My Book Bucket List

A while back, I read through article after article called 'Books to Read Before You Die' and compiled a list of all the books that caught my eye. This is what I'm calling my Book Bucket List and I thought I'd share this list with you :)

Here are all the books I must read before I die:

Classics:

⏹️ Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (might regret putting this on the list…)

⏹️ Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

✅ Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (DNFed in high school, SO BORING!)

✅ The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (surprisingly enjoyed this one)

⏹️ Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

⏹️ Moby Dick by Herman Melville

⏹️ Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (partially read – still working my way through these)

⏹️ The Hollow Man by John Dixon Carr

⏹️ The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

⏹️ Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I want to read this SO BAD but it’s SO LONG)

⏹️ The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

⏹️ War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (this one’s gonna be FUN I’m sure…)

⏹️ Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

⏹️ Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

✅ Dracula by Bram Stoker (one of my fave classics! So many layers…)

✅ Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (also DNFed in high school, sorry not sorry)

⏹️ Emma by Jane Austen

✅ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (controversial opinion but this is just another Cinderella story and I’m not the biggest fan of it…)

⏹️ Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

⏹️ Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (the Pride and Prejudice I SHOULD read instead)

✅ Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (hated it in high school, LOVED it as an adult)

⏹️ Hamlet by William Shakespeare (also read in high school, planning on re-reading)

⏹️ Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (if it disappoints me, does that count as false advertising?)

⏹️ David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

⏹️ The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

⏹️ Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

⏹️ The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (started it, soft DNFed, will hopefully get back to someday)

⏹️ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (heard great things about this one)

⏹️ The Complete Poems by Emily Dickinson

⏹️ Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

⏹️ One Thousand and One Nights by Unknown

⏹️ Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (ngl I’m scared of this one... might skip it)

⏹️ The Odyssey by Homer (Emily Wilson translation) (gotta support the women making history)

Sci-fi/Fantasy:

✅ 1984 by George Orwell (a classic for a reason. They just don’t make dystopian sci-fi like this anymore)

⏹️ Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

⏹️ A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

⏹️ The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (I own this but haven’t read it yet. I think I’m scared to)

⏹️ The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

✅ The Giver by Lois Lowry (top 5 favourite books ever. Read 3 times, would happily read again)

✅ Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (LOVE the movie. The book is very strange but still good)

⏹️ Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

✅ The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey (a beautiful take on grief. I STILL haven’t fully recovered from this book)

⏹️ Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

⏹️ Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo

⏹️ This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

⏹️ Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

⏹️ Slan by A. E. van Vogt

⏹️ Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Children's:

✅ Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (another favourite classic, love my girl Anne so much)

✅ Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (have some very controversial opinions on this one that I won’t get into here…)

✅ The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (possibly THE best children’s book ever written. So gorgeous)

✅ Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne (what can I say, other than utterly adorable?)

⏹️ Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (this movie broke me as a child, why haven’t I read the book yet???)

⏹️ Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

✅ A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (loved the movie, but didn’t read past the first book)

⏹️ The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

⏹️ Watership Down by Richard Adams

✅ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (the book is tiny, the chapters are short – I STILL DNFed halfway through. SO BORING)

⏹️ A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (people keep telling me this book is incredible. I don’t know why I haven’t read it yet)

⏹️ Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

⏹️ Wonder by R. J. Palacio (heard some opposing thoughts on this one. Interested to read it for myself)

Coming-of-age:

✅ The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (I don’t care what anyone says, I loved this book. Is Holden Caulfield annoying? Of course he is, he’s a teenager. That’s the whole point)

✅ The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (beautiful, sad, tragic. And features my favourite poem I’ve ever read)

✅ Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (absolutely timeless. Perfectly captures the whimsy of girlhood in a way that still resonates decades later)

✅ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (great first half, not-so-great second half)

⏹️ The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Emotional/Romance:

✅ Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (maybe controversial but I loved this book. A great reminder to be kind because you never know what others are going through)

✅ The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (loved the depictions of mental health and depression, didn’t love the casual racism and fatphobia)

✅ The Fault In Our Stars by John Green (sobbed like a baby. 5 stars)

✅ My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (brilliant up until the worst ending to a book I’ve ever read. I’m still mad. I will never not be mad.)

