Last updated: 18th September 2022
So this is a bit of a departure from travel content and I haven't posted in so long, but 2020 really got me back into reading and introduced me to so many amazing books.
I've taken a break from travel content because frankly I've been a bit down about not being able to travel. I decided to lose myself in books instead and I managed to read 60 books in 2020. My TBR (to be read) is now so long I'm wondering if I'll even manage to read all the books I want to in my lifetime.
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In an effort to diversify my reading a bit, I was furiously searching ‘books to read before you die’ on google. Until one day I came across a really clever Medium article where they had compared a few different lists and merged them to create their own mega list.
I absolutely loved this idea but this particular compilation had a bit of a male bias as they included a list aimed at men, so I decided to create my own mega list using the same principle.
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How I created my own mega list of books to read before you die...
I compared and combined 12 lists (detailed at the bottom of this post) and sorted the books by the number of lists they featured on and the average position it held on the lists.
So for example my number 1 entry featured on 9 of the lists with an average position of 20. Number 2 was also on 9 lists, but an average position of 29, and so on.
There were 687 books mentioned in total over the 12 lists (entire series’ count as one).
If I came across a book from a series I changed it to the entire series and removed any duplicates on the same list. There are probably some I’ve missed, but honestly I’d had enough of staring at excel for so long, and my mind was blown from the formulas on my spreadsheet.
If a list was in no particular order, I just used the order it was in. So it’s not an exact science.
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Ok so onto the books. What follows is my mega mega ultimate amazing list of 100 books to read before I die. Some I’ve already read, if I read it recently I have given my rating out of 5. If I read it too long ago to remember if I liked it I have marked it (*) and will go back and re-read it so I can rate it.
You can see all the books I currently own from this list that are waiting to be read on my dedicated goodreads bookshelf.
Lets go…
100 Books to read before you die - the mega list
100
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
99
The Code of the Woosters
PG Wodehouse
98
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
97
The Giver
Lois Lowry
96
The Alchemist
Paul Coelho
95
Life After Life
Kate Atkinson
94
The Line of Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst
93
Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret
Judy Blume
92
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
91
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
90
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote
89
The Fault in our Stars
John Green (*)
88
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
87
Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis
86
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
85
The Hunger Games Trilogy
Suzanne Collins (*)
84
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
83
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
82
Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier
81
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
80
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh
79
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
78
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
77
Austerlitz
W G Sebald
76
The Trial
Franz Kafka
75
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
74
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
73
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
72
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
71
Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
70
On The Road
Jack Kerouac
69
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon
68
Gone With The Wind
Margaret Mitchell
67
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
66
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
65
Bleak House
Charles Dickens
64
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz
63
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
62
A Passage to India
EM Forster
61
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
60
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison
59
Dune
Frank Herbert
58
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank
57
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
56
Anne of Green Gables
LM Montgomery
55
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
54
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
53
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
52
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn (*)
51
Emma
Jane Austin
50
Don Quixote
Miguel De Cervantes
49
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
48
Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegut
47
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck (*)
46
The Little Prince
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
45
Gullivers Travels
Jonathan Swift
44
A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L’Engle
43
Ulysses
James Joyce
42
Dracula
Bram Stoker
41
The Stranger
Albert Camus
40
The Hobbit
JRR Tolkien
39
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
38
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
37
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen
36
Atonement
Ian McEwan
35
Tess of the D’Ubervilles
Thomas Hardy
34
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
33
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
32
Middlemarch
George Eliot
31
Farenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
30
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
29
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
28
Charlotte’s Webb
EB White
27
Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie
26
The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe
CS Lewis
25
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
24
Beloved
Toni Morrison
23
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
22
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
21
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
20
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
19
Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
Roald Dahl (*)
18
Little Women
Louise M Alcott
17
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
16
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
15
Animal Farm
George Orwell
14
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
13
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
12
Harry Potter Series
JK Rowling
11
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman
10
The Lord of the Rings
JRR Tolkien
9
The Catcher in the Rye
JD Salinger
8
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
7
The Great Gatsby
F Scott Fitzgerald
6
Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
5
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
4
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
3
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens (*)
2
1984
George Orwell
1
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Okay, so now what?
My plan now is to read and rate them all.
I know, it’s going to take me a few years to get through them. My target this year is to read 60 books again but there are so many books not on this list that I want to read too. I might aim for 2 a month which will take me what, 4 years?
So I shall say by 2025 I aim to have completed this entire list.
I will keep the list updated with my ratings as I go along. Feel free to use my list and join my in my challenge. Let me know if you do!
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On a personal note...
There are probably going to be some changes around here on the blog. I’ve been so disheartened with the world, (not mentioning any names here *cough* coronavirus *cough*) that I am avoiding most things travel related currently.
I planned a whole trip to New Zealand for 2021 which is now not going to happen. So I stopped editing my videos and photos. I stopped reading other blogs for inspiration. I abandoned my instagram.
I’m planning on including new content which isn’t exclusively travel related (yes including books). So watch this space…
The 12 lists I used to make my mega list:
BBC - The Big Read
Medium - Top 200 Books of All Time
Medium - Creating the Ultimate 100 Books List
Vulture - 100 Most Important Books of the 2000's
OCLC - Top 100 Books
The Guardian - 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Independent - 40 Best Books to Read in Lockdown
Business Insider - Goodread's 100 Books to Read Before You Die
Business Insider - Amazon's 100 Books to Read Before You Die
Best Books of the Decade according to Goodreads
BBC - The 100 Greatest British Novels
Reedsy - 100 Books to Read Before You Die
Thank you so much for taking the time to compile this list. My husband and I are using it to work our way through some of the best books ever written.