50 books to read before you die
This is the list that appears on a bookmark I bought in UK last summer.

This is the list; please don't add books to it.
1 To Kill a Mockingbird
by
4.22 of 5 stars 4.22 avg rating — 1,398,348 ratings
2 The Harry Potter Collection...
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4.67 of 5 stars 4.67 avg rating — 10,494 ratings
3 Pride and Prejudice
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4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 avg rating — 971,989 ratings
4 The Diary of a Young Girl
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4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 avg rating — 904,454 ratings
5 1984
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4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 909,765 ratings
6 The Great Gatsby
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3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 1,158,155 ratings
7 Life of Pi
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3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 avg rating — 482,006 ratings
8 Jane Eyre
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4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 648,222 ratings
8 Holy Bible: New Internation...
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4.53 of 5 stars 4.53 avg rating — 15,209 ratings
10 Hamlet
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3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 avg rating — 275,697 ratings
11 The Adventures of Huckleber...
by
3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 avg rating — 700,067 ratings
12 The Color Purple
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4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 avg rating — 196,170 ratings
13 The Lord of the Rings (The ...
by
4.41 of 5 stars 4.41 avg rating — 208,166 ratings
14 The Count of Monte Cristo
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4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 avg rating — 352,183 ratings
15 Wuthering Heights
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3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 avg rating — 429,750 ratings
16 Lord of the Flies
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3.59 of 5 stars 3.59 avg rating — 909,147 ratings
17 The Catcher in the Rye
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3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 avg rating — 1,096,369 ratings
18 The Grapes of Wrath
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3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 avg rating — 268,411 ratings
19 The Canterbury Tales
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3.44 of 5 stars 3.44 avg rating — 81,918 ratings
20 The Divine Comedy
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4.01 of 5 stars 4.01 avg rating — 41,360 ratings
21 Alice in Wonderland (Alice,...
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3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 avg rating — 133,298 ratings
22 Gulliver's Travels
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3.49 of 5 stars 3.49 avg rating — 81,922 ratings
23 The Curious Incident of the...
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3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 avg rating — 425,356 ratings
24 Catch-22
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3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 avg rating — 272,748 ratings
25 Rebecca
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4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 avg rating — 143,626 ratings
26 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's ...
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4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 avg rating — 245,816 ratings
27 Brave New World
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3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 avg rating — 549,016 ratings
28 The Bell Jar
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3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 avg rating — 199,570 ratings
29 Frankenstein
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3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 avg rating — 466,172 ratings
30 The Picture of Dorian Gray
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3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 avg rating — 253,726 ratings
31 A Christmas Carol and Other...
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4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 avg rating — 13,078 ratings
32 Memoirs of a Geisha
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4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 782,833 ratings
33 Anna Karenina
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3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 avg rating — 183,780 ratings
34 The War of the Worlds
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3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 avg rating — 73,186 ratings
35 Moby-Dick
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3.36 of 5 stars 3.36 avg rating — 258,010 ratings
36 The Hobbit
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4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 avg rating — 1,051,601 ratings
37 Don Quixote
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3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 65,187 ratings
38 A Passage to India
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3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 avg rating — 25,876 ratings
39 The Stranger
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3.89 of 5 stars 3.89 avg rating — 193,167 ratings
40 Ulysses
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3.72 of 5 stars 3.72 avg rating — 44,136 ratings
41 The Wind in the Willows
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3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 avg rating — 62,781 ratings
42 The Book Thief
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4.35 of 5 stars 4.35 avg rating — 303,809 ratings
43 His Dark Materials (His Dar...
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4.22 of 5 stars 4.22 avg rating — 59,094 ratings
44 A Song of Ice and Fire, 5 B...
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4.6 of 5 stars 4.60 avg rating — 7,147 ratings
45 The Hunger Games (The Hunge...
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4.44 of 5 stars 4.44 avg rating — 1,583,142 ratings
46 Robinson Crusoe
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3.56 of 5 stars 3.56 avg rating — 81,279 ratings
47 On the Road
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3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 avg rating — 140,315 ratings
48 Birdsong: A Novel of Love a...
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4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 23,270 ratings
49 Heart of Darkness
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3.36 of 5 stars 3.36 avg rating — 142,979 ratings
50 The Way We Live Now
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4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 avg rating — 4,085 ratings
51 A Bend in the River
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3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 avg rating — 5,236 ratings
52 Dracula
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3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 avg rating — 281,055 ratings
53 The Quiet American
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3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 avg rating — 16,634 ratings
54 Money
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3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 avg rating — 7,664 ratings
55 A Tale of Two Cities
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3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 avg rating — 403,045 ratings
55 Room
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3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 avg rating — 206,890 ratings
57 The Lion, the Witch, and th...
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4.14 of 5 stars 4.14 avg rating — 630,476 ratings
58 Men Without Women
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3.74 of 5 stars 3.74 avg rating — 2,719 ratings
59 The Handmaid's Tale
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3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 avg rating — 251,176 ratings
59 Wizard's First Rule (Sword ...
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4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 avg rating — 85,018 ratings
61 The Name of the Wind (The K...
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4.56 of 5 stars 4.56 avg rating — 105,907 ratings
61 Gone with the Wind
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4.22 of 5 stars 4.22 avg rating — 464,298 ratings
63 Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1)
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4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 161,906 ratings
64 Eragon (Inheritance, #1)
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3.72 of 5 stars 3.72 avg rating — 485,632 ratings
65 Crônicas De Nárnia
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4.22 of 5 stars 4.22 avg rating — 208,746 ratings
66 The Help
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4.44 of 5 stars 4.44 avg rating — 747,645 ratings
67 The Golden Compass (His Dar...
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3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 avg rating — 491,393 ratings
68 A Cancer Prevention Guide f...
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4.17 of 5 stars 4.17 avg rating — 40 ratings
68 Reverb
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4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 36 ratings
70 David Copperfield
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3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 avg rating — 75,289 ratings
70 The Glass Castle
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4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 avg rating — 306,348 ratings
72 Divergent (Divergent, #1)
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4.39 of 5 stars 4.39 avg rating — 296,054 ratings
73 Explosion in Paris
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4.01 of 5 stars 4.01 avg rating — 172 ratings
74 Passion (Fallen, #3)
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3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 avg rating — 51,385 ratings
74 Anna Karenina
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3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 avg rating — 183,780 ratings
76 Firesong (Wind On Fire, #3)
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3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 avg rating — 3,660 ratings
76 books · 93 voters · list created April 6th, 2011 by Ghostcat (votes) .
 · 
Lists are re-scored approximately every 500 seconds.


