30 Books to Read Before You Die (Pt. 28)

It has been quite a ride, but don't think we're just going to finish here just yet. I've told you already about a little celebration I'm going to have when I hit 900 and I have already planned what's going to happen after that and beyond. Let's talk for a bit before we get into the list:

People normally ask me why I read so many books. The reason is simple. I love reading. Then people get confused and ask, "But why so much?" Then I tell them that it only looks like a lot. I read in my spare time for pleasure, I read for my website, I used to read for my Bachelors and Masters degrees. I am currently reading in order to try and write a coherent something to begin anything towards a PhD (though I have no damn clue what I want to do). And there are upsides and downsides to knowing too much about literature.

The upside is that you know too much about literature. The downside is that when you're studying it—you have way too much choice and therefore can't decide what you want to write about. The time for writing creatively is replaced with wanting to read more books, the time for watching television is replaced by reading more books, and finally, the time for actually doing anything other than reading is replaced with reading more books. Maybe that's actually an upside... it definitely sounds like a lot of fun!

Reading is possibly one of the most satisfying things in the world. I normally like a good song playing softly in the background to help me concentrate and maybe, one day, I'll share some of my top reading songs with you (I have an entire playlist!). But for now, I guess you could do with me getting on with this list instead of talking so often about how much I love reading!

Let's get on with this then. It's going to be the same as it has always been. I'll never give you a book I haven't read, tried and tested, myself. I'll mark my personal favourites with an (*) and talk about some memorable experiences reading certain books throughout the course of this article. I hope you're having as much fun as I am and it's been a great ride. See you on Part 29! For now, I leave you with 30 books you should read before you die...

811-820

811. South Sea Tales by RL Stevenson

812. Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald

813. Teenage Writings by Jane Austen

814. Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi*

I read the Disney version of Pinocchio when I was a child. It was a little hardback green book with a big picture of the movie poster on the front of it. Then, when I was slightly older—I read the origin story which was by Carlo Collodi. I was absolutely horrified. If you really want to learn about how the Disney effect changes the storylines of the original material, then you probably want to read Collodi's original Pinocchio story. It is more horrifying than Grimm or Perrault. It scared the hell out of me. Not really by the contents of the book, but to know I'd been lied to all those years.

815. The American by Henry James

816. Sister Carrie by Theodor Dreiser

817. The Anglo-Saxon World by Kevin Crossley-Holland*

818. The Bright Side of Life by Emile Zola

819. Collected Poems by CP Cavafy

820. Swann in Love by Marcel Proust

Though it may not be my favourite volume of the intensely large and oversized In Search of Lost Time, this part really struck me as the most human of the entire book. I recommend that if you do undertake such a task of reading this long epic, then pay good attention to the descriptions on emotion and humanism on this volume because it will play a very important role!

821-830

821. The Complete Short Stories of Oscar Wilde*

822. The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

823. King Lear by William Shakespeare*

This was my English Teacher's favourite Shakespeare play whilst I was in sixth form and he used to sit there explaining his favourite acts of unbridled violence in the play. Personally, it may not be my ultimate favourite because let's face it, even in terms of unbridled violence you're better off reading Titus Andronicus. But I love the play for its incredible attention paid to family in relation to violence. It's like Hamlet just with girls and all the girls want their father's love, and maybe it's not Hamlet but it sure has similar family politics.

824. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

825. The Country Wife and Other Plays by William Wycherley

826. The Mabinogion by Sioned Davies

827. The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi

828. The Major Works of Robert Browning

829. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

830. Stories and Poems by Rudyard Kipling

831-840

831. Aspern Papers by Henry James

832. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

833. The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins

834. The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

835. The Major Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson

836. The Man of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie

837. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare

838. The Nature of the Gods by Cicero

839. The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf

840. Six French Poets of the 19th Century by AM Blackmore