26 Books You Should Read Before You Die

For my 26th birthday, I thus want to go through 26 books that I think, though may not be my favourite books of all time, are the most important books you should read. Of course though, you should primarily read what you feel like - then read these afterwards. They will be in no particular order.

26 Books You Should Read Before You Die

1) Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner

It is no competition, this is my favourite Faulkner novel. But the way in which it explores the death of Old America and the birth of New America through its views of the Civil War Era shows us truly what the landscape is capable of. Things are disappearing and the rural nature of America is slowly disintegrating whilst towns build and people move, there seems to be no room for the old-fashioned nature of overbearing patriarch Thomas Sutpen anymore, though he may try. In what is basically a Shakespearean tragedy with machiavellian characters, this novel is one of the most important books to read if you want to understand what really happened to America and why it needed rebuilding from the Civil War to the present.

2) Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Possibly one of the greatest tragedies ever written, this play is a combination of many things including: power dynamics, knowledge and even the way in which people are perceived by society. Faustus is definitely conscious of his place in the world and seeks out ways to better it, much to his own demise and thus, he sets into motion a power play concocted by a messenger who is summoned as Faustus in this adaptation fo the legend, makes a deal with the devil. He wants it all, but he must promise an eternity in hell in return. With that, he agrees and then things begin to turn sour. What do you give the man who has everything? There are several great adaptations of this old legend apart from Marlowe’s play. Including the book by Goethe, the book by Thomas Mann and even the brilliant 1926 film adaptation of Goethe’s book by my favourite German director, F.W Murnau.

3) Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

It’s not my personal favourite Baldwin novel, but I do understand it to be one of the most important books ever written. The protagonist’s little brother is stabbed in the eye in a racist attack. From this spurns off histories of various family members from the silence of the mother to the brutality of the father - Gabriel. In this mixture between culture and self-discovery, one family battles against their oppression in a land that does not accept them, adult or child. There is something really special about this book because it entails so much about the Black experience at the time and not only can it teach us a lot about that, but it can also teach us about why it is so important that in this world, we stand up for each other regardless of where we come from.

4) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy’s language is known for its eloquence and brilliance. Personally, it is Anna Karenina which is higher up on my list of favourite novels, but I think if you really want to learn about the dreaded Russian aristocracy, then you need to look to War and Peace. Five families at the heart of the Napoleonic Franco-Russian Wars. We have the Rostovs who always seem a bit out of it - Natasha is a whimsical, but silly kind of grown child and Nikolai doesn’t know what he wants. We have the Bolonskys (my favourite family) with a tyrannical father who’s daughter, Maria, is an anxious mess whilst her brother Andrei is at war. We have the morally corrupt children of the Kuragin family with Prince Vassily, their father, constantly begging them to behave. When the Count Bezukhov dies at the novel’s beginnings, it leaves his family (especially the illegitimate member, Pierre) in utter despair and yet, things must get better. The Drubetskoys show themselves with the valiant, but duplicitous Boris, the original lover of Natasha, he is the son of the noble but conflated Anna. It is a brilliant book filled with incredible characters, my favourite being Maria and I would love it if you tackled it as well (trust me, it is not as hard as you think - it is just difficult starting it).

5) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

One of my personal favourite books of all time which is basically a study in late 19th century philosophy. This book is filled with some of Dostoevsky’s best writing - especially concerning the language of morality. The story goes that the father of Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha has been killed - all fingers point to one of the three brothers and yet, there is something not quite right about this at all. As we travel through the trials and tribulations, rights and wrongs, outbursts and internal monologues of Fyodor Pavlovich and his three children, we start to see the very fabric of the family dynamic start to unravel at the sight of money, inheritance, temper and loss. This, in my opinion, is Dostoevsky’s best work - even better than Crime and Punishment and I can definitely see why so many people, including myself, count this book on their top ten favourite books of all time. I have no idea where I would be without this book today, there are so many things I have learnt from it purely from different readings. I read it on my own a few times, I also read it with others and I have written a couple of articles on it too. It truly is a brilliant text.

6) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Possibly one of the most well-known and least widely read books on this list is Victor Hugo’s French Epic Les Miserables. I honestly don’t know why more people don’t read it. Yes, it is long, but it is really worth it. There are lots of different genres going on in the same book and so, there is something for everyone. When I first read this book, I was in my teens and I liked to have a notebook on hand for writing down names of characters, who they were friends with, who they were related to and which years they lived in (as the book takes place in different eras across time). It really helped when I first read the book and each time I’ve dipped into it afterwards, I have found that the ease of reading allows me to discover different themes and symbols that add more and more meaning to the plot. My favourite character has always been Enjolras, the revolutionary who wants to take on the French army. He is depicted in almost a superior fashion and the symbolism around his demise is really quite something. I wish more people would read this book and so, go ahead and make it a 2022 post-New Year’s resolution.

7) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

About a madman who goes out of his way to create monster only for it to run away, this novel is written in different narrative forms, starting with the doomed and perilous journey of Robert Walton across the sea as he writes letters to his sister. He sees a man on the horizon with a bunch of dead dogs, and Victor Frankenstein begins his story. After Victor and his prize meet again, the Monster begins his narrative and then as Frankenstein begins his own yet again, we witness the downfall of a scientist who went way too far. Things take a turn for the worst in four letters and twenty four chapters of pure gothic terror. It is a text that hardly anyone ever forgets reading.

8) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

When I tell you about the amount of times I have been over this book I’m pretty much saying that I like to make myself suffer. Marlowe goes on a journey to visit Mr Kurtz up the Belgian Congo River, he encounters savagery through cannibalism, violence and images of complete terror. When he finally reaches the dwelling of Kurtz, he only finds things get worse and worse. Skeleton bones everywhere, human heads stuck to pikes of a fence and people eating people are just some of the horrors that you witness here. Marlowe is a man of the world and yet, he is terrified by the very thought of the things that happen when you approach the heart of darkness. A brilliantly written book filled with dense social imagery, this short novel is one you must read in your lifetime.

9) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

This book is one of my favourite books of all time and every time I teach it, the students seem to love it. The story of Jane Eyre is a turbulent one; starting off with the abuse she wrestles with at the hands of the Reed family, her adoptive aunt Mrs Reed, who took her in after her parents died. Then, she is sent to Lowood School where she suffers at the hands of Mr Brocklehurst, but is steered in correct directions by Ms Temple and my personal favourite character, Helen Burns. Becoming a teacher in