Ghostcat
Ghostcat
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6 friends
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375 friends
Alex
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Ben
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Wanda
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Innerpeace1081
Innerpeace1081
1167 books
38 friends
Themis-Athena
Themis-Athena
3161 books
212 friends
Bettie
Bettie
8636 books
169 friends

More voters…


Comments (showing 1-12 of 12) (12 new)

dateDown_arrow    newest »

message 1: by Hayes (new)

Hayes Are we voting for the ones we have read?
Or only for the ones we think should be on the list too?


message 2: by Ghostcat (new)

Ghostcat This is my first list so I'm not an expert yet.
I just wanted to list all those books like a special "to read list", like a personnal challenge.
So feel free to do as you think it's the best ;)


message 3: by Hayes (new)

Hayes OK... I'll take off a few. I've left ones I didn't like that I think are important to read.


message 4: by Ghostcat (new)

Ghostcat Ok thanks a lot ^.^


message 5: by Themis-Athena (new)

Themis-Athena I notice there are more than 50 books on the list now -- but wasn't this supposed to be based on a specific list you had come across, Ghostcat? (I'm asking because "(so-and-so many) books to read before you die" where voters can randomly add books that are important to them already exist aplenty, so selecting books from a specific, pre-defined list of 50 books (no more, no less) kind of seemed to be an important distinguishing point in looking at this particular list ...


message 6: by Ghostcat (new)

Ghostcat Yes, I wanted this to be an exhausted list based on that bookmark I bought in UK, but as I'm quite new here, I don't know how to "block" the list in order that nobody add books on it
(my apologizes if my sentence is not clear, I'm french)


message 7: by Themis-Athena (last edited Apr 10, 2011 08:02am) (new)

Themis-Athena Your sentence is perfectly clear -- at least to this fellow non-native speaker! :)

I think only GR super-librarians (or GR employees) can actually place restrictions on lists; however, ALL librarians can delete books that really shouldn't have been added to a given list. In fact, this is not an infrequent occurrence, particularly with lists based on a specific theme, or moving within a certain set of parameters defined by the list's creator, or lists that are -- like yours -- based on some other list, published somewhere else.

Since the model for this particular list is not something retrievable from elsewhere on the internet, though, it would be helpful if you could copy the list from your bookmark into a comment here at the bottom of the page ... if that isn't too much trouble, of course! (?)


message 8: by Ben (new)

Ben Actually, if you look at Ghostcat's list, it has the 50 books that belong on this list. All the others should be deleted if possible.


message 9: by Susanna (new)

Susanna OK, I'll delete the ones not on Ghostcat's list.


message 10: by Susanna (new)

Susanna Removed:

Paradise Lost
One Hundred Years of Solitude
MacBeth
Things Fall Apart
Midnight's Children
Othello
The Tempest
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
A Clockwork Orange
Three Tragedies: Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Electra
The Death of Ivan Ilych
The Metamorphosis
Great Expectations
Romeo and Juliet
The Merchant of Venice
A Room of One's Own
The Trial
The Brothers Karamazov
The Little Prince
Utopia
The Land of the Just
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Fatal Shore
The Waste Land
King Lear
The Trial and Death of Socrates
Four Great Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, MacBeth
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Le Malade Imaginaire
Metamorphoses
Lyrical Ballads
Songs of Innocence and Experience
Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems
Tristram Shandy
Shakespeare's Sonnets
A Study in Scarlet
The Happy Prince
Dr. Faustus
The Koran
Ben liebt Anna
The Winter's Tale
Jude the Obscure
Pinocchio
The Essays of Montaigne
The Overcoat


message 11: by Ghostcat (new)

Ghostcat Waow, thank you so much for your efficiency.


message 12: by Susanna (new)

Susanna No problem!


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