50 books to read before you die discussion

These are the named books:

1 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien ✓
2 1984 by George Orwell ✓
3 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ✓
4 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
5 To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee ✓
6 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
7 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
9 The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
10 Hamlet by William Shakespeare
11 A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
12 The great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald
13 The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
14 The Bell Jar by Sylvie Plath
15 Brave new World by Aldous Huxley
16 The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
17 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
18 The Bible by Various
19 The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
20 Ulysses by James Joyce
21 The quiet American by Graham Greene
22 Birdsong by Sebastian Faulke
23 Money by Martin Amis
24 Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling
25 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
26 The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
27 His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
28 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
29 Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
30 Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
31 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
32 On the Road by Jack Kerouac
33 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
34 The way we live now by Antony Trollope
35 The Outsider by Albert Camus ✓
36 The colour Purple by Alice Walker
37 Life of Pi by Yann Martel
38 Frankenstein by Mary Selley
39 The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells ✓
40 Man without Woman by Ernest Hemingway
41 Gulliver´s Travels by Jonathan Swift
42 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
43 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
44 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe
45 One flew over the Cockoo´s Nest by Ken Kesey
46 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
47 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
48 Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
49 The Divine Comedy by Alighieri Dante ✓
50 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde ✓

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Book Count: 8/50

1984 by George Orwell

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

I really need to re-read this book one day, as I'm sure I missed many things due to my short attention span...

This is a wonderful book. I struggled a lot to get into it, for some reason i wasn't feeling drawn to read it, so i had to switch for an audio version. What a wonderful audio!! the narrator really did a great job making this story come into life and that was what helped me get through it.... more

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

I saw a list of some classic books that someone created saying which books everyone must read before dying. And i was am a bit ashamed to realize that i actually haven't read most of them. This is partly because these books are usually required to read when you are in high school in the US, and since i didn't study in the US, well... Anyway i think it's never too late to start reading these books, so I decided to start with the book that is probably the most famous and most read out there, To Kill a Mockingbird... more

The Stranger* by Albert Camus

Rating: 3 stars

Review:

This is the story of a man who is stranger to emotions.

This book starts when the main protagonist is told his mother died and he acts with no emotions at all, he doesn't feel anything. When he asks to his boss to give him a day off to go to the funeral he apologizes saying it wasn't his fault, and he immediately feels like he shouldn't have said that. He for some reason cannot comprehend why some people feel like that at his mother's funeral, and why they go to him and tell him things like they know how he must be feeling and so on.... more

*This book actually has 2 names "The Stranger" and "The Outsider".

The War of the Worlds by H.G Wells

Rating: 1 star

Review:

Disappointment.
It's the right word for my feelings about this book.

This is a short book only 200 pages, and I was unable to keep up with it.

The story didn't grab me as I thought it would.
Hey!
it's about the Martians invading the earth, what's not to like?!...more

Erika, I agree w/ your status on War if the worlds. I just wanted to tell you about the greatest science fiction book that I've read and it is NOT on this list. "Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. Enjoy...Julie

That book seems to have very good ratings, maybe I will check it out in the future :)

Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen

Rating: 2 stars

Review:

I will give this book 2 stars only because of the writing otherwise it would be 1.

I don't like romance books *sigh* ...more

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

Oh Man, Why do I always have problems reviewing a classic?

Perhaps it's because there's already been said a lot about them by so many people. Perhaps it's because I don't feel I can do justice to them saying whatever I think about them.

It's just hard for me.

Now I can understand why some people who always review books leave the classics "unreviewed".

All I can say about this book is that I liked it... a lot. Usually I suck reading the classics, I've attempted reading some of the most well liked out there and I just couldn't stand them. But this was incredible!

I liked so much the dark atmosphere it offered, Probably that's what I should do, read some of the dark, witty classics instead of the romances like Pride And Prejudice...more