I know I'm belatedly jumping on a popular meme, but I suppose it's better late than never...
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Anyway, here's my list (right) of the 25 novels I think you should read before you die. Of course its just a snapshot of what I'm thinking at the moment and at least for me these things change all the time. (Next month I imagine it'd be a totally different list). One rule I gave myself was limiting my choices to 1 novel per author. I was also a little bit reluctant to include stuff that I've just recently read. I think The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell is a modern classic, but will I think that a year from now? I don't know...My final rule was not to include books that I think everyone has already read in school "To Kill A Mockingbird", "Things Fall Apart", "Catcher in the Rye" etc. (Maybe this is a bit of a naive belief, but one lives in hope). I do appreciate this is largely a Western Anglophone list but that's the culture I grew up in and you are certainly free to make a list of your own.
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So why should you read these 25 novels? Well, it won't make you a better man (or woman), it won't always be fun (parts of Ulysses do drag), but I think it will enrich your experience of life on this little planet of ours...
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Anyway, here's my list (right) of the 25 novels I think you should read before you die. Of course its just a snapshot of what I'm thinking at the moment and at least for me these things change all the time. (Next month I imagine it'd be a totally different list). One rule I gave myself was limiting my choices to 1 novel per author. I was also a little bit reluctant to include stuff that I've just recently read. I think The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell is a modern classic, but will I think that a year from now? I don't know...My final rule was not to include books that I think everyone has already read in school "To Kill A Mockingbird", "Things Fall Apart", "Catcher in the Rye" etc. (Maybe this is a bit of a naive belief, but one lives in hope). I do appreciate this is largely a Western Anglophone list but that's the culture I grew up in and you are certainly free to make a list of your own.
...
So why should you read these 25 novels? Well, it won't make you a better man (or woman), it won't always be fun (parts of Ulysses do drag), but I think it will enrich your experience of life on this little planet of ours...
