Blogmas Day 18: Books to Read Before You Die

Hello! Welcome to Blogmas Day 18!

As the title of the post suggests, today I’m going to be looking at some Books to Read Before You Die lists. I’ll do a compare/contrast on a few, then decide which titles I agree or disagree with, and add a few of my own. If you’d like to skip to the final list of books I think everyone should read in their lifetime, that’ll be at the bottom of the page.

First things first – today’s advent calendar jigsaw puzzle.

Advent Calendar

Today’s puzzle would complete the third row of 6 squares in the complete jigsaw puzzle, which means THERE’S ONLY ONE WEEK UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!!!

Books to Read Before You Die

It’s always been a goal of mine to be “well-read,” by whichever definition of the term a person could give. Over the years, I’ve read loads of classics (including “the” Classics), lots of philosophy and nonfiction, and as much World Literature new and old as I could get my hands on. I even went to university as a mature student to get a degree in English language and literature, with a minor in French language and literature, just to make sure I’d filled in all my gaps. Now, at the ripe old age of [redacted], I like to think I’m there. I am a well-read person.

So could someone please explain to me why I still regularly look up Books to Read Before You Die lists and make my TBR ever longer? 🤣

It’s all subjective

Here’s the thing – no two people or organizations agree on what books everyone should read in their lifetime. For the most part, it’s a completely subjective question. Everyone is different, therefore everyone has a different relationship with literature. Someone might get a lot out of a book, recommend it to everyone they know, and 90% of those people won’t find it enlightening at all. Also, who is “everyone” anyway? Should someone in one country read the same books as someone in another? Are we being a little too West-centric with these lists?

All that to say, please don’t regard any of the lists below as the definitive list of books you NEED to read. Read the books that you’re drawn to, the books that will make you feel well-read. Maybe challenge yourself to read a few outside your comfort zone here and there, but if there’s something on these lists that you really truly could not stand to read, that’s okay. Nobody can read everything. You CAN be a well-read person without reading Ulysses, I promise. I am!

The lists

The lists I’ll be comparing are: Pan Macmillan’s 25 ‘Classic books to read at least once in your lifetime‘, Penguin Random House’s 22 ‘Books to Read Before You Die,’ and Ms Mojo’s ‘Top 30 Books to Read Before You Die.’ Why these three sources, you may ask? Well, Ms Mojo’s because it popped up in my YouTube feed the other day and inspired this post in the first place, and the other two because they were the first reputable sources that appeared on a Google search.

Pan Macmillan: This list is all classics, and they’re obviously trying to make it Western-diverse. It’s a little too UK and US centric, but there are a few European titles. Nothing from Asia, South America, Africa, or Australia, as far as I can tell. No Russians at all, surprisingly. All of their titles come from within their publishing catalogue, though, so there’s some heavy bias there. Still, it’s a solid list of Western classics.

Penguin: This list leans more towards modern classics and recent fiction, which is fine, but some of the choices are a bit wild to me. Again, all of the titles come from Penguin’s publishing catalogue, so to some degree I have to wonder if they’re just trying to sell certain books. But at least their selections cover more of the world than Pan Macmillan’s.

Ms Mojo: This YouTube channel isn’t literature-focused by any means, but their list is actually the best of the three. Not being a publishing company, the list seems free of bias, and mostly contains titles that you find on classroom syllabi. Also, each of their books has been groundbreaking and/or heavily influential in its genre. It’s hard to argue with any of their picks, and a lot of them are more fun adventures than dry literary tours-de-force.

Where they agree

Surprisingly, the only book that all three lists agree on is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen!

The other books that appear on more than one list are: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

I’ve read them all, and I can agree with these 10 titles.

Where I agree

I would say that Pan Macmillan was correct in adding Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll to their list. Both of these were influential both to their respective genres and to pop culture in general.

Penguin was definitely correct in adding a Fyodor Dostoevsky title to the list, but I would choose Crime and Punishment over The Brothers Karamazov myself. I feel as though C&P invades western culture more, and it’s one of those books that people tend to reference whether they’ve read it or not. I also agree with Penguin on The Secret History by Donna Tartt and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro even though I haven’t read either of them yet. (They’re going on my 2026 TBR for sure!)

And like I said, I agree with the vast majority of Ms Mojo’s list. In particular: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, 1984 by George Orwell (honestly surprised this wasn’t on all 3 lists!), The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and as much as I don’t like the book myself, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is extremely culturally relevant these days and should be read.

What I would add

Just to be clear, this list doesn’t include nonfiction, plays, or poetry, so a lot of the seeming omissions like Shakespeare and Homer and Anne Frank belong on another list. But there are 5 fiction books that I couldn’t believe weren’t on any of these lists: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (the quintessential Christmas book!), East of Eden by John Steinbeck (often cited as one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, and I agree), Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne (if you think it’s just a children’s book, read it as an adult, trust me), Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (one of the cleverest satires of modern literature, imo), and call me biased but Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (hey, if Little Women makes it on these lists, as it should, then so should Anne).

The Final List

I believe that brings me to an even 30 books that I think everyone should read in their lifetime! So here’s the final list, in all its glory:

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
1984 by George Orwell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Extra credit

Here are a dozen more titles for the overly-ambitious (they won’t be for everyone, but give ’em a try!):

Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Ulysses by James Joyce
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Tale of Genji by Shikibu Murasaki
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I’ve collected these 42 titles into a curated shelf on my Bookshop.org affiliate shop. They look so good all together! Any purchase made through that link will earn me a small commission at no extra expense to you, but I won’t blame you if you click just to look at the pretty. 😍