The Student Room Group

Books that are a must - read

Scroll to see replies

Reply 300
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy
Schindler's List - Thomas Keneally
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Anything of George Orwell's - preferably 1984 or a Clergyman's Daughter.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho


Posted from TSR Mobile
Reply 302
Original post by pearl_ake
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho


Original post by Zoelingua
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Lord of the Flies - William Goulding
The Handmaids Tale - Margret Atwood


Original post by Oddities
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy
Schindler's List - Thomas Keneally
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Anything of George Orwell's - preferably 1984 or a Clergyman's Daughter.


Thank you all three of you. I'll check the list and add these books too.
Reply 303
Original post by Diiiii
Thank you all three of you. I'll check the list and add these books too.


Oops... It's not 'Schindler's List', it's 'Schindler's Ark'... I got the film and the book mixed up... Sorry.
Reply 304
Original post by Oddities
Oops... It's not 'Schindler's List', it's 'Schindler's Ark'... I got the film and the book mixed up... Sorry.


No problem :smile:
For anyone who likes both history and Jane Austen, Jane Austen's England by Roy Adkins and Leslie Adkins is a definite Must Read, and yes, the capitals are necessary!
Original post by Narutopolaris
The Count of Monte Cristo
War and Peace
The Brothers Karamazov
Hadji Murad
A Tale of Two Cities
Don Quixote
Around the World in Eighty Days
Snow Falling on Cedars
The Quran
1984
Animal Farm
The Merchant of Venice
The Prince
The Art of War
Kim
The Man Who Would Be King
Jeeves and Wooster
sSherlock Holmes
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Passage to India


Time to get reading!
Original post by Oddities
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy
Schindler's List - Thomas Keneally
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Anything of George Orwell's - preferably 1984 or a Clergyman's Daughter.

Did you finish reading War and Peace? :lolwut:
Original post by LostGear
Did you finish reading War and Peace? :lolwut:


Yes I did! It technically took me 1 and a bit months to read - I started it when I was 15.. (I read most of it in May, and then didn't read the rest until November because I was too busy... :/)
My teacher read it in a week... :/ Have you tried reading it?
Original post by Oddities
Yes I did! It technically took me 1 and a bit months to read - I started it when I was 15.. (I read most of it in May, and then didn't read the rest until November because I was too busy... :/)
My teacher read it in a week... :/ Have you tried reading it?


the sheer scale of it is putting me off! it's the sort of book that requires incredible amount of will power and patience lol which are two things that I'm severely lacking at the moment lol
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 310
50 shades of grey.
Original post by LostGear
the sheer scale of it is putting me off! it's the sort of book that requires incredible amount of will power and patience lol which are two things that I'm severely lacking at the moment lol


It's not actually 'one book'! It's split into volumes and parts.. I.E. the first bit goes up to volume 1, part 3, and it carries on like that. I think there are 4 volumes and an epilogue. So if you want to read it break it down like that. It also helps that the majority of the chapters are relatively short!
A very good list there Diiiii - hats off to you! :hat2:
Reminds me how much I've read!
Someone has mentioned it already - definitely The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy! The Babel Fish!!! :yep:
(edited 9 years ago)
Definitely Time Shifters by Shanna Lauffey. This is going to be the best new time travel series, ever!
Reply 314
Original post by dorababy1995
For anyone who likes both history and Jane Austen, Jane Austen's England by Roy Adkins and Leslie Adkins is a definite Must Read, and yes, the capitals are necessary!



Thank you and yes there are so many Jane Austen fans out there! My sister loves her :smile:

Original post by LostGear
Time to get reading!


Happy Reading!! Which book are you reading now?

Original post by BoBosus
50 shades of grey.


Thanks

Original post by LongLazyDays
A very good list there Diiiii - hats off to you! :hat2:
Reminds me how much I've read!
Someone has mentioned it already - definitely The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy! The Babel Fish!!! :yep:



Thank you LongLazyDays! :hugs:
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy is on the list but I'll definitely add The Babel Fish.

