Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

Hey, I stumbled upon this page:
http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?pag...

It's a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet of all the titles, which calculates your percentage remaining, how many you would have to read a year, and just keeps a checklist for you.
Pretty neat, figured you guys would love it!

Thanks for sharing this, it's pretty cool. I am excited to use it.

This is a great resource, much easier to use than the website, when I went through and did it this way, I had read over 17% and I only scored 15% on the website, I think it was easier to miss titles in the other format. I also like how this is organized by time period, this will be great for my classics book group in helping us make selections.

thanks for that- its brill, though it showed me how much I still have to go!

I have a long way to go, only 5.59% read, and an average of 19 a year to so it in the "average lifetime."

That's a lot of books to add to the ol' GoodReads "to-read" list.

Thanks, I've just joined the group and that comes in handy :)

Although I wonder how long the expected lifetimes are.

Thanks, this list is very easy to use, really quite handy. lolz I've only read 2.30% of the list =( then again, I am only twelve, and most of the books on the list wouldn't really be considered books for my age group. thanks, again. this is interesting, im going to start reading more of the books on this list. i wonder if anyone has actually read all 1001 of them? =D

expected lifetime is 80 for females

Thank you, Sibyl

Thanks! What a fun tool! Read much more than I thought!

thanks for this.

i'm at a whopping 1.8%

just 22 books a year to go!

I used the excel sheet to create my own list of 1001 Things to Do before I die. It's amazing how many of the things I have already done. I had a list already going I just had to copy and paste it into the worksheet. It was great. It would work great to copy and paste the 1001 movies to watch before you die too.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I'm going to read all of them! Now I have another goal to work towards! Thank you for the checklist!

-Khloe

This is the best! So easy to use. Now I just have to get reading.

Thanks for posting this. So much more handy than the list i had.

Awesome! How nifty. Now it shall be easier to keep track...though seeing it all together is a bit discouraging. lol

Bummer it's not working!

That was pretty interesting. I'm at 6.49 percent of the books read and at 24, some 17 to read every year to finish it...eek.

i LOVE the excel spreadsheet and i have forwarded it to the important compulsive people in my life so that they can share the joy of tracking their reading with it. one thing that i've been discussing with my sister is strategy...say, for example, there are books or authors on the list that you know you have no interest in reading...what do you do? if you attack the list by first reading the authors that interest you most, you will face, in your twilight years (if we all make it that far, and i hope we all do) spending your last few years on earth reading things you don't want to read...i am considering altering the list by adding a code for books that i have no intention of reading and then adding some books to the list as substitutions. I am curious to know if other people are devising such approaches to the list. anyone?

Not a bad plan Rreimer. If you have no aversion to audio books, that is also a good alternative for difficult reads if you want to try to adhere to the list. Assuming there is an audio version. Some of these books appear to be really obscure.

Rreimer, I'm reading the books (as available) in alphabetical order by title. This way I'm covering all genres and authors randomly. So far there's only one book I've decided NOT to read: American Psycho. I bought it used, and in fact it would be the next one on my list, but after reading all the reviews here, I've chosen not to be disturbed by it.

i love this list! although now it's kind of overwhelming to see how many there are to read. but, it's also interesting that a lot of books on my to-read list are also on this list.

I was shocked to see that I've read 16.18% of the books on the list. I was also surprised to see how many of the books I've started but not finished. That will be the subject of further commentary. I have to make a shelf of not finished books. Maybe some of you can enlighten me about some of these. So many of the other books are on my to read list, which is obviously very long...

Anyone else have trouble downloading it? It comes as an .xlsx file that my Excel doesn't recognize.

Hi April - Try going here http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?pag...
and downloading the 2003 version. I was able to get that one to work on my machine, and I can't open .xlsx files. I hope it works for you.

Thanks Laura - it worked! :)

.xlsx files will only open in MS Office 2007 and newer. Just another moment where Windows really screwed up, pretty much par for the course by now.

Thanks for that 2003 spreadsheet. Very helpful!

Arukiyomi is now offering a 2008 excel spreadsheet, with links, a "to be read" function, and other fun features. See here - http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/

Unfortunately, the new edition does not work on my Mac. My partner refuses to pay for Excel. So, I think I'm just going to hand edit the 2003.

I downloaded the new spreadsheet, but when I click the buttons (new list or 2003 list), I get a message that says I'm not allowed to alter the list. I'm not trying to alter it, I just want to open it. :( Anyone know what I should do?

