Book List

101 Books to Read Before You Die

list at the 2007 Cape Town Book Fair

I was stuck in the Johannesburg airport once for a few days. After being restless by the 2nd day, I found the amazing 101 Books to Read Before You Die list by the Exclusive Publishing company. These were selected by the readers themselves.

“The books that made the list are the books you’ve read, and re-read, books which define eras, created friends instead of characters, entertained generations and have become legends….” 

1. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
3. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen [love this, try the Zombies version]
4. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
5. The Harry Potter series – JK Rowling [who doesn’t love these books?]
6. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
7. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho [talented writer]
8. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
9. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
10. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
11. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
12. Spud – John van de Ruit [absolutely the funniest book I’ve read]
13. The Power of One – Bryce Courtenay
14. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
15. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
16. Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
17. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
18. Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger [I could not warm up to Holden, ugh]
19. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte [Another classic, Jane is intriguing ]
20. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
21. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez [awful, awful, awful]
22. Disgrace – J. M. Coetzee
23. My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
24. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
25. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
26. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
27. Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
28. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
29. Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
30. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald [took years to love, but now I appreciate it]
31. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
32. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – Mark Haddon
33. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
34. Atonement – Ian McEwan [could only read 1/2 of it. Too depressing when I know the ending]
35. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
36. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
37. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
38. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
39. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie [had no interest for it]
40. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
41. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
42. I Know This Much is True – Wally Lamb
43. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
44. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
45. War And Peace – Leo Tolstoy
46. Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M. Auel [love this story!]
47. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
48. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery [can reread it again and again]
49. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
50. Possession – A. S. Byatt
51. Perfume – Patrick Suskind
52. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
53. Chocolat – Joanne Harris
54. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
55. Q & A – Vikas Swarup
56. Dune – Frank Herbert
57. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
58. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
59. River God – Wilbur Smith
60. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
61. Lord of the Flies – William Golding [read it as a child, good story]
62. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis [read it as a child]
63. Mort – Terry Pratchett
64. Crime and Punishment – Feodor Dostoyevsky
65. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
66. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
67. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
68. The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory
69. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – John Boyne
70. The Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy
71. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
72. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
73. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
74. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll [I am so intrigued by this story]
75. Animal Farm – George Orwell
76. The Red Tent – Anita Diamant
77. Watership Down – Richard Adams
78. Magician – Raymond E Feist
79. Middlemarch – George Eliot
80. The Day of the Jackal – Frederick Forsyth
81. We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver
82. The Magus – John Fowles
83. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Agaat – Marlene van Niekerk
85. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
86. The Shell Seekers – Rosamunde Pilcher
87. The Colour Purple – Alice Walker
88. The Beach House – James Patterson
89. Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
90. Kringe in ‘n Bos – Dalene Matthee
91. The World according to Garp – John Irving
92. Northen Lights – Phillip Pullman 
93. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides 
94. Shades – Marguerite Poland
95. Kane and Abel – Jeffrey Archer
96. Fiela se kind – Dalene Matthee
97. Story of an African Farm – Olive Schreiner
98. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl [A chocoholic’s must]
99. The Magic Faraway Tree – Enid Blyton
100. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
101. Winnie-the-Pooh – A.A. Milne

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