Original post by KatrinaMay
Definitely Time Shifters by Shanna Lauffey. This is going to be the best new time travel series, ever!



Sure thing Kat! Thank you :smile:
Original post by Diiiii


Thank you LongLazyDays! :hugs:
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy is on the list but I'll definitely add The Babel Fish.


You're very welcome! :grin:
I try and think of other books to pit on the list!!
Reply 316
Original post by Diiiii
No problem :smile:


What do the bold book titles mean? Hoping to read these after my GCSEs...so tempting to start reading some books I've bought off my shelf!
Original post by Diiiii
I've always wanted to make a list of books that are a definite must read. This may relate any gendre and everyone is welcome to add more books to the list. You can bold out the ones you've read too :smile: I want to read the books that I haven't read before which is the also why I'm making this list.

We started with 20 books and now thanks to everyone one of your suggestions, we have a humongous list of books for all those who love reading! Thank you everyone! Feel free to include more suggestions any time. I'll definitley update the list :smile:

1.

1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off by John Lloyd

2.

1984 by George Orwell

3.

39 steps by John Buchan

4.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

5.

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

6.

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

7.

A Million Bullets by James Ferguson

8.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

9.

A Passage to India by E. M Forster

10.

A Room with a View by E.M Forster

11.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

12.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

13.

A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R. R. Martin

14.

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

15.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

16.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

17.

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith

18.

Adventure Series by Willard Price

19.

Alice Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

20.

An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin

21.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

22.

Angels And Demons by Dan Brown

23.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

24.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

25.

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

26.

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

27.

Batman by Scott Snyder

28.

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

29.

Before I Die by Jenny Downham

30.

Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson

31.

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche

32.

Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernières

33.

Birthdays For The Dead by Stuart Macbride

34.

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

35.

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

36.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

37.

Blindness by Jose Saramago

38.

Blowing Up Russia by Alexander Litvinenko

39.

Boy by Roald Dahl

40.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

41.

Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

42.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

43.

Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger

44.

Catching the Tide by Judith Lennox

45.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

46.

Chavs by Owen Jones

47.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

48.

Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

49.

Days Of War, Nights Of Love by Crimethinc

50.

Digital Fortress and Deception Point by Dan Brown

51.

Do You Believe In Happy Ever After by Patricia Scanlan

52.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

53.

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

54.

Down and Out In Paris And London by George Orwell

55.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

56.

Dreams Of My Father by Barack Obama

57.

East Of Eden by John Steinbeck

58.

Emma by Jane Austen

59.

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

60.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

61.

Fallen by Lauren Kate

62.

Fearless by Tim Lott

63.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

64.

Franny and Zooey by J D Salinger

65.

Girl, Missing by Sophie McKenzie

66.

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

67.

Going Solo by Roald Dahl

68.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

69.

Goodbye Mr Chips by James Hilton

70.

Gormenghast Series by Mervyn Peake

71.

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

72.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

73.

Great Apes by Will Self

74.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

75.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

76.

Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy

77.

Ham On Rye by Charles Bukowski

78.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

79.

Harry Potter by J K Rowling

80.

His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman

81.

Human, All Too Human by Nietzsche

82.

Incentive To Delight by Romson 1976

83.

Infected by Scott Sigler

84.

Inkheart Trilogy by Cornelia Funke

85.

Jack Dawkins by Charlton Daines

86.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

87.

Jeeves And Wooster Series by P. G. Wodehouse

88.

Jig by Campbell Armstrong

89.

Journey To The River Sea by Eva Ibbotson

90.

Junior Officer's Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey

91.

Kane And Abel by Jeffrey Archer

92.

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

93.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

94.

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

95.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

96.

Life Of Pi by Yann Martel

97.

Little Women by Louisa Alcott

98.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

99.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

100.

Lord of the Rings by J. R. R Tolkien

101.

Love Story by Erich Segal

102.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

103.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

104.

Matilda by Roald Dahl

105.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

106.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

107.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

108.

Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson

109.

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine

110.

Muhammad By Martin Lings

111.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

112.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

113.

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

114.

No Ordinary Love by Anita Notaro

115.

No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander Mccall Smith

116.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

117.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

118.

Nothing Lasts Forever by Sidney Sheldon

119.

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

120.

Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

121.

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

122.

Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck

123.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

124.

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

125.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

126.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

127.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

128.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

129.

Othello by William Shakespeare

130.

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

131.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

132.

Percy Jackson Books by Rick Riordan

133.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

134.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

135.

Prettly Little Things by Jilliane Hoffman

136.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

137.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

138.

Regeneration by Pat Barker

139.

Return Of The Native by Thomas Hardy

140.

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

141.

See You At Harry's by Jo Knowles

142.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

143.

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

144.

Siddhartha by Hesse

145.

Silverfin by Charlie Higson

146.

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

147.

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

148.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

149.

Sophie's Choice by William Styron

150.

Star Dancer by Beth Webb

151.

Street Lawyer John Grisham

152.

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

153.

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

154.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

155.

That Girl is Poison by Tia Hines

156.

The 37th Hour by Jodi Compton

157.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

158.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

159.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

160.

The Assault by Harry Mulisch

161.

The Beach by Alex Garland

162.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

163.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

164.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

165.

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

166.

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

167.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

168.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S Lewis

169.

The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolai Gogol

170.

The Communist Manifesto by Marx/ Engels

171.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

172.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

173.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

174.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F Scott Fitzgerald

175.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

176.

The Da Vinci by Dan Brown

177.

The Declaration by Gemma Malley

178.

The Diary Of A Young Girl by Anne Frank

179.

The Dolphin Crossing by Jill Paton Walsh

180.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

181.

The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry

182.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

183.

The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

184.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

185.

The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

186.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

187.

The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

188.

The Hobbit by J. R. R Tolkien

189.

The Holy Qu'ran translated by Yusuf Ali

190.

The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas

191.

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

192.

The Iliad by Homer

193.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

194.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

195.

The Last Days Of A Condemned Man by Victor Hugo

196.

The Laws That Make The World Work by Jeff Stewart

197.

The Little Princess by Frances Hodgsdon Burnett

198.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

199.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks

200.

The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling

201.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

202.

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

203.

The Meditations by Aurelius

204.

The Meditations by Descartes

205.

The Medusa Project novels by Sophie McKenzie

206.

The Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden

207.

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

208.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

209.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus

210.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

211.

The Odyssey by Homer

212.

The Outsider by Albert Camus

213.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

214.

The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde

215.

The Plague by Camus

216.

The Poems of Emily Dickinson

217.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

218.

The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer

219.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

220.

The Republic by Plato

221.

The Road by Cormac Mccarthy

222.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsdon Burnett

223.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

224.

The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson

225.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

226.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

227.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

228.

The Third Man by Graham Greene

229.

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

230.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

231.

The Trial by Franz Kafka

232.

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

233.

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts

234.

The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

235.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

236.

The Witches by Roald Dahl

237.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

238.

Thursdays In The Park by Hilary Boyd

239.

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche

240.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

241.

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

242.

Ulysses by James Joyce

243.

Utopia by Thomas More

244.

Vanishing acts by Jodie Picoult

245.

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

246.

War and Peace by Tolstoy

247.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

248.

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

249.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr

250.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

251.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

252.

Wonder by R. J. Palacio

253.

Work, Consume, Die by Frankie Boyle

254.

World Without End by Ken Follett

255.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

256.

You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane


Links
http://www.booklit.com/blog/1001-books-to-read-before-you-die/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction


I wonder how long it'll take me to ready every single one of them? :biggrin:
If you're into horror, The Shining and IT by Stephen King are definitely good reads :tongue:
Reply 319
I've read 52 of them - just the other 204 left ;-)

Two really good authors are Kate Morton and Victoria Hislop would definitely recommend them

Quick Reply

Latest

Trending

Trending