40 best books to read before you die

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books, books, books. they will increase your life expectancy, reduce your stress and increase your intelligence. they will give you thicker and more abundant hair.

Whatever the breathless claims about reading, one thing is for sure: getting lost in a great novel is one of life’s most enduring and dependable joys. job satisfaction comes and goes, partners get drunk and run away, but you can always draw on literature’s timeless ability to transport you to a different world. From the elegant salons of Jane Austen to the airless tower blocks of 1984, the novels do something unique. they speak simultaneously to the heart and the mind. they teach you about the history of our world, the possibilities of our future, and the fabric of our souls.

You are reading: Books to read before you die

so where do you start? is a tricky question, because the obvious answer, “the literary canon,” means a pantheon of predominantly dead white guys. the power structures in play for centuries have meant that a very small group of people have had the opportunity to say something universal about the human condition. it’s impossible to ignore these biases: the least we can do is acknowledge them, include different perspectives, and point to some great resources here, here, and here to discover more writers we should read.

As it stands, narrowing this list down to 40 novels has been a process that makes Brexit negotiations look simple and amicable. we hope you enjoy the selection, or at least enjoy arguing about who should or shouldn’t have made the cut.

We may earn commission from some of the links in this article, but we never allow this to influence our content.

pride and prejudice, jane austen

It is a universally recognized fact that any list of great books must include pride and prejudice. Don’t be fooled by the hats and balls: Beneath the sugary surface is a sour exposition of the marriage market in Georgian England. For every lucky Elizabeth, who tames the haughty, handsome Mr. Darcy and learns to know herself in the process, there is a Charlotte, resigned to living with a goofy jester for lack of a pretty face. cr

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the secret diary of adrian mole, 13 ¾ years old, sue townsend

read this when you’re decrepit enough and chances are you’ll die laughing. No one has lampooned the self-absorption, delusions of grandeur, and sexual frustration of adolescence as brilliantly as Sue Townsend, and no one ever will. Beyond the majestic poetry and pimples, there is also a sharp satire of Thatcherite Britain. cr

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charlie and the chocolate factory, roald dahl

harry potter may be more popular, but willy wonka is much rarer. From the grinding poverty experienced by Charlie Bucket and his family, to the spoiled, greedy and spoiled children who join Charlie on his journey to Willy Wonka’s spooky candy factory, there’s nothing artificially sugar-coated in this startling work of fantasy. roald dahl. ch

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Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

A classic exposition of colonialism, Achebe’s novel explores what happens to a Nigerian village when European missionaries arrive. The main character, a warrior-like Okonkwo, embodies traditional values that are ultimately doomed. By the time Achebe was born in 1930, missionaries had settled in his town for decades. He wrote in English and took the title of his novel from a poem by Yeats, but weaved Igbo proverbs throughout this lyrical work. cr

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1984, George Orwell

The definitive piece of dystopian fiction, 1984 was so prescient it has become a cliché. but forget big brother on tv or the hackneyed parody of room 101: the original has lost none of its raging force. Orwell was interested in the mechanics of totalitarianism, envisioning a society that took the Soviets’ paranoid surveillance to chilling conclusions. Our hero, Winston, tries to resist a gray world where a screen watches your every move, but bravery is ultimately worthless when the state finds its way into your mind. cr

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rebecca, daphne du maurier

The Second Mrs. Winter is the narrator of Du Maurier’s wonderful gothic tale about a young woman who replaces the late Rebecca as the wife of the wealthy Maxim de Winter and Mistress of Manderley Manor. she there she meets the housekeeper, mrs. danvers, formerly engaged to rebecca, who proceeds to torment her. like atmospheric psychological horror, it gets darker and darker. ch

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great expectations, charles dickens

dickens was the social conscience of the Victorian era, but don’t let that put you off. Great Expectations is the turbulent story of orphaned Nugget, lovely Estella, and frustrated Miss Havisham. First written in series form, you barely have time to recover from one cliffhanger before the next follows, all told in Dickens’s exuberant, humorous and heartfelt prose. cr

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to kill a mockingbird, harper lee

