100 books

100 Books to Read Before You Die

There's a lot of these lists. The Guardian go for 1,000 books. This is the Telegraph's list. Hence the redundant “before you die” in the article headline. I thought I'd see how I get on, ticking some of them off:

100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein

Several aborted attempts at this, until I quit the anal-retentive read every word approach and skipped the fireside songs that do nothing to move things along. Much better. It was MM's box paperback set, I think.

99 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A truly beautiful book. Easy to read, easy to like. Knocked this one off pretty young.

98 The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

Nope. One for the future.

97 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

“What's your name?”

“Dent. Arthur Dent.”

“Well, Dentarthurdent...”

96 One Thousand and One Nights Anon

Nope, but it should have been read at some time.

95 The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nope. Don't think I ever will.

94 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

On the to-do list.

93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

I watched the two series first. Atmospheric, compelling, and apparently an accurate picture of the “Circus” that runs our spies.

92 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Another yes, and a hilarious book.

91 The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki

The world's first novel, apparently.

90 Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

I need to catch up on my Murdoch. Another no, not any of her books.

89 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

That to-do list...

88 Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

...it's getting longer.

87 On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Another early doors book, another easy read. Raced through it, a long time ago now.

86 Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

Sadly, no.

85 The Red and the Black by Stendhal

No.

84 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Not unless a kids' comic version counts.

83 Germinal by Emile Zola

On the e-reader thanks to Gutenberg. To-do.

82 The Stranger by Albert Camus

Nope, but on the e-reader, too. I've only read Camus' The Rebel.

81The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Yes. A whodunnit. With maps and monks, and Eco's linguistic pyrotechnics. He a professor of semantics.

80 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Just about my first Booker winning book.

79 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

No. Probably never will.

78 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Yes but not as an adult.

77 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Hilarious. Milo Minderbinder is the godfather of modern bankers' dodgy maths. Major Major Major Major must be the best character's name ever.

76 The Trial by Franz Kafka

Not so hilarious, and one that I would file under “hard work”.

75 Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

Not yet. Tried the audio book an age ago, but found audio books like chocolate fireguards.

74 Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan

No.

73 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

Fairly recently. The 60p library reservation service is brilliant.

72 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

The good things about these lists include the odd inexplicable omission, and the nudge to put it right.

71 The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin

On the e-reader. Definitely to-do.

70 The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Nope.

69 If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

A postmodernist puzzle, it says. Just last year. Easier than they'd have you believe. Funnier, too.

68 Crash by JG Ballard

Yes, but I struggle to like and admire Ballard the way writers I really enjoy reading do.

67 A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul

Not yet, but I'm finding good modern Indian novels coming thick and dast right now.

66 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

So many aborted attempts. I needed the advice on how to deal with the same character / multiple names thing. An odd psychological note, too. When I picked up a fresh copy, the trying and failing stopped and I finished it.

65 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Nope. I just see that old-lady film poster with Omar Sharif on it. Can't fancy it, somehow.

64 The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz

Another one on the list.

63 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

No. More psychology. I feel too familiar with it to think about reading it now.

62 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Actually quite nasty and fierce. In a good way.

61 My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Not yet. Definitely to-do, loaded ready to go.

60 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

My best ever holiday book investment. I came home and devoured everything else he's written. I'd never even heard of magic realism.

59 London Fields by Martin Amis

I have no Amis gaps. They're all there on the shelves.

58 The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

This is just about next on the to-do list, after all the Iain Sinclair references.

57 The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse

I've struggled with Hesse...

56 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

...and with Grass.

55 Austerlitz by WG Sebald

Sebald on the catch up rota, too.

54 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Not yet.

53 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Another one in waiting.

52 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Wonderful. Funny. There's a bit of Holden Caulfied in us all, I think.

51 Underworld by Don DeLillo

It's sitting on the shelf, for some reason I picked up White Noise first.

50 Beloved by Toni Morrison

No Toni Morrison on my list, yet.

49 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Much, much better (but much longer) than that one kids get forced to read at school.

48 Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

Nope. Unknown. Round here anyway.

47The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Will Self's collected food reviews for the New Statesman is called the Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker.

46 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Ballad of Peckham Rye, but not this.

45 The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet

This is a no.

44 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

I'm low on Satre, considering I agree so completely with his definition of hell.

43 The Rabbit books by John Updike

Four books, written over and spanning thirty years. My introduction to Updike.

42 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Always saw this as kids' stuff. I'm often wrong.

41 The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

I raced through all the Sherlock Holmes books a long, long time ago.

40 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Nope. It'll probably stay nope.

39 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Another one high on the coming right up list.

38The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Last year or the year before was that novel based on Hemmingway's wife. Quite a lot on Fitzgerald in there.

37 The Warden by Anthony Trollope

No Trollope on the CV.

36 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

No. Should be a yes.

35 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Yes, but Martin's much better than his Dad.

34 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Yes, but I find Chandler riddled with loose ends and inexplicable character behaviours.

33 Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

I have this down as too Mills and Boon.

32 A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

Earthly Powers is my Anthony Powell hit.

31 Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky

I need to pick this up.

30 Atonement by Ian McEwan

Like Amis, I'm a McEwan completist.

29 Life: a User’s Manual by Georges Perec

Perec is brilliantly insane, and this is a great book.

28 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Took this on holiday once but never got it going. It failed the 10% or stop there rule.

27 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Yes, but it's tough going at times.

26 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Nope. Don't know why.

25 The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

No. This is maybe one of the first 'nos' that's on more or less every list of this type.

24 Ulysses by James Joyce

Eventually, with a few give ups along the way. Another one where picking up a fresh copy broke the duck. As well as finally getting some help with understanding what's going on. Should be higher up the list, a number one contender.

23 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

No, but I have read Flabert's Parrot by Julian Barnes.

22 A Passage to India by EM Forster

This one, and A Room With A View, too.

21 1984 by George Orwell

The title's an anagram of 1948, you know. Big Brother. The Ministry of Truth. We're living in an Orwellian dystopia.

20 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Too tough for me when I gave it a go long ago. Through the Laurence Sterne reference in a song on the first Dexy's Midnight Runners album.

19 The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

Okay until the weak ending.

18 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Recent read, and a hilarious look at our newspaper industry.

17 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

No.

16 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Pinkie, and a big win at the races. I did the Graham Greene complete back catalogue thing, then have foound him un-re-readable.

15 The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse

No, but I have done the collected golf stories. Laugh out loud funny.

14 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

No, I've always had this down as Granny-reading, too.

13 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Forced to read Dickens at school, I ducked and dodged and read only the Spark Notes for Oliver Twist. Not now.

12 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Yeah, but under protest, from memory.

11 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This is on the Mills and Boon pile.

10 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

There's a much-praised fairly recent translation I couldn't put down.

9 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Not yet, copy on the shelf.

8 Disgrace by JM Coetzee

Does very nearly finished, interrupted by library books count?

7 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

This is a very Daily Telegraph list, isn't it? Costume drama abounds and Ulysses only at 25?

6 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Yep. All seven volumes, all the pages, all those words. All good.

5 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Wonderful book.

4 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

No.

3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

No. Millski and Boonski.

2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Call me Ishmael (is it Ishmael?).

1 Middlemarch by George Eliot

On the shelf ready to go.

Overall: Forty two. Must do better, or must ignore the Telegraph.