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

I have updated the spreadsheet to add the new books. I did not erase any of the books that were omitted.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?ke...

I heard that you can't download it from this site. If you can't, email me and I will send you a copy. Does anyone know of a place I can upload it so people can get to it?

Hi Talya,

I just looked, and cannot download or save a version of the spreadsheet, so I would be extremely grateful if you could email me a copy instead - [email protected]
Thanks so much in advance.

Cheers :D

Hi Tayla,

Could you please email it to me, too?
Thanks a bundle :).
Tammy

Cancel my last comment - I found it!

I can download it ... BUT cannot change it from age 27 and whoever's reads are highlighted with an "r".

Yeah, if anyone knows of a place where I can upload it and other people can download. I will email it to those who left their email on here, or PM me with you email.

Oh and those are my reads, all 16 of them. :-)

I would also love a copy... I'll PM you.

Hi Talya, you could set up an account at Mediafire for free and they'll host the download for you. Just go to Mediafire.com and you should be all set.

Thanks in advance!

I can save the google doc to my computer (pc) & modify it from there. It may only work for those with gmail accounts, but try this:

Click on the link Talya provided & scroll all the way to the bottom. On the bottom right there is a link for "Edit this page". Clicking on it opens the document again, but you should see the goggle logo & in the upper left corner a tab labeled "File". Click on it, scroll down to export, & choose xls. From there you can save it or open it with excel.

Thanks Talya!

Unfortunately, the formula that calculates how many books you have to go and your percentage read didn't work when I exported it. Any idea how to fix this?

You could copy it from the old version of the spreadsheet into the new one and then change the lines that it's supposed to total. So for the number of books read the formula should read:
=COUNTIF(A15:A1295,"R")
and the percentage read should read:
=A8/1275

I should note that I'm going by my version of the list that I manually added the books into and not the sheet that Talya uploaded. Still, if we both did it correctly then the values should be the same.

Yes, Tanya! Please e-mail it to me, too : [email protected] Thanks :-)

Thanks for the hints, Liz! I now have a copy on an Excel spreadsheet on my desktop so I can add in the books I, personally, have read.

Logan and others,
I went ahead and uploaded it on mediafire.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1tbsyimskvc

Enjoy!

please email it to me also

[email protected]

Thanks

Heather, you can download it from the link above.

Thanks for the updated spreadsheet.

Now I have to find a few minutes to go through it!

PLEASE~! email me. [email protected]

ohnevermind@! I see the message and link to download it. thanks!

can you email it to me? [email protected]

I can't download the above link for some reason

could you email me the spreadsheet as well? [email protected]

thanks

thanks for the spreadsheet!

Did anyone ever cross-reference the old list with the new to determine the books that had been cut?

The spreadsheet that is out here, contains all the books (even the cut ones). I think the total number is at 1283 on the list. The 1001 books are numbered and the cut ones remain on the list in the places they were unless you resort the list. Hope that helps.

I might have to find a newer version of the book. I just want to see what books are no longer necessary to read before I die. :)

I JUST downloaded it from the above link ...

List of bests now has both versions of 1001 on the site, allows you to add them to your lists and tick off the ones you've read.
Lots of other lists are also there including the BBC top 100 books, voted by the UK in 2003.

Replying to my own post ... spoke too soon! The first version/list downloaded in Excel, but the updated list did not ... could you send it please in the Excel version? Much thanks!!

thanks for posting the spreadsheet. i just posted my favorite 100 books on my blog.

After comparing the 2008 version (from Lists of Bests) with the 2006 version, I determined the following books were cut from the 2006 version:

1. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Saturday by Ian McEwan
3. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
4. Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
5. Adjunct: An Undigest by Peter Manson
7. The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble
10. Vanishing Point by David Markson
11. The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd
12. Dining on Stones by Iain Sinclair
14. Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle
15. The Colour by Rose Tremain
16. Thursbitch by Alan Garner
17. The Light of Day by Graham Swift
21. Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
22. London Orbital by Iain Sinclair
23. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
24. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
25. The Double by José Saramago
27. Unless by Carol Shields
29. The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
30. That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern
31. In the Forest by Edna O’Brien
32. Shroud by John Banville
33. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
34. Youth by J.M. Coetzee
35. Dead Air by Iain Banks
37. The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
38. Gabriel’s Gift by Hanif Kureishi
41. Schooling by Heather McGowan
44. Don’t Move by Margaret Mazzantini
45. The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
46. Fury by Salman Rushdie
47. At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill
48. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
51. An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma
57. Ignorance by Milan Kundera
58. Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace
60. City of God by E.L. Doctorow
61. How the Dead Live by Will Self
63. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
64. After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
66. Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard
67. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
68. Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
69. Pastoralia by George Saunders
70. Timbuktu by Paul Auster
71. The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
72. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
74. Everything You Need by A.L. Kennedy
76. The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
78. Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
80. Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi
81. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
82. Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
85. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
87. Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis
88. Another World by Pat Barker
91. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
93. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
94. Great Apes by Will Self
99. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
100. The Untouchable by John Banville
102. Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard
112. The Information by Martin Amis
113. The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
114. Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth
115. The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
120. Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster
121. The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst
124. The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee
134. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
137. Operation Shylock by Philip Roth
138. Complicity by Iain Banks
144. The House of Doctor Dee by Peter Ackroyd
145. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
146. The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
150. A Heart So White by Javier Marias
155. Jazz by Toni Morrison
159. Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
160. The Heather Blazing by Colm Tóibín
162. Black Dogs by Ian McEwan
167. Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis
171. Downriver by Iain Sinclair
172. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis de Bernieres
173. Wise Children by Angela Carter
176. Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
181. A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
183. Possession by A.S. Byatt
186. A Disaffection by James Kelman
189. Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow
192. The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
198. The Book of Evidence by John Banville
199. Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
201. The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White
206. Libra by Don DeLillo
207. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
209. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams
214. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
216. The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
226. Marya by Joyce Carol Oates
232. Foe by J.M. Coetzee
237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
239. A Maggot by John Fowles
240. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
244. Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard
246. Queer by William Burroughs
262. Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett
263. Fools of Fortune by William Trevor
267. The Diary of Jane Somers by Doris Lessing
277. The Newton Letter by John Banville
279. Concrete by Thomas Bernhard
280. The Names by Don DeLillo
283. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
289. Rites of Passage by William Golding
292. City Primeval by Elmore Leonard
296. Shikasta by Doris Lessing
299. The Safety Net by Heinrich Böll
303. The World According to Garp by John Irving
307. Yes by Thomas Bernhard
310. The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
314. Petals of Blood by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
318. Ratner’s Star by Don DeLillo
319. The Public Burning by Robert Coover
322. Amateurs by Donald Barthelme
327. Grimus by Salman Rushdie
331. High Rise by J.G. Ballard
333. Dead Babies by Martin Amis
339. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré
340. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
348. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
349. Sula by Toni Morrison
351. The Breast by Philip Roth
360. The Wild Boys by William Burroughs
363. The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
364. The Ogre by Michael Tournier
366. Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke
368. Mercier et Camier by Samuel Beckett
369. Troubles by J.G. Farrell
371. The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard
377. The Green Man by Kingsley Amis
385. The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch
391. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid by Malcolm Lowry
396. Chocky by John Wyndham
398. The Cubs and Other Stories by Mario Vargas Llosa
402. The Joke by Milan Kundera
405. A Man Asleep by Georges Perec
406. The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West
407. Trawl by B.S. Johnson
416. August is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien
417. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
421. Come Back, Dr. Caligari by Donald Bartholme
422. Albert Angelo by B.S. Johnson
435. The Collector by John Fowles
439. The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
452. The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O’Connor
453. How It Is by Samuel Beckett
454. Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino
464. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
465. Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
474. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico
476. The End of the Road by John Barth
487. The Wonderful “O” by James Thurber
492. Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
497. A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen
505. Self Condemned by Wyndham Lewis
512. The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
513. Watt by Samuel Beckett
516. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
523. The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
535. The Third Man by Graham Greene
551. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
554. The Victim by Saul Bellow
565. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
566. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
572. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
575. Caught by Henry Green
578. Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
581. The Poor Mouth by Flann O’Brien
583. Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
584. Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf
585. The Hamlet by William Faulkner
586. Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
591. Party Going by Henry Green
595. Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
597. Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
600. After the Death of Don Juan by Sylvie Townsend Warner
611. The Years by Virginia Woolf
613. The Revenge for Love by Wyndham Lewis
615. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
621. Wild Harbour by Ian MacPherson
629. The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
630. England Made Me by Graham Greene
631. Burmese Days by George Orwell
633. Threepenny Novel by Bertolt Brecht
634. Novel With Cocaine by M. Ageyev
637. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
647. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
655. The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
656. Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
659. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
661. Hebdomeros by Giorgio de Chirico
664. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
669. The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
670. Harriet Hume by Rebecca West
671. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

After comparing the 2008 version (from Lists of Bests) with the 2006 version, I determined the following books were cut from the 2006 version (part 2):

671. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
678. The Childermass by Wyndham Lewis
679. Quartet by Jean Rhys
693. The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence
697. Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
704. Billy Budd, Foretopman by Herman Melville
711. Cane by Jean Toomer
712. Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley
714. The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield
716. Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
718. The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton
720. The Last Days of Humanity by Karl Kraus
721. Aaron’s Rod by D.H. Lawrence
724. The Fox by D.H. Lawrence
729. Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
732. The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad
733. Summer by Edith Wharton
735. Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton
740. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
746. Rosshalde by Herman Hesse
756. Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
757. Martin Eden by Jack London
759. Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells
762. The Iron Heel by Jack London
772. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
775. The Golden Bowl by Henry James
785. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
789. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
791. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
800. The Real Charlotte by Somerville and Ross
801. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
802. Born in Exile by George Gissing
814. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson
816. Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdés
818. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
819. She by H. Rider Haggard
821. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
822. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
837. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
839. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
842. Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev
843. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
844. The Hand of Ethelberta by Thomas Hardy
845. The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert
856. He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
869. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
877. On the Eve by Ivan Turgenev
878. Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope
881. The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
883. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
888. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
891. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
894. The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
899. Shirley by Charlotte Brontë
900. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
903. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
907. La Reine Margot by Alexandre Dumas
909. The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe
910. Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
913. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
917. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
927. The Albigenses by Charles Robert Maturin
929. The Monastery by Sir Walter Scott
932. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
933. Persuasion by Jane Austen
934. Ormond by Maria Edgeworth
939. The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth
954. Cecilia by Fanny Burney
972. Amelia by Henry Fielding
976. Roderick Random by Tobias George Smollett
984. Roxana by Daniel Defoe
988. A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
991. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
993. The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nashe
994. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit by John Lyly
998. Aithiopika by Heliodorus
999. Chaireas and Kallirhoe by Chariton
1000. Metamorphoses by Ovid
1001. Aesop’s Fables by Aesopus

it would be better if you tell us which books have been added, so we can also add it manually to our list. Maybe a separate sheet for 2008 additions.

Thanks so much for your post. Very Helpful!

Some of those dropped are welcome removals for me, but others are heart wrenching! Is there anything by Faulkner left on the list?

And removing Aesop's Fables? I dunno.....It's one of the first written forms of literature....seems worth reading to me....

I could go on and on on this subject but will let someone else take it up here.....

I think just the titles in bold were dropped, Judith. I could be wrong.

Looks like I might be wrong after looking at the new list on lists of bests. Sad.

I applaud some of the additions (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Namesake), but there are others that seem tragic (Fall on Your Knees??). Don't get me started on the books that have been dropped. I haven't had a chance to fully go through the list with a fine tooth comb, but I'm thinking most of my reading will come from the original list. If they coincide, so be it.

Sorry to keep posting...

Seems that I have most of what I've read from the original list has been cut, resulting in a full 1% drop for me. :-(

Wow...

I fully recognize that the newest version of this list is obviously constructed to represent a far more WORLDLY approach to literature, which I can applaud and appreciate (albeit at the expense of my beloved American Lit). However, there are some changes here that are, in my humble opinion, poorly made.

I have not seen the new book, but I think the compilers need to clearly articulate not only the purpose of the list, but also the compilation process and rationale. Obviously, their goals have changed.

Also, I wonder if some of these titles lose anything in translation for a English reader? Translation is an art form and not all translators are equal.

Oops, I was going to explain the reason for the bolded titles. I was trying to bold the titles not included in the 2008 edition that the group is reading soon (Cocaine Nights) & the titles that were nominated for the fall selections (The Plumed Serpent, Persuasion, Book of Illusions, Cryptonomicon, & Cloudsplitter).

Unfortunately, I can't edit the first post -- I keep getting an error message, so I haven't been able to bold all of the above mentioned titles.

I went over the new list yesterday and found 30 books that I've read have been dropped -- most of them well-loved, I must add.

I'm glad to see the Austin and Dickens representation reduced, but "The Christmas Story"?
Shocking!