A timeless plea for justice set against the backdrop of America’s racist South during the Depression years, Lee’s novel caused a sensation. Her device was simple but incendiary: looking at the world through the eyes of a six-year-old girl, in this case Jean Louise Finch, whose father is a lawyer defending a black man falsely accused of raping a woman. white. Lee expected nothing more than “a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers”: she won the Pulitzer and a place on the curriculum. cr

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Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

In an astonishing act of literary ventriloquism, Mantel inhabits a fictionalized version of Thomas Cromwell, a working-class boy whose fierce intelligence became a key player in the treacherous world of Tudor politics. historical fiction so immersive you can smell the fear and ambition. cr

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the big dream, raymond chandler

dashiell hammett may have been tougher, his plots more intricate but, wow, raymond chandler has style. the tug of war at the beginning of the big dream between private eye philip marlowe, in his light blue suit and dark blue shirt, and miss carmen sternwood, with her “sharp little predatory teeth” and her lowering and raising eyelashes Like a stage curtain, it sets the tone for a story of bad girls and bad men. ch

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frankenstein, mary shelley

Shelly was only 18 years old when she wrote Frankenstein as part of a challenge with her future husband, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron to come up with the best horror story. She leaves the green paint on her face: Frankenstein’s monster is a complex creation that craves sympathy and companionship. Some 200 years after it was first published, the gothic story feels more relevant than ever as genetic science pushes the boundaries of what it means to create life. cr

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wuthering heights, emily brontë

Will there ever be a novel that burns with a more passionate intensity than Wuthering Heights? The forces that bind her fierce heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, and cruel hero, Heathcliff, are violent and untamed, but rooted in the mutual devotion of childhood, when Heathcliff obeyed Cathy’s every command. it is impossible to imagine that this novel ever provoked peaceful dreams; emily brontë’s vision of nature brims with poetry. ch

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lord of the flies, william golding

Anyone who has ever suspected that children are primitive little beasts will nod sagely as they read golding’s classic. his theory is this: dump a group of schoolboys on an island and see how quickly the trappings of decent behavior vanish. Never have broken glasses looked so sinister, nor has a civilization so fragile. cr

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vanity fair, william makepeace thackeray

all the bustling life of 19th century london is here in thackeray’s masterpiece, right down to the curry houses frequented by jos sedley, who has earned a taste for things spicy as an officer in the eastern trading company the indian But it is Becky Sharp, one of literature’s great characters, who gives this novel his enduring fascination. As a woman in the making, Becky is the perfect combination of wit, cunning, and ruthless cruelty. Try like movies and TV to humanize her and make excuses for her, Becky needs victims to thrive! and she’s all the more convincing for it. ch

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Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

the protagonist of rushdie’s most famous novel is born at the exact moment when india gains its independence. he’s also born with superpowers, and he’s not the only one. In a bold and poetic piece of magical realism, Rushdie tells the story of India’s blood-soaked resurgence through a swath of midnight-born children with uncanny abilities. cr

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lolita, vladimir nabokov

Banned from the UK in its year of publication, 1955, Vladimir Nabokov’s astonishingly clever and controversial work of fiction introduces us to literary professor and self-confessed hebephile Humbert Humbert, the novel’s perhaps unreliable narrator. he marries the widowed charlotte haze just to have access to her 12-year-old daughter, Dolores, nicknamed Lo de Ella by her mother, or as Humbert calls her “lolita, light of my life, fire of my entrails ”. my sin, my soul.” Covering up his abuse with the allusive language of idealized love doesn’t lessen Humbert’s crimes, but it does allow Nabokov to skewer him where he hides. ch

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jane eyre, charlotte brontë

You’ll need a cold, dead heart not to be moved by one of literature’s fiercest heroines. From the institutional cruelty of Ella’s boarding school, “plain little” Jane Eyre becomes a governess demanding the right to think and feel. Not many love stories include a mad woman in the attic and a point of therapeutic disfigurement, but this one somehow pulls it off with mythical aplomb. cr

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Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A subtle and fascinating look at racial identity, through the story of a charismatic young Nigerian woman who leaves her comfortable home in Lagos for a world of struggle in the United States. Capturing both the harsh lives of us immigrants and the brazen divisions of a rising Nigeria, Ella Adichie crosses continents with all her usual depth of feeling and lightness of touch. cr

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cold comfort farm, stella gibbons

