This post in three months overdue. My original plan was to finalize my list of 40 books to read before my 40th birthday on my 30th birthday, so that I would have exactly ten years to complete them. But then life happened.
Anyway, the list. (Those books I've read are bold.)
- J.M. Barrie - Peter Pan
- Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot
- Ferdinand Bordewijk - Karakter
- Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
- Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass
- Italo Calvino - If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
- Joseph Campbell - The Hero with a Thousand Faces
- Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
- Hugo Claus - Het verdriet van België
- Erich von Däniken - Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past
- Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
- Mark Dunn - Ibid: A Life
- Erasmus - Lof der Zotheid
- F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
- Anne Frank - Het Achterhuis
- Jostein Gaarder - Sophie's World
- William Gibson - Neuromancer
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
- Brothers Grimm - Fairytales
- Joseph Heller - Catch-22
- W.F. Hermans - De donkere kamer van Damokles
- Homerus - Iliad / Odyssey
- Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
- Franz Kafka - Der Prozess
- Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
- H.D. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover
- Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
- Herman Melville - Moby Dick
- John Milton - Paradise Lost
- Alan Moore / David Lloyd - V for Vendetta
- Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
- Nescio - De uitvreter / Titaantjes
- Gerard Reve - De avonden
- J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
- Bram Stoker - Dracula
- Strunk & White - The Elements of Style
- Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five
- Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Mists of Avalon
And in case you're wondering why, I made this list just because I can. I read a lot anyway, so I might as well make it a little bit challenging by adding some some classics and books that are (at least slightly) outside of my comfort zone to the mix. Also, I was way too late to make a list of 30 books to read before I turned 30.
Eventually, I'll either integrate this list in my 100 Things list, or put it on a separate page. Until then, I'll keep crossing off those books I've read here.
2 Comments
An interesting list. The titles all sound familiar to me. I am eagerly waiting for the revieuws :)
Although I have some of the books standing in my bookcase already, just keep in mind that I still got nine years and nine months left to read 'em all. ;-)