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
17130 Qed Richard P. Feynman 1985 American English
12130 The Glass Palace Amitav Ghosh 2000 Indian English
561 The Recognitions William Gaddis 1955 American English
8507 The Art Of Eating M. F. K. Fisher 1954 American English
14159 The Great Crash, 1929 John Kenneth Galbraith 1955 Canadian English
6484 Coming of Age in the Milky Way Timothy Ferris 1988 American English
483 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
14666 Offshore Penelope Fitzgerald 1979 British English
17130 The Spare Room Helen Garner 2008 Australian English
17130 Flour Water Salt Yeast Ken Forkish 2012 American English
17130 Critical Path R. Buckminster Fuller 1981 American English
5699 The Little Virtues Natalia Ginzburg 1962 Italian Italian
15903 Brazilian Adventure Peter Fleming 1933 British English
17130 My Father's Fortune Michael Frayn 2010 British English
15903 A Mass For The Dead William Gibson 1968 American English
17130 Passing The Time In Ballymenone Henry Glassie 1982 American English
1387 Gödel, Escher, Bach Douglas Hofstadter 1979 American English
578 The Silence of the Lambs Thomas Harris 1988 American English
295 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
209 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
194 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
214 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
825 In Our Time Ernest Hemingway 1925 American English
652 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
2340 Personal History Katharine Graham 1997 American English
1733 Zen In The Art Of Archery Eugen Herrigel 1948 German German
2716 Something Happened Joseph Heller 1974 American English
2711 Alan Turing Andrew Hodges 1983 British English
6715 The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind Julian Jaynes 1976 American English
5081 Autobiography Of A Face Lucy Grealy 1994 American English
586 The Third Man Graham Greene 1949 British English
3194 The Best And The Brightest David Halberstam 1972 American English
2613 Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant U. S. Grant 1885 American English
957 The Little World Of Don Camillo Giovanni Guareschi 1948 Italian Italian
5862 Italian Journey Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1816 German German
14897 We Die Alone David Howarth 1955 British English
3287 The Aspern Papers Henry James 1888 American English
2653 Sleepless Nights Elizabeth Hardwick 1979 American English
2405 A Sorrow Beyond Dreams Peter Handke 1972 Austrian German
17130 The Essential Haiku Robert Hass 1994 American English
14984 A Drinking Life Pete Hamill 1994 American English
14984 The All Of It Jeannette Haien 1986 American English
15903 Act One Moss Hart 1959 American English
1924 Pages From The Goncourt Journal Edmond de Goncourt 1887 French French
14862 Hiroshima Diary Michihiko Hachiya 1955 Japanese Japanese
17130 Time And The Art Of Living Robert Grudin 1982 American English
17130 Adam's Task Vicki Hearne 1986 American English
15903 String Too Short To Be Saved Donald Hall 1961 American English
17130 Forests Robert Pogue Harrison 1992 American English
17130 A Romantic Education Patricia Hampl 1981 American English
17130 When French Women Cook Madeleine Kamman 1976 American English
17130 Darwin's Dreampond Tijs Goldschmidt 1994 Dutch Dutch
17130 I Was A Stranger Sir John Winthrop Hackett 1977 Irish Unknown
16781 The Dead Of The House Hannah Green 1971 American English
17130 There Is A World Elsewhere F. Gonzalez-Crussi 1998 American Unknown
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
646 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
1007 The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs 1961 American English
1075 The Kon-Tiki Expedition Thor Heyerdahl 1948 Norwegian Norwegian
4138 The Liars' Club Mary Karr 1995 American English
1058 Memories, Dreams, Reflections Carl Jung 1963 Swiss German
537 The Waning of the Middle Ages Johan Huizinga 1919 Dutch Dutch
258 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner James Hogg 1824 Scottish English
2019 The Berlin Stories Christopher Isherwood 1945 British English
14984 Cultural Amnesia Clive James 2007 Australian English
3022 An Infamous Army Georgette Heyer 1937 British English
518 The Odes Horace 23 Roman Latin
17130 World Of Our Fathers Irving Howe 1976 American English
2441 A Rage In Harlem Chester Himes 1957 American English
8373 Beyond A Boundary C. L. R. James 1963 British English
17130 Ten Years In The Tub Nick Hornby 2013 British English
10450 Footsteps Richard Holmes 1985 French English
3022 Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House Eric Hodgkins 1946 American English
14897 Great River Paul Horgan 1954 American English
6886 Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage Richard Holmes 1993 British English
17130 In The Vineyard Of The Text Ivan Illich 1993 American English
15903 The Destruction Of Lord Raglan Christopher Hibbert 1961 British English
14984 A False Spring Pat Jordan 1975 American English
17130 Hokusai Henry D. Smith 1988 Japanese English
15903 A Johnson Reader Samuel Johnson 1964 American English
1794 My Past And Thoughts Alexander Herzen 1861 Russian Russian
15903 The Selected Letters Of William James William James 1920 American English
15903 Holmes Laski Letters Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 1953 American English
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
1093 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera 1979 Czech Czech
126 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
5372 Endurance Alfred Lansing 1959 American English
288 Independent People Halldor Laxness 1934 Icelandic Icelandic
2391 The Face of Battle John Keegan 1976 British English
13920 The Cyberiad Stanislaw Lem 1965 Polish Polish
559 Christ Stopped at Eboli Carlo Levi 1945 Italian Italian
485 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955 French French
17130 Friends In High Places Donna Leon 1999 French English
3099 Why We Can't Wait Martin Luther King 1964 American English
8815 Shikasta Doris May Lessing 1979 British English
1088 The Dwarf Par Lagerkvist 1944 Swedish Swedish
1814 Christ Recrucified Nikos Kazantzakis 1948 Greek Greek
14868 Palm Of The Hand Stories Yasunari Kawabata 1949 Japanese Japanese
17130 Book Of Ages Jill Lepore 2013 American English
16781 The Pound Era Hugh Kenner 1971 Canadian English
15903 Zibaldone Giacomo Leopardi 1898 Zibaldone Italian
17130 Talking Like The Rain X. J. Kennedy 1992 American English
15903 Kilverts Diary, 1870 1879 Francis Kilvert 1938 British English
15903 The Living Thoughts Of Kierkegaard Soren Kierkegaard 1938 Danish English
15903 Letters Of John Keats John Keats 1848 British English
17130 The Oldest Dead White European Males Bernard Knox 1993 American English
16536 Notes On A Cowardly Lion John Lahr 1969 American English
17130 A Boy At The Hogarth Press Richard Kennedy 1972 American English
16620 Another Self James Lees-Milne 1970 British English
14132 Death Of My Aunt C. H. B. Kitchin 1929 British English
15903 Part Of Our Time Murray Kempton 1955 American English
17130 A Dresser Of Sycamore Trees Garret Keizer 1991 American English
15903 Old House Of Fear Russell Kirk 1961 American English
15903 The Perfect Stranger P. J. Kavanagh 1966 British English
3102 Reading Lolita in Tehran Azar Nafisi 2003 Iranian English
17130 Gardening For Love Elizabeth Lawrence 1981 American English
17130 The Gentleman In Trollope Shirley Robin Letwin 1982 British English
3582 Two Sought Adventure Fritz Leiber 1957 American English
10656 Grief Observed C. S. Lewis 1961 British English
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin