1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List

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

About this list

1,000 Books to Read Before You Die(Book), 969 Books

A list written by James Mustich, a bookseller, editor, and writer. Here's the publisher's description:

Celebrate the pleasure of reading and the thrill of discovering new titles in an extraordinary book that’s as compulsively readable, entertaining, surprising, and enlightening as the 1,000-plus titles it recommends.

Covering fiction, poetry, science and science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children’s books, history, and more, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die ranges across cultures and through time to offer an eclectic collection of works that each deserve to come with the recommendation, You have to read this. But it’s not a proscriptive list of the “great works”—rather, it’s a celebration of the glorious mosaic that is our literary heritage.

This list was originally published in 2018 and was added to this site about 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
748 Howl and Other Poems Allen Ginsberg 1956 American English
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
989 The Grass Is Singing Doris May Lessing 1950 British English
14984 Book Lust Nancy Pearl 2003 American English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
1323 A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter M. Miller 1960 American English
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
1680 Harold and the Purple Crayon Crockett Johnson 1955 American English
1685 Burr Gore Vidal 1973 American English
14984 Sailing Alone Around The Room Billy Collins 2001 American English
4789 Memento Mori Muriel Spark 1959 British English
15902 Life Among The Savages Shirley Jackson 1953 American English
303 Peter And Wendy J. M. Barrie 1911 Scottish English
878 The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver 1998 American English
1077 Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee 1959 British English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
3218 Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil John Berendt 1994 American English
361 Foundation Isaac Asimov 1951 American English
5737 The Ghost Road Pat Barker 1995 British English
749 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
2106 Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey 1968 American English
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
1861 Citizen Claudia Rankine 2014 American English
14711 Parnassus On Wheels Christopher Morley 1917 American English
450 Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler 1903 British English
402 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
569 The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen 1938 British, Irish English
130 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
10100 A Fan's Notes Frederick Exley 1968 American English
790 The Mask of Dimitrios Eric Ambler 1939 British English
1775 Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri 1999 American English
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
1214 The Moving Toyshop Edmund Crispin 1946 British English
2651 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Sherman Alexie 2007 American English
3022 Diary Of A Provincial Lady E. M. Delafield 1930 British English
988 Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes 1984 British English
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
14871 The Common Reader Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
1146 Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens 1839 British English
2450 Henry V William Shakespeare 1600 British English
670 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
683 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
2720 Richard Ii William Shakespeare 1595 British English
2977 Johnny Tremain Esther Forbes 1943 American English
415 The Day of the Jackal Frederick Forsyth 1971 British English
2099 From Russia with Love Ian Fleming 1957 British English
913 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass 1845 American English
1239 The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne John Donne 1952 British English
679 The Expedition of Humphry Clinker Tobias Smollett 1771 British English
87 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
5755 Blue Highways William Least Heat-Moon 1982 American English
211 The Tempest William Shakespeare 1623 British English
104 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
2206 Dreams from My Father Barack Obama 1995 American English
181 Light in August William Faulkner 1932 American English
14984 Crazy Salad Nora Ephron 1975 American English
14714 Eloise Kay Thompson 1955 American English
3244 The Thurber Carnival James Thurber 1945 American English
7650 Angels In America Tony Kushner 1991 American English
12440 Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee 1962 American English
8891 The Fatal Shore Robert Hughes 1987 Australian English
10587 Goodbye, Mr. Chips James Hilton 1934 British English
1114 Andersonville MacKinlay Kantor 1955 American English
1243 Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson 1886 British English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
14897 Guys And Dolls Damon Runyon 1932 American English
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
680 The Stories of John Cheever John Cheever 1978 American English
14891 Nicholas And Alexandra Robert K. Massie 1967 American English
14787 Betsy Tacy Maud Hart Lovelace 1940 British English
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
1500 The Bourne Identity Robert Ludlum 1980 American English
202 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
15902 A Hole Is To Dig Ruth Krauss 1952 American English
51 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
3306 Henry IV, Part I William Shakespeare 1597 British English
210 Dangerous Liaison Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 1782 French French
3813 Henry IV, Part II William Shakespeare 1600 British English
392 Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis 1954 British English
1830 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Anne Tyler 1982 American English
9165 84, Charing Cross Road Helene Hanff 1970 American English
14232 A Year in Provence Peter Mayle 1989 British English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
673 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Jules Verne 1870 French French
1172 My Family And Other Animals Gerald Durrell 1956 British English
1244 The Travels of Marco Polo Marco Polo 1300 Italian Old french
13347 Just So Stories Rudyard Kipling 1902 British English
228 Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac 1835 French French
598 Night Elie Wiesel 1958 French French
658 Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner 1971 American English
1974 The Emperor of All Maladies Siddhartha Mukherjee 2010 American English
349 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
14984 Wittgenstein Jr. Lars Iyer 2014 British English
348 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
14897 Fer De Lance Rex Stout 1934 American English
1491 Presumed Innocent Scott Turow 1987 American English
1400 The Great Railway Bazaar Paul Theroux 1975 American English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
1154 True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey 2000 Australian English
2492 A Lesson Before Dying Ernest J. Gaines 1993 American English
1621 Good-Bye to All That Robert Graves 1929 British English
917 The Day of the Triffids John Wyndham 1951 British English
631 The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder 1927 American English
17131 The Panda's Thumb Stephen Jay Gould 1980 American English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
831 Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers 1903 British English
667 The Book of Job Unknown -600 Israeli Hebrew
223 A House for Mr. Biswas V. S. Naipaul 1961 Trinidadian English
3615 11 22 63 Stephen King 2011 American English
2323 The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward H. P. Lovecraft 1941 American English
14131 The Boys Of Summer Roger Kahn 1972 American English
3128 Attis And Other Poems Catullus -53 Roman Latin
1743 Life & Times of Michael K J. M. Coetzee 1983 South African English
1800 The Deptford Trilogy Robertson Davies 1970 Canadian English