50 Books to Read Before You Die

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Barnes and Noble, 55 Books

Barnes and Noble's selection of the 50 most essential books.

This list was originally published in 2015 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
25 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
30 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
72 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
731 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
103 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
112 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
637 The Quiet American Graham Greene 1955 British English
1086 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks 1993 British English
750 Money Martin Amis 1984 British English
2231 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows J. K. Rowling 2007 British English
1911 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix J. K. Rowling 2003 British English
2145 Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets J. K. Rowling 1998 British English
1017 Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban J. K. Rowling 1999 British English
1843 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J. K. Rowling 2000 British English
238 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
1755 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince J. K. Rowling 2005 British English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
136 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
398 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman 1995 British English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
1812 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon 2003 British English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
703 The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope 1875 British English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
1143 Life of Pi Yann Martel 2001 Canadian English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
359 War of the Worlds H. G. Wells 1898 British English
655 Stories of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway 1987 American English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
216 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens 1843 British English
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
88 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
2025 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden 1997 American English
29 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English