An absolute unadulterated comic joy of a novel. Stella Gibbons neatly mocks sentimental navel gazing with Ella’s vivacious heroine Flora, who is more interested in basic hygiene than histrionics. in other words, if she has “seen something nasty in the woodshed”, she just closes the door. cr

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dear, toni morrison

Dedicated to the “60 million and more” Africans and their descendants who died as a result of the slave trade, this is a cultural landmark and Pulitzer-winning tour de force. Morrison was inspired by the true story of an enslaved woman who killed her own daughter rather than see her return to slavery. In its plot, the murdered boy returns to haunt a black community, suggesting the inescapable stain on American history. cr

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Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

evelyn waugh bottles the heady vapor of a bygone era in this novel about middle-class charles ryder who meets upper-class sebastian flyte at oxford university in the 1920s. delete the foreword from the time of the war and the whole relationship between charles and sebastian’s sister, julia (dear evelyn, thank you for your last manuscript, some suggested cuts…) and you are facing one of the most moving love affairs in the english language. ch

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duna, frank herbert

You can almost feel your mouth dry with thirst as you enter the world of Frank Herbert’s Dune and encounter the desert planet of Arrakis, with its giant sandworms and mind-altering spices. it is the setting for an epic saga of warring feudal houses, but it is as much an ecological parable as it is a thrilling adventure story. rarely has a fictional world been so completely realized. ch

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the woosters code,pg wodehouse

if you haven’t read pg wodehouse in a hot bath with a glass of whiskey and ideally a rubber duck for company, you haven’t lived. Immerse yourself in this sublimely goofy tale of the ultimate comedic double act: bumbling aristocrat Bertie Wooster and his omniscient butler, Jeeves. A book that is a joy to read and also manages to satirize British fascist leader Oswald Mosley as a whining grump in black shorts. cr

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the great gatsby, by scott fitzgerald

the savage reviews f scott fitzgerald’s third novel received: “no more than a glorified anecdote”; “just for the season” – did not recognize something really great; a nearly perfect distillation of the hope, ambition, cynicism, and desire at the heart of the American dream. Other novels capture the allure of the invented self, from Stendhal’s Red and Black to Thomas Mann’s Confessions of Felix Krull, but Fitzgerald’s enigmatic Jay Gatsby casts a shadow that reaches to the madman’s Don Draper and beyond. ch

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A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

From the moment we meet alex and his three droogs at the korova milk bar, drinking moloko with vellocet or synthemesc and wondering whether to chat with the devotchkas at the counter or tolchock some old veck in an alley, it’s clear that the normal novel conventions do not apply. Anthony Burgess’s little volume about a violent near future where aversion therapy is used on Nadsat-speaking feral youths who commit rape and murder is a dystopian masterpiece. ch

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tess of the d’urbervilles, thomas hardy

A good 125 years before #metoo, thomas hardy skewered the sexual hypocrisy of the victorian era in this melodramatic yet immensely moving novel. tess is a naive girl from a poor family who is raped by a rich landowner. After the death of her baby, she tries to build a new life, but the “shame” of her past casts a long shadow. read this if you want to understand the rotten culture that is at the root of blaming the victims. cr

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Do androids dream of electric sheep?, philip k dick

here are roy baty, rick deckard and rachael rosen: the novel that inspired blade runner is stranger than even the movie it became. In a time before artificial intelligence could learn to play chess better than any grandmaster that ever lived, in a few hours, Philip K. Dick was using the concept of android life to explore what it meant to be human and what it is to be. left behind on a compromised planet. that he could do it in 250 mind-spinning pages that draw emotions with every turn of the page makes this a rare science fiction. ch

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the god of small things, arundhati roy

roy won the 1997 booker’s prize with his first novel, a powerful intergenerational love story that crosses caste lines in south india and the dire consequences for those who break the taboos that dictate “who is owed love and how. and how much.” sex, death, religion, the ambivalent attraction of motherhood: everything is in this beautiful and disturbing book. cr

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heart of darkness, joseph conrad

Inspired by Conrad’s own experiences captaining a merchant ship up the Congo River, Heart of Darkness is part adventure, part psychological journey into the unknown, as narrator Marlow tells the story of his journey into the jungle to meet the mysterious ivory. trader mr kurtz. the novel, while continuing the debate over whether his attitude towards Africa and colonialism is racist, is deeply engaging and demands to be read. ch