⏹️ A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

⏹️ The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom (this one intrigues me so much…)

✅ Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin (such an incredible concept with such lacklustre characters and dull-as-bricks writing. Very disappointed)

⏹️ A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (I keep seeing this book in stores and never buying it. I don’t know why)

⏹️ 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons

⏹️ Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott (who put this on the ‘read before you die’ list? Is it worth it?)

⏹️ Every Day by David Levithan (really like the movie, been meaning to read it)

⏹️ The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

⏹️ Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

⏹️ The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman

⏹️ Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

⏹️ One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

⏹️ The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

⏹️ The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Philosophical/Commentary:

⏹️ Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (bought on my Kindle for less than fifty cents!)

⏹️ The Trial by Franz Kafka (see also: Metamorphosis comment)

⏹️ The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (this one sounds incredibly interesting!)

⏹️ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Olive Sacks (this one came up a while back when I was researching stories. Should look into it)

⏹️ White Noise by Don DeLillo

⏹️ The Stranger by Albert Camus

⏹️ Lord of the Flies by William Golding (the OG Hunger Games? Dunno if I’ll like it, but I’ll give it a go)

⏹️ Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

⏹️ The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

⏹️ The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

⏹️ Ulysses by James Joyce

⏹️ The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

⏹️ One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

✅ Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (an almost incredible book that gets way too caught up in the romance, presents intelligent people as lacking empathy, pretends that the people who bullied him were totally his friends, and features some very out-of-date language regarding mental disabilities that did NOT age well)

✅ Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (an absolute banger, the equivalent of a puzzle in book form. And the imagery is beautiful!)

Memoir:

⏹️ The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (can’t believe I haven’t read this yet)

⏹️ I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (this one should be interesting…)

⏹️ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

War/Politics:

✅ Animal Farm by George Orwell (reading this in high school was probably a waste. I think I’d love it more now as an adult)

⏹️ Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

✅ The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (I have since learned why this is not a good book. Not too impressed by the author either…)

⏹️ The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (owned this book for about a decade and still haven’t read it even though everyone says it’s incredible. Somebody slap me)

✅ All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque (a genuine surprise. Read it in high school, thought it would be boring, wound up loving it!)

⏹️ All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (the Netflix show was good, so I’ll read this at some point)

✅ Caging Skies by Christine Leunens (one of my favourite books. A perfect example of complex character psychology and the nature of obsession. Also the writing is outstanding)

⏹️ Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

⏹️ Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

⏹️ Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

⏹️ Night by Elie Wiesel

⏹️ Atonement by Ian McEwan

Race:

✅ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I truly love this book, HOWEVER I do find it interesting that high schools love to push the book about race written by a white woman, then ban all the ones written by black women… so interesting…)

⏹️ The Color Purple by Alice Walker

⏹️ The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (heard such high praise for Toni Morrison that I added multiple books to the list. She sounds like an amazing writer)

⏹️ Recitatif by Toni Morrison

⏹️ Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

⏹️ Beloved by Toni Morrison

⏹️ The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

⏹️ Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

⏹️ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

⏹️ Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

✅ The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (SUCH an incredible book! It’s emotional, it’s funny, it’s tense, it hits all the right notes. THIS is the one we need in schools)

⏹️ The Help by Kathryn Stockett (the movie is classic, but I do have concerns…)

Feminism/LGBTQ:

⏹️ Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

⏹️ Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

✅ The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (honestly, a little disappointed with this one. Didn’t stick with me the way I’d hoped)

⏹️ The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

⏹️ Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

⏹️ Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

Mystery/Horror:

✅ Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (okay hear me out, but I think this one made for a better movie than book…)

✅ The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (was honestly not enjoying it until the twist ending. Well played, Agatha, well played…)

⏹️ And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

⏹️ The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

⏹️ The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

✅ The Shining by Stephen King (an absolute masterpiece and my first King experience. 10/10 no notes)

✅ The Long Walk by Stephen King (300+ pages of constant walking. I was never once bored)

⏹️ Misery by Stephen King (as a writer, I expect I will relate to this one)

✅ Pet Semetary by Stephen King (currently reading and honestly, not loving. Poor pacing, too much exposition. Hoping it gets better)

⏹️ Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (apparently this is the OG Verity? I don’t care for Colleen Hoover books but I’d like to read the original concept)

⏹️ House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (gonna need at least a year to get through this one. I hear it’s agonising…)

Have you read any of these titles? Which ones are worth the time? Are there any more great titles I should add to this list? Let me know!