23 Books to Read Before You Die

There are thousands of books out there to read. Choosing which ones to read can be difficult. That is why we decided to curate a list of 23 books to read before you die. Keep reading to see which books made the list!

Before I dive into the list, I know that it is going to ruffle a lot of feathers. Unlike other lists, this one was entirely off of feelings. When making this list, I thought about which books to add, I considered the impact of the novel as well as if not reading the novel would change anything. You can see the full list below.

23 Books to Read Before You Die

• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Must Read Books

The list includes classics such as 1984, The Book Thief, and Crime and Punishment. These are novels that I believe everyone should read because the story, writing, plot, and message are worth it. There are many books that people read for fun and then there are books that enlighten you and educate you.

With that said, reading is an experience that changes depending on the reader. Different people will get different messages but as long as It is within the boundaries of what the author intended, then that is a success. The Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple, and The Handmaid’s Tale are important works of fiction that were and still are necessary.

But not every must read novel needs to be a lesson. The Count of Monte Cristo, The Great Gatsby and The Hobbit are brilliant novels that epitomize amazing writing. Not everyone is going to enjoy all of these novels but you can’t deny the quality of the writing as well as how important they are in the literary world and beyond.

Conclusion

That wraps up our list of the 23 books to read before you die. This list could easily have been much longer. However, making it short and to the point felt like a great starting point. Because we all know someone who loves books isn’t going to stop at 23 books.

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