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the secret story, donna tartt

Put another log on the fire and snuggle up with this dark, quirky, and rather brilliant literary tale of murder. a group of classics students become fascinated by Greek mythology and then level up. remember, kids: never try your own delusional Dionysian ritual at home. cr

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dracula, bram stoker

whatever happened between irish theater director bram stoker and hungarian traveler and writer Ármin vámbéry when they met in london and discussed the carpathian mountains hatched in stoker’s gothic imagination a play that has had an influence priceless in western culture. it’s not hard to play the earl as a shady sexual figure who surprises prissy victorian england in her beds, but in the hands of a stoker he’s also creepy. ch

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middle gear, george eliot

This is a richly satisfying novel that follows the lives and loves of the inhabitants of a small town in England during the years 1829-32. the biting wit and timeless truth of his observations mark this as a work of genius; But at the time the author, Mary Anne Evans, had to resort to a male pseudonym to be taken seriously. cr

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the catcher in the rye, jd salinger

It only takes one sentence, written in the first person, for salinger’s holden caulfield to announce himself in all his adolescent nihilism, mocking you for wanting to know his biographical details “and all that david copperfield shit.” The Catcher in the Rye is the quintessential novel of the teenage experience, captured in immortal prose. ch

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The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

The only novel written by poet Sylvia Plath is a semi-autobiographical account of a descent into depression that the book’s narrator, Esther Greenwood, describes as being trapped under a bell jar, used to create a vacuum in scientific experiments. , struggling to breathe. Nearly every word is stunning, and the way Plath captures the vivid life going on around Esther (news events and magazine parties) accentuates the deadly illness that drives her to suicidal feelings. Plath herself would commit suicide a month after the novel’s publication in 1963. ch

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Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Andrew Davies’s recent television adaptation of War and Peace reminded those of us who cannot face returning to the novel’s monstrous demands how brilliantly Tolstoy delineates matters of the heart, even if the war passages They will always be a fight. on anna karenina – huge too! -the great russian novelist captures the erotic charge between married anna and bachelor vronsky, then drags her heroine through society’s scorn as her relationship takes shape, without even suggesting we walk away from her . ch

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trap-22, joseph heller

It’s not often that an idiom coined in a novel becomes a catchphrase, but Joseph Heller pulled it off with his wacky, wild and hilarious tour de force. War is logic’s ultimate dead end, and this novel explores all of its absurdities as we follow bomber pilot Captain John Yossarian. While Heller drew on his own experience as a World War II pilot, it was the McCarthyism of the 1950s that fueled the book’s glorious fury. cr

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dangerous relationships, pierre choderlos de laclos

The most deliciously perverse experience in literature, this epistolary novel introduces us to the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, who play cruel games of sexual conquest with their unwitting victims. the Marchesa’s justification for her behavior – “I, who was born to avenge my sex and dominate yours” – will strike a chord in the #metoo era, but emotions, even love, get in the way, to the point where laclos amorality becomes unsustainable. sexy but very, very bad. ch

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100 years of solitude, gabriel garcia marquez

The energy and charm of García Márquez’s story of seven generations of the Buendía family in a small town in Colombia continues to captivate half a century later. Ghosts and premonitions coupled with a journalistic eye for detail and a poetic sensibility make Márquez’s magical realism unique. ch

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the trial, franz kafka

“someone must have been telling lies about josef k…” thus begins kafka’s nightmarish tale of a man caught up in an unfathomable bureaucratic process after being arrested by two agents from an unidentified office for a crime they can’t tell about. Foreshadowing the anti-Semitism of Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as the methods of the Stasi, KGB and STB, it is a disturbing, sometimes unnerving story with chilling resonance. ch

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the leopard, giuseppe tomasi di lampedusa

Published posthumously in 1958, tomasi di lampedusa’s novel is set in 19th century sicily, where revolution is in the air. the imposing prince don fabrizio presides over a town near palermo during the last days of an old world in which class stratifications are stable and understood. Garibaldi’s forces have taken the island and a new world will follow. it is a profound and poetic meditation on political change and the characters it produces. ch

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This article was originally published on October 13, 2019

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