For those who don't know, today is World Book Day! Well actually, it's the first of two World Book Days this year. The other is on April 23rd, so make a note in your diary. Why two? Well, it doesn't really matter why. After all, EVERY day should be World Book Day!
To celebrate this awesome occasion we've decided to come up with a list of books to read before you're 30. Some of them can be read in one sitting, others are sprawling epics, but whether long or short, they all have one thing in common: they're all masterpieces of literature. Don't see your favorite in the list? Then feel free to share your own, and don't forget to comment!
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The Little Prince By Antoine De Saint-Exupery
This book definitely isn't my childhood, but I wish it was. It would've saved my a*s when I was a moody elementary brat
The Lord Of The Rings By J.R.R. Tolkien
To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee
Animal Farm By George Orwell
The Book Thief By Markus Zusak
This Booked Has Been Banned In Some Schools... It's An Amazing Read
how ironic that it's banned in some schools, this makes the book even better ...
The Picture Of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde
Read it in 7th grade! Loved it! Had to skip some never-ending philosophical conversations between Dorian and his friend Lord Henry :P
Lord Of The Flies By William Golding
The Alchemist By Paulo Coelho
Hamlet By William Shakespeare
The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte
The Catcher In The Rye By J.D. Salinger
War And Peace By Leo Tolstoy
Anyone who can get through the entirety of this book is amazing!
Jonathan Livingston Seagull By Richard Bach
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
The Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka
I hated this book when I read it but now years later I hold a deep appreciation..
The Art Of War By Sun Tzu
It requires objectivity and maturity -- probably a good exercise for younger readers.
The Republic By Plato
A Clockwork Orange By Anthony Burgess
Anna Karenina By Leo Tolstoy
All the s****y Hollywood adaptations discouraged me from coming close to this book!
The Complete Persepolis By Marjane Satrapi
The Myth Of Sisyphus By Albert Camus
Persuasion By Jane Austen
Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov
By the way Nabokov never wanted the book to be printed with any images on it and it was said directly when the book was published first. This is what he never wanted to start: the "nymphette" cult. I have read this one in Russian although the original one was in English. And I feel very sorry that this book created so much mess around 12 year olds "asking for it" in this world full of sexual violence that even girls of such young age face all over the world. :( Makes me sad...
Cloud Atlas By David Mitchell
Crime And Punishment By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
On The Road By Jack Kerouac
All Quiet On The Western Front By Erich Maria Remarque
The Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Master And Margarita By Mikhail Bulgakov
Oliver Twist By Charles Dickens
Siddhartha By Hermann Hesse
For Whom The Bell Tolls By Ernest Hemingway
The Power Of Myth By Joseph Campbell
Meditations By Marcus Aurelius
White Teeth By Zadie Smith
Middlemarch By George Eliot
The Woman In White - Wilkie Collins
The Prince By Niccolò Machiavelli
My father was just a teacher but he adored this book, occasionally quoting it at the dinner table. To this day, I still can't understand the reason why he was so fascinated with it.
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao By Junot Díaz
To The Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf
The Corrections By Jonathan Franzen
First They Killed My Father By Loung Ung
Heaven Has No Favorites By Erich Maria Remarque
Fun Home By Alison Bechdel
The God Of Small Things By Arundhati Roy
The Beggar Maid By Alice Munro
The Dharma Bums By Jack Kerouac
The Year Of Magical Thinking By Joan Didion
A Little Life By Hanya Yanagihara
Milkweed By Jerry Spinelli
The Man:s Search For Meaning-viktor Frankl
Paper Towns By John Green
#61 To All The Boys I Loved Before And Ps I Still Love You By Jenny Han
#54 A Wolf At The Table By Augusten Burroughs
Running With Scissors By Augusten Burroughs
Ken's Guide To The Bible By Ken Smith
Why the hell this have to be before I get 30? And what would happen if I'm over 30? And why this books qualify to be on this list? Is there a life lesson to learn about that? A life lesson that I can not learn after 30??
RELAX YOUR @NUS, WHINER.. it's a list of suggestions by the author for "world book day'. I didn't know there's that day, I don't know why before 30, but there's no need to be upset. You can always click that red X at the top corner if you don't like it. Geez.. (thanks for the list Viktorija, I've read some of the titles and will browse the others)
Load More Replies...'The Goldfinch' by Donna Tartt. Documents the lifestyle of kids and afflicted pseudo-parents of our times. With some art, action, betrayal and redemption to digest. Also: 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi ---brutal, not for the faint of heart, but great sci-fi for people who are not sci-fi fans. Deals with continued abuses of women & animals like today, betrayals, power and the war over genetically controlled food in the future. Other work: Howard Zinn, Historian and Alice Miller, Psychologist, are brilliant authors to explore in total.
Why the hell this have to be before I get 30? And what would happen if I'm over 30? And why this books qualify to be on this list? Is there a life lesson to learn about that? A life lesson that I can not learn after 30??
RELAX YOUR @NUS, WHINER.. it's a list of suggestions by the author for "world book day'. I didn't know there's that day, I don't know why before 30, but there's no need to be upset. You can always click that red X at the top corner if you don't like it. Geez.. (thanks for the list Viktorija, I've read some of the titles and will browse the others)
Load More Replies...'The Goldfinch' by Donna Tartt. Documents the lifestyle of kids and afflicted pseudo-parents of our times. With some art, action, betrayal and redemption to digest. Also: 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi ---brutal, not for the faint of heart, but great sci-fi for people who are not sci-fi fans. Deals with continued abuses of women & animals like today, betrayals, power and the war over genetically controlled food in the future. Other work: Howard Zinn, Historian and Alice Miller, Psychologist, are brilliant authors to explore in total.