Careful Thought

According to a passel of British librarians, here are the thirty books all adults should read before they die. I think the list speaks to the sad state of our librarian friends across the sea. Other than the Bible (and maybe LoTR, Dickens and Steinbeck), I’m thinking the rest are all in the ‘nice to read’ category.

And how did Phillip Pullman’s swill get on the list? The Time Traveller’s Wife? Poisonwood? Within six months those will be in the $1.99 ‘last chance’ rack at Megabooks.

I’ve highlighted the ones I’ve read. What would you add to a list of books that all adults should read before they die?

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D’urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

I would add the following:
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
The Narnia series by C.S. Lewis

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