I'm glad to see "A Dry White Season", "The Optimist's Daughter" and "The Way of All Flesh" added, among others; but it only added about six or seven books that I have actually read and struck of 30 in that category.

I saw some welcome additions as well, but most of the new ones are "greek to me" as I've never even heard of the authors...Bishop, I specialized in American Lit in college, so it is a special love for me, too.

I am really going to have to rethink "the lists" and my relationship to them now. Perhaps it is just time to make my own list from the two combined, like you did with the first one, Charity, and explore new titles as I feel drawn to them from references and reviews...

I have already been crossing many of my more unfamiliar choices against more uniformly respectable lists such as Nobel Prize authors, PENN Faulkner Awards, National Critic's Circle and Book Award lists, etc. I'll certainly continue to do that with the new titles -- at the very least.

I'll be most interested to hear how others are "regrouping" or sticking to their original goals/list.

Judith,

That might be a fun exercise to compile an altogether new list, based on some of the criteria you've mentioned.

I know I am a westerner with western biases, but I have a hard time thinking Ovid should be knocked off the list to make room for The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, etc. Why? Because as a westerner (who focuses on primarily North American/English lit), Ovid is far more valuable in informing the bulk of my reading (from Shakespeare to John Barth). That is not to say that the Bamboo cutter is less valuable, just perhaps less valuable to me, personally.

The more I think about these lists the more I recognize that while it is fun to measure oneself against an essentially arbitrary notion of what it means to be "well-read" and it is useful to expose yourself to new books/ideas from around the world, it is really up to the individual to determine what is important to them. These lists really do need to be personalized. Maybe we've been missing the point in just trying to read them all and should spend more time in deciding whether (and why) they should be read at all.

Very well put, Bishop.

Let's discuss our criteria for the titles we include in our own lists, shall we? And each choice if we have the time.

Charity, you have already made your own list, have you not? If so, would you share your criteria for your picks?

One criteria for me is just that I loved the story! It moved me. I had an emotional reaction to it. It opened me up to some new or repressed felling and perspective of the human heart.

In this category,to start a partial list, would be:

"All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
"To Kill a Mockingbird" - Harper Lee
"A Separate Peace" - John Knowles
"The Poisonwood Bible" - Barbara Kingsolver
"Never Let Me Go" - K. Ishiguro
"The Innocent" - Ian McEwan
"The Reader" - Bernhard Schlink
"The Remains of the Day" - K. Ishiguro
"The English Patient" - Michael Ondaatje
"Schindler's Ark" - Thomas Kenneally
"The Bluest Eye" - Toni Morrison
"The Color Purple" - Toni Morrison
"The Old Man and the Sea" - Hemingway
"The Little Prince" - Saint-Exupery
"Under the Volcano" - Malcolm Lowry
"Of Mice and Men" - John Steinbeck
"The Great Gatsby" - F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Howards End" - E.M. Forster
"The House of Mirth" - Edith Wharton
"Madame Bovary" - Gustave Flaubert
"The Scarlet Letter" - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Wuthering Heights" - Emily Bronte
"Great Expectations" - Charles Dickens

Could you please send me a copy to: [email protected]

I filled it out last time and can't find it anywhere on my computer so I am thinking it didn't download.

Rather than completely hijack this thread (which is valuable in its own right), I would like to propose that we move the discussion of a "personalized list" to another thread.

In fact, I will go start one and we can continue from there, if you like!I'll call it "Rethinking 1001 Books"

So glad Adjunct: An Undigest was omitted, so sad that I took the time to read it before it was cut.

Hi Tayla. I am new to the group. Just joined right now. I am curious, would you mind telling me what this spreadsheet is for? Thanks

I downloaded it too. Whew, that was fun to go through! I'm at 6% (82 books). I need to read more from the 20th & 21st centuries. Can anyone explain to me why there's not a single Shakespeare work on the list? Did the "listmaker" intentionally exclude plays? Just wondering

I think that Unfortunate Traveller has not been removed but remains in the 2008 edition. As I have only the 2006 version, I can't confirm. Anyone?

Oh, and I like this spreadsheet:

http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?pag...

Linda wrote: "I downloaded it too. Whew, that was fun to go through! I'm at 6% (82 books). I need to read more from the 20th & 21st centuries. Can anyone explain to me why there's not a single Shakespeare work o..."

I think I read somewhere that the panel involved in making the list wanted to exclude theater from the list as well as works of nonfiction, but I can't be too sure about the latter.