Hi Kara - My guess is you are still connected to the original online one. Try downloading it again, and then click the Save button and save it onto your computer before making any changes. That should do the trick - let me know if it doesn't. (Being an accountant should be good for something, I guess....)

Laura,

That didn't work, but I clicked the "unprotect sheet" button and that DID work. :) Thanks though!!

YAY! Glad you worked it out.

I have read 27 books, which is 2.697%. Only 20 books to read a year!

Oh, I would probably have to spend every waking second reading so I suppose I'll never get there - but I like book lists like this, because they remind you of books you'd forgotten you want to read. Does anyone keep a reading journal?

This is nice - but why were some books removed? Cuts down on the number I thought added to the list.

boo i have Windows XP and can't figure out how to open an XLXS file.

Laura, I have a reading journal. I write down what books I start when, the author, the publication date and the date I finish. Oh...I also write down how many pages the book has. Sometimes I write the definitions of words that I don't know and have had to look up.

I'd be interested to know what information others put in their journals. :)

I was amazed to find I had read about 16% of the books on the list. Only 84% to go...

Kristen - you may have to be in Microsoft Excel first, and depending on what version of Excel you have, you might have to download the 2003 version.

Kara - I've never really had a reading journal per se, but this year, I started writing down the books I checked out from the library, which ones I read and liked and why I liked them, which ones I never read/finished, why, etc. But then I started going book crazy (as usual) and I haven't kept up writing them all down. I'm still trying to list the ones I actually read, though, and why I liked them. I also like to include quotes that really grabbed me - but that can get a little time consuming as well. The first book that got me on that kick was Travels With Charley, a non-fic. book by Steinbeck about travelling w/his dog across the US. What a book! I never even knew Steinbeck wrote non-fiction until I came across that one.

Catalina - I was able to download the spreadsheet on my Mac and then open it through the spreadsheet program in NeoOffice (this is free open source office software for Macs - comparable to Open Office for PCs). Since some formatting is supposedly lost through this, I thought it was safest to stick with the regular Excel document rather than try the XLXS version.

Speaking of which ...

Kristen - You need the most recent version of Excel to open the XLXS document, which I don't have either (too bad, because the graphics sound cool!). But Arukiyomi provides a regular version as well which should work if you have an older version of Excel.

Good luck!

Fun. 6.79% read. I'm doing this because it's fun, but I think the selection is on average terrible (because of its omissions and frivilous inclusions) for books to read before you DIE. Then there is the matter of changing over 200 books between the first and second edition, which shows the list was completely random to begin with.

Kara -
I'm impressed by all the different items you keep in your journal - new vocabulary words - what a great idea - I think I'm going to add that to mine. The one thing different that I do keep is I rate the books on a scale of 1 - 10. This helps me remember books when someone asks me to recommend a title or recall what were my favorite books of the year. I also put down narrator for the audiobooks since there are some readers that I like much better than others. Someone on this site had recommended the journal, Read, Remember, Recommend. I bought a copy and I love all the lists (different award winners, etc.). I just love checking off those boxes... And it is much less daunting because none of the lists has 1001 titles!

Thank you so much for posting that link up, it's a very handy file! :)

Julie,

I just read your message and it's october. sorry!! :) i think i am going to start rating my books too. and i plan to get Read, Remember, Recommend after Christmas, using my spanking new Amazon gift card.

Great ideea. Thank you for posting it, Tami Lynn! Scored 12.48%. I need several lives for the rest :)

I'm having some trouble with the checklist. I clicked on a column to order the books alphabetically by author's last name, so I could find a book I was looking for without having to scroll through the whole list. Now the spread sheet doesn't add anymore. Anybody have any recommendations? I tried ordering it again like it was originally, but I'm not sure I remember correctly.

Hi Kevin,

No, the spreadsheet is not set-up in the most user friendly fashion. If you've downloaded the 2008 version then here are some tips on how to make the spreadsheet easier to navigate:

1) Next to the header marked "Last Name" you should see a down arrow button. Click on this and you will see all of the authors last names in alphabetical order. Select the author name you need and the spreadsheet will show only those books written by that author.

2) You can sort the spreadsheet and not mess-up the formulas, but only by manually highlighting the rows that you want to sort (sorting the whole tab will cause the formulas to error out). Ex. 2000's start on row 19 and finish on row 72. Highlight those rows by clicking on the excel row number 19, while holding the shift key click on excel row number 72, than go to Data>Sort and select column E when the sort menu appears.