1001 Books #Update #BookList

 

My edition of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is a 2009 reprint by Harper Collins Australia with a Preface by Australian journalist and book lover, Jennifer Byrne. Back in February 2016, I spent one ghastly heatwave weekend, going through this book and compiling my read and to-be -read lists with the idea that I would constantly refer back to it and update it.

Guess what?

Neither of those things happened.

I'm not even sure what I hope will happen now, by revisiting both the read and TBR lists!

Except, I love lists.

I love the idea of ticking things off a list.

I love seeing that list of things completed and what is still to be accomplished.

It makes me feel organised and like I'm making progress.

Maybe that's the key word here - progress.

There has been a lot of standing still, treading water, waiting around, and biding my time this year. You all know why. Most of us are experiencing a similar thing.

I've always read several books at once, but since Covid, I have taken this habit to the extreme! As a result, I'm not getting that lovely, satisfied feeling one gets, when a good book is finished. I'm curiously delaying this pleasure, by waylaying it with that other glorious book pleasure of starting a new book!

Which is also making it hard for me to blog regularly as I have less book reviews in the wings. Therefore, a list.

On my current TBR pile I have these books from the list of 1001 to look forward to:

• Tale of the Genji
• The Princess of Cleves
• Oroonoko (ebook)
• Robinson Crusoe
• Moll Flanders
• Pamela
• Clarissa
• The Female Quixote (ebook)
• Candide (ebook)
• Dream of the Red Chamber
• Camilla (ebook)
• Rob Roy (ebook)
• Ivanhoe
• Last of the Mohicans (ebook)
• The Betrothed
• The Red and the Black
• Hunchback of Notre Dame
• Eugene Onegin (ebook)
• Le Pere Goriot
• Oliver Twist
• Lost Illusions (ebook)
• The Three Musketeers (ebook)
• The Scarlet Letter (ebook)
• Cranford
• Walden
• Adam Bede
• Fathers and Sons
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (can't believe I got through my childhood without reading this, but have seen many movie versions)
• Journey to the Centre of the Earth (ebook)
• Last Chronicle of Barset
• Therese Raquin
• Alice Through the Looking Glass
• Around the World in Eighty Days (ebook)
• L'Assommoir
• Treasure Island (ebook)
• Une Vie (ebook)
• The Death of Ivan Illyich
• Bel-Ami
• La Bete Humaine
• Picture of Dorian Gray
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Diary of a Nobody
• The Time Machine
• Dracula
• What Maisie Knew
• The War of the Worlds
• The Awakening
• Buddenbrooks
• The Hound of the Baskervilles
• Heart of Darkness
• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
• Death in Venice
• Kokoro
• The Good Soldier
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• The Return of the Soldier
• Ulysses
• Siddharta
• Kristin Lavransdatter
• The Magic Mountain
• The Professor's House
• The Trial (ebook)
• Mrs Dalloway
• The Good Soldier Svejk
• To the Lighthouse
• Remembrance of Things Past
• Steppenwolf
• Some Prefer Nettles
• Parade's End
• Orlando
• Passing
• The Maltese Falcon (movie version only)
• The Waves
• The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
• Tender is the Night
• Independent People
• Nightwood
• Nausea (ebook)
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
• The Big Sleep (movie version only)
• Goodbye to Berlin
• The Outsider | Albert Camus
• Pippi Longstocking
• The Heat of the Day
• The Rebel
• Invisible Man
• The Tree of Man
• The Talented Mr Ripley
• Voss
• Cider with Rosie
• The Tin Drum
• The Golden Notebook
• A Clockwork Orange (movie only. Not sure I will ever, ever read it!)
• The Bell Jar
• The Graduate (movie only)
• Silence
• The Master and Margarita
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (the movie was enough)
• Slaughterhouse Five
• G
• The Siege of Krishnapur
• A Dance to the Music of Time
• Quartet in Autumn
• Delta of Venus
• The Beggars Maid
• The Singapore Grip
• The Virgin in the Garden
• The Name of the Rose
• On the Black Hill
• Waterland
• Flaubert's Parrot
• The Cider House Rules (movie only)
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• An Artist of the Floating World
• Beloved
• Regeneration (started many years ago, but never finished)
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
• A Fine Balance
• The Unconsoled
• The Life of Pi (movie only, found the book hard to get into)
• The Corrections (tedious, did not finish)
• Cloud Atlas
• The Master
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I have now read all of these:

• Don Quixote (once will be more than enough with this one)
• The Sorrows of Young Werther (ugh! hard work. Read during my pre-blogging days)
• Dangerous Liaisons (book & movie several times)
• Sense and Sensibility (book & movie oodles of times)
• Pride and Prejudice (lost count of how many rereads I've had. No movie or tv series has even come close to capturing this story to date imo)
• Mansfield Park (book only)
• Emma (book & movie)
• Frankenstein
• Eugenie Grandet
• The Count of Monte Cristo (book & old tv movie starring Richard Chamberlain)
• Jane Eyre (numerous rereads & movies)
• Vanity Fair (didn't finish the book, but watched the 1998 BBC production instead)
• Wuthering Heights (ugh! Probably should reread)
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• David Copperfield (probably my favourite Dickens to date)
• Moby-Dick (I am now one of those Moby-Dick fanatics)
• Bleak House
• North and South (great readalong book that introduced me to Gaskell)
• Madame Bovary (another ugh! Not sure I finished it either. Read during my pre-blogging days)
• The Woman in White (book and the old B&W movie)
• The Mill on the Floss (read a long time ago - can't remember much about it)
• Les Miserables (my first year-long chapter-a-day readalong book)
• The Moonstone (the book that turned me onto Wilkie Collins many moons ago)
• Little Women (numerous rereads and viewings)
• War and Peace (rereading this year a chapter-a-day)
• Middlemarch (read so long ago & I feel it's due for a reread sooner rather than later)
• Far From the Madding Crowd
• Anna Karenina
• Nana
• Portrait of a Lady (book & movie)
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (surprised myself by how much I enjoyed this book)
• Germinal (my favourite Zola to date)
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (underwhelmed)
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles (makes me angry every time I read it)
• Jude the Obscure
• The Wings of the Dove (movie and book)
• The Ambassadors (watched the tv series way back when)
• The House of Mirth
• The Forsyte Saga (books and BBC series)
• A Room With a View (numerous reads and viewings of the Ivory Merchant movie)
• Howards End (movie and book)
• Ethan Frome
• Sons and Lovers (made to read this at school! Scarred me for life!)
• The Thirty Nine Steps (book & movie, both a long time ago)
• The Home and the World
• Women in Love (made to read this at school!)
• The Age of Innocence (several times, book and movie)
• A Passage to India (movie and book)
• The Great Gatsby (movie and book)
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (read during my Agatha Christie binge in Yr 7-8)
• Lady Chatterley's Lover (all the various versions of it plus a live outdoor performance)
• Cold Comfort Farm (didn't see what all the fuss was about)
• Brave New World (a favourite of Mr Books that he made me read 30 yrs ago)
• Testament of Youth (love, love, love)
• Gone With the Wind (relationship status: complicated)
• Out of Africa (underwhelmed. The movie was better)
• The Hobbit (just the book. Tried to watch the first movie but just couldn't)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (thank you to the Classics Club for introducing this booka nd author to me)
• Of Mice and Men (book and movies)
• Rebecca (preferred My Cousin Rachel)
• The Grapes of Wrath (underwhelmed)
• The Little Prince
• Animal Farm
• Brideshead Revisited (three times plus numerous viewings of the BBC series)
• If This is a Man
• The Plague
• 1984 (book and theatre production)
• Love in a Cold Climate
• A Town Like Alice (book and TV series)
• The End of the Affair (book & movie)
• Day of the Triffids (book and m0vie)
• Excellent Women
• The Story of O
• Under the Net
• Lord of the Flies (ugh!)
• The Quiet American (twice plus movie)
• The Lord of the Rings (book and movies)
• Doctor Zhivago (book & movie, of course!)
• The Midwich Cuckoos
• The Leopard
• Breakfast at Tiffany's (movie, of course, and book)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (several rereads & movie)
• Catch 22 (don't get me started!)
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (twice)
• The Godfather (movie and book)
• The French Lieutenant's Woman (book & movie several times)
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Surfacing (read during my Atwood phase in the mid 90's but I remember very little about this one)
• The Summer Book (interesting)
• The Commandant (loved, a lot)
• The Shining (book & movie)
• The Sea, The Sea
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ( a hoot)
• If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
• Midnight's Children (an all-time favourite)
• Schindler's Ark (book & movie)
• The Color Purple (movie then book, sans the 'u' both times!)
• If Not Now, When?
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• The Handmaid's Tale
• Perfume (loved in a perverse kind of way. If you've read the book, you'll understand this comment)
• Contact (book & movie)
• The Drowned and the Saved
• The New York Trilogy (not sure if I will ever be brave enough to read this again)
• Kitchen
• Oscar and Lucinda (all I can remember is the glass church floating down the Bellinger River)
• Like Water For Chocolate (book & movie several times)
• The Remains of the Day (movie & book)
• Wild Swans
• Smilla's Feeling for Snow (book & movie)
• Written on the Body
• The English Patient (movie & book)
• Possessing the Secret of Joy
• The Secret History
• Remembering Babylon
• A Suitable Boy (quite possibly my all-time favourite book ever, although it will need a reread to confirm this status)
• The Shipping News (book & movie)
• Felicia's Journey
• Captain Corelli's Mandolin
• The Reader
• Alias Grace (my favourite Atwood to date)
• Fugitive Pieces
• The God of Small Things
• Enduring Love
• The Hours (movie & book)
• Atonement (book & movie)
• Kafka on the Shore (read in Japan :-)
• The Namesake
• What I Loved
• Suite Francaise
• The Inheritance of Loss
• The Gathering

I have now read 133 of 1001 books!

In 2016 I had read 120, or 12%.

I am making progress, even if it is only 1% in four years!

Other editions of the 1001 series (as kindly compiled here) include even more books that I have read:

• Never Let Me Go (underwhelmed)
• Saturday
• The Children's Book (loved a lot)
• The Gathering (read in the past four years & new to the list) 
• What I Loved (read in the past four years & new to the list) 
• The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time
• The Blind Assassin
• Amsterdam
• Memoirs of a Geisha (read in the past four years & new to the list) 
• The Robber Bride
• The Heather Blazing (read in the past four years & new to the list) 
• Possession
• Cat's Eye
• The Passion
• The Child in Time (read in the past four years & new to the list) 
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
• The World According to Garp (movie and book)
• The Nice and the Good (read in the past four years & new to the list) 
• Chocky
• Vile Bodies (ugh!)
• Summer
• Where Angels Fear to Tread
• Lord Jim (movie and book)
• Northanger Abbey (book and TV series)
• Persuasion (book and movies)

Now we're up to the interactive part.

Which books on my TBR list should I prioritise?

Convince me!