7 February 2011

30 Books Before 30

I've decided to amend my previous list to keep things along the lines of the '30' theme. The 30 selections I have made are a rather eclectic bunch. The only defining criteria was that I do truly want to read all of the books on this list, and more than that I can actually stomach reading them.

It is for that reason that you won't fine Dante's Divine Comedy (too intimidating), Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (yawn), Chaucer's A Canterbury Tales (interesting but just too long and difficult), James Joyce's Ulysses (I would probably end up going what the hell?). There is one notable exception. I forced myself to include the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms; it is shameful enough that I am reading it in an English translation.

I will try and explain the stranger of my choices at some point, but here is the list for now in random order. Suffice to say this is quite a daunting list, and I had better get cracking!

  1. The Illiad
  2. The Odyssey
  3. The Analects | Confucius
  4. Romance of the Three Kingdoms
  5. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained | John Milton
  6. The Rights of Man | Thomas Paine
  7. Moll Flanders | Daniel Defoe
  8. Emma | Jane Austen
  9. Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte
  10. Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte
  11. Middlemarch | George Eliot
  12. Great Expectations | Charles Dickens
  13. Madame Bovary | Gustav Flaubert
  14. Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain
  15. War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy
  16. The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  17. The Moonstone | Wilkie Collins
  18. Walden and Civil Disobedience | David Henry Thoreau
  19. Democracy in America | Alexis de Tocqueville
  20. On the Origin of Species | Charles Darwin
  21. The Complete Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle
  22. Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man | James Joyce
  23. Lolita | Vladimir Nabakov
  24. Catch-22 | Joseph Heller
  25. 100 Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  26. The Trial and Metamorphoses | Franz Kafka
  27. Under the Volcano | Malcolm Lowry
  28. Murphy, Malloy, Malone Dies | Samuel Beckett
  29. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold | John Le Carre
  30. The Book of the New Sun | Gene Wolfe
List correct as at 23 March 2011. Subject to change. Suggestions welcome

4 comments:

Karin Lai said...

I can tick off middlemarch, Crime and Punishment, Portrait of Artist, Lolita, Catch-22, 100 years,and the Kafka already. Totally want to read Tinker Tailor, haha. there's a movie coming out, did you know?

name said...

I vaguely recall your birthday being in august... Which means you have about 1.5 years? Erm. Romance of the three kingdoms... In English, right.

Anonymous said...

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

The LIfe of Pi - Yann Martel

are worthy ones to add.

Good luck with your list!

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