With four years to do it and a few books already under my belt, I got this. Right?
- The Dream of a Common Language, by Adrienne Rich
- Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins
- The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
The Secret History, by Donna TarttAnna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy- A Collection of Essays, by George Orwell
Hamlet, by William ShakespeareThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon- Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, by Alice Munro
- Native Son, by Richard Wright
- Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan
- Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera- Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
- Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant
- Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
- The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
- You Shall Know Our Velocity, by Dave Eggers
How Should a Person Be?, by Sheila Heti- Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
- Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, by Grace Paley
Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James- Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion
- Letters to a Young Contrarian, by Christopher Hitchens
- A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
- The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing
- Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin
- Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
- A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf
- Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore
The list is a nice balance of new books and old, and many will create a nice overlap with my goal of reading 50 classics before I'm 30. But since no list is ever perfect, and it is our duty as passionate readers to debate and re-debate every book list ever to appear on the internet, I want to know...
Well, I turned 30 two years ago, and I've only read 10 on that list! I love everything by Howard Zinn. I'd add Elizabeth Gaskell and Kurt Vonnegut to the list.
ReplyDeleteTwo authors I've never read!
DeleteI've read 13 of them, so I have a ways to go. I turn 30 in 6 months and found the list at the link below a couple years ago and have been working towards completing it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marcandangel.com/2008/08/11/30-books-everyone-should-read-before-their-30th-birthday/
I love that there are so many different versions of this same list to choose from. Thanks for sharing this link!
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