinbaum
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
- Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan- Incest: From a Journal of Love by Anaïs Nin
- Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
- On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
- Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- Catch Me if You Can by Frank W. Abagnale
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- Fight Club by Chucke Palahniuk
- Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
- The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
- Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities by Flora Rheta Schreiber
- Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers
- The Hours by Michael Cunningham
- Looking for Alaska by John Green
- These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner
- Maus — A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
- The Tempest by William Shakespeare
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness- 100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda
- If I Stay by Gayle Forman
- Saturday by Ian McEwan
- Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
- Coraline by Neil Gaiman
- I Am Nujood: Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
- Unwind by Neal Schusterman
- 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fights to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer & Kevin Flynn
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout- Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
- Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- Slave: My True Story by Mende Nazer
- It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick- Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
- Every Day by David Levithan
- Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon
- The Angel Experiment by James Patterson
- The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
- Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
- Naked by David Sedaris
- Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning
- Amber House by Kelly Moore
- Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
- Empty Chairs by Stacey Danson
- Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
- The Violets of March by Sarah Jio
- The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
- Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt- Watership Down by Richard Adams