30 Books to Read Before You Die (Pt. 29)

Part 29 is a pretty big number, we're well into the 800s and I feel like we've covered a lot of what I want to cover. But not all of it. There's something very special about sharing your reading with someone but really, I wanted to tell you the actual reason I started these lists in the first place and why I didn't just make it one long list - though I totally could've at this rate.

The reason I made these lists was because I wanted to create lists of books I loved. A few years ago I owned a book called "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" and apart from being filled to the brim with droning "classics" that nearly everyone has to read at school. I'm not going to lie, a lot of the books were alright, but it sounded like a list compiled by every single middle class white literature snob out there that wants to tell you that they got into Oxford but doesn't want to tell you that their parents slid a donation to do so.

I feel like there aren't a lot of lists out there written by normal people for other normal people who just like to read and want to see what other people read. It's always "the definitive..." this and "the best of..." that. What about just "here's some books I enjoy, maybe you'll enjoy them too..." - what about that?

Mostly frowned upon, sharing popular literature or "pop-lit" as some call it is mostly the stuff of Reese Witherspoon's book club or privy to the online accounts that involve Oprah Winfrey and the life. But, I beg to differ. I don't believe there is any such thing as "pop-lit" because literature is normally structured into genres and the term of what is popular changes over time. For example: in the 80s, it was cool to read Bret Easton Ellis. Now, it is no longer cool to read Bret Easton Ellis. Not even in the slightest. He's not a bad writer - he is a brilliant writer. He just became irrelevant.

Now that I've rambled on for what seems like a century, let's go through this list the same as we always have. I never recommend a book I haven't read but my own personal favourites on this list will be marked with a (*). I will talk about two or three intermittently throughout the article and above all, I hope you enjoy yourself on my page today!

841-850

841. The Paston Letters by Norman Davis

842. Plays and Fragments by Menander

843. The Rise of Rome by Livy*

844. The Playboy of the Western World by JM Synge

845. The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen

846. The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin

847. Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

848. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

849. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

I had to study this in the first year of sixth form and I'm not going to lie but the way it was taught made it so incredibly dry. I remember reading the play and thinking "man, you really couldn't make this stuff boring!" because it was so much fun and so hilarious to read. But, my teacher at the time couldn't have made the play more boring if she tried. I'm sorry ma'am but it's true - your lessons were boring as hell. How can you make William Shakespeare boring? HOW?

850. The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman

851-860

851. Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

852. The Poems of Propertius

853. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

854. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

855. Three Major Plays by Lope de Vega

856. Three Plays by Luigi Pirandello

857. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf*

858. Typhoon and Other Tales by Joseph Conrad

859. Washington Square by Henry James

860. The Looking Glass War by John Le Carré

861-870

861. Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo*

862. Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton

863. Three Tales by Gustav Flaubert

864. Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare*

865. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

866. Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington

867. Ward Number 6 and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

868. Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare

869. Three Early Modern Utopias by Susan Bruce

870. The Years by Virginia Woolf