1,001 BOOKS YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE

I'm a big fan of lists and books based on lists.  These include tomes such as Patricia Schultz' 1,000 Places To See Before You Die or Steve Walkins' Unforgettable Things To Do Before You Die.

I thought I was fairly well read until I came across Peter Boxall's 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.  The numbers of books on that list that I've actually read is fairly small; I haven't even heard of a fair number of the more recent works.  There are a number that I seem to remember having to read in school but whether or not I actually finished reading them is another matter.  As I had nothing else better to do early this morning, I compiled a list of those books from Bowell's list that I did complete from cover to cover.  I now present them here for your amusement or boredom:

Books I've Read
1)  Jack Maggs (Peter Carey)
2)  The World According To Garp (John Irving)
3)  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John Le Carré)
4)  The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (John Le Carré)
5)  To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
6)  On The Road (Jack Kerouac)
7)  The Lord Of The Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
8)  Casino Royale (Ian Fleming)
9)  The Old Man And The Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
10)  Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
11)  I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
12)  Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell)
13)  Animal Farm (George Orwell)
14)  Farewell My Lovely (Raymond Chandler)
15)  For Whom The Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)
16)  The Grapes Of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
17)  The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler)
18)  The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
19)  Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
20)  Tender Is The Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
21)  Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
22)  The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett)
23)  The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
24)  A Farewell To Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
25)  All Quiet On The Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
26)  The Sound And The Fury (William Faulkner)
27)  Look Homeward, Angel (Thomas Wolfe)
28)  Lady Chatterly's Lover (D.H. Lawrence)
29)  The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
30)  The Plumed Serpent (D.H. Lawrence)
31)  The Murder Of Roger Akroyd (Agatha Christie)
32)  The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
33)  The Trial (Franz Kafka)
34)  A Passage To India (E.M. Forster)
35)  Ulysses (James Joyce)
36)  The Good Soldier (Ford Maddox Ford)
37)  The Thirty-Nine Steps (John Buchan)
38)  Tarzen Of The Apes (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
39)  Sons And Lovers (D.H. Lawrence)
40)  Howards End (E.M. Forster)
41)  A Room With A View (E.M. Forster)
42)  The Secret Agent (Joseph Conrad)
43)  The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
44)  Nostromo (Joseph Conrad)
45)  Heart Of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
46)  The Hound Of The Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)
47)  Kim (Rudyard Kipling)
48)  Lord Jim (Joseph Conrad)
49)  The Turn Of The Screw (Henry James)
50)  The War Of The Worlds (H.G. Wells)
51)  The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells)
52)  Dracula (Bram Stoker)
53)  The Time Machine (H.G. Wells)
54)  The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)
55)  Tess Of The D'Ubervilles (Thomas Hardy)
56)  The Picture Of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
57)  Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)
58)  Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson)
59)  King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard)
60)  The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
61)  Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
62)  The Portrait Of A Lady (Henry James)
63)  Ben-Hur (Lew Wallace)
64)  The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
65)  Anna Karenina (Lev Tolstoy)
66)  Far From The Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)
67)  Around The World In Eighty Days (Jules Verne)
68)  War And Peace (Lev Tolstoy)
69)  The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
70)  The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins)
71)  Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (Jules Verne)
72)  Crime And Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
73)  Our Mutual Friend (Charles Dickens)
74)  Les Misérables (Victor Hugo)
75)  Fathers And Sons (Ivan Turgenev)
76)  Silas Marner (George Eliot)
77)  Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
78)  The Woman In White (Wilkie Collins)
79)  A Tale Of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
80)  Walden (Henry David Thoreau)
81)  Bleak House (Charles Dickens)
82)  Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
83)  The House Of The Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
84)  Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)
85)  The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
86)  David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
87)  Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)
88)  The Count Of Monte-Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
89)  The Purloined Letter (Edgar Allen Poe)
90)  The Pit And The Pendulum (Edgar Allen Poe)
91)  A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
92)  Dead Souls (Nickolai Gogol)
93)  The Fall Of The House Of Usher (Edgar Allen Poe)
94)  Nicholas Nickelby (Charles Dickens)
95)  Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
96)  The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo)
97)  Last Of The Mochicans (James Fenimore Cooper)
98)  Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott)
99)  Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
100)  Pride And Prejudice (Jane Austen)
101)  Sense And Sensibility (Jane Austen)
102)  Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift)
103)  Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
104)  Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)
105)  Aesop’s Fables (Aesopus)

Like most such lists, the Bowell's 1001 has some glaring omissions (where's Tom Sawyer, for example?).  I was surprised when I got to one hundred when compiling those I've finished reading.  I had thought about also making a list of those I would like to read but that would be too long and time-consuming (I do have something of a life planned for this weekend).

Perhaps tomorrow morning (some free time exists when I wake up before my wife does), I'll go through the 1000 Places To See Before You Die list and figure out where I've been and where I haven't...