1001 Books I’ve Read

Posted in About Me, Reading Recommendations

Last week, I talked about the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Here, for those who’d like to see, is the list of books from it that I’ve read so far. Also, a photo of my cat. Because she’s cute. And why not?

Any recommendations for which list book I should pick up next? Reviews that you would like to see? Comment below!

Books Read Before I Started Tracking

I started following the 1001 list in college, which is about the same time I started tracking my reading in general. For some books, I can at least remember what year I read them, especially if I read them for school, but others I read in some indistinct before time. This is the list of those books.

  1. The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
  2. The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe
  3. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The High School Years

I don’t necessarily remember in what order I read these, but I do remember I read them sometime during high school. Most of these were for class. Some I picked up because I’d heard of other people having read them in high school. One was recommended to me by a friend who’d loved it. And one I read purely out of my own interest. A good mix.

  1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  2. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  4. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
  5. A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
  6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  9. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  10. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
  11. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  12. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
  13. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

First Year of University

Here we find the first books I read specifically as part of the 1001 list. The trend of books read for school also continues, as I was just starting my degree in Writing and therefore took Introduction to Literature as soon as possible.

  1. 1984 by George Orwell
  2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  3. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  4. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
  5. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  6. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
  7. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  8. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  9. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
  10. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Second Year of University

Including the summer before it began. Literature courses this year included Contemporary Literature and Bristish Literature (Restoration to Twentieth Century).

  1. Middlemarch by George Eliot
  2. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
  3. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
  4. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  5. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  6. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  7. Erewhon by Samuel Butler
  8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  9. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  10. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
  11. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
  12. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  13. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
  14. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
  15. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
  16. The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
  17. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

Third Year of University

Same deal as the previous year. Courses included American Literature I and Irish Literature.

  1. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
  2. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
  3. Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe
  4. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
  5. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
  6. The Collector by John Fowles
  7. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
  8. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
  9. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  10. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
  11. The Interesting Narrative by Olaudah Equiano
  12. Passing by Nella Larsen
  13. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
  14. Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson
  15. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
  16. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  17. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
  18. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  19. Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
  20. Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth

Final Year of University

By which I really mean the summer before. A busy year in my life, finishing both my degrees, working an internship, and job hunting. All my literature requirements had been fulfilled by this point as well. No time for reading.

  1. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
  2. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  3. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  4. The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard

The Recent Past

After graduation but before I started blogging. From this point on, all choices were my own, besides a few that were for book clubs. But I chose to be a part of those, so I think they all still count as not being forced.

  1. Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
  2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  3. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
  4. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  5. Dracula by Bram Stoker
  6. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
  7. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
  8. The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley
  9. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
  10. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
  11. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  12. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
  13. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carré
  14. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
  15. The Shining by Stephen King
  16. Watchmen by Alan Moore
  17. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  18. Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
  19. Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
  20. Emma by Jane Austen
  21. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  22. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  23. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Modern Era

All the list books read since I started this blog. While I might fill in reviews for older books as I reread them, I’ve made a concerted effort to review all books from this point on. I did decide not to make a separate review for the second book in the Dirk Gently series, but that’s because I had little to say about it that I hadn’t said about the first.

  1. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams
  2. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
  3. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
  4. The Heather Blazing by Colm Tóibín
  5. Thank You, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
  6. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
  7. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Future

With 97 done, I have 904 to go if I want to complete the challenge. I’m not sure I ever will, since I increasingly want to read books that don’t appear on it instead, but if I read two books from the list each month, I could finish by the time I’m seventy. So at least it’s possible in theory!

Published by Shannon Fallon

Shannon Fallon is an aspiring author currently developing her debut novel The Binding of Magic. She lives in Wisconsin with her cat Willowstripe, who loves to sleep on her lap while she writes... and pester her when not being given enough attention. She graduated from Cardinal Stritch University in 2014 with bachelor's degrees in writing and computer science. She currently works as a Senior Programmer Analyst for a property and casualty insurance company that creates much of the software used by its employees. When she's not wrangling unruly code, she enjoys reading a mix of modern and classic literature, exchanging feedback with other writers, and relaxing with a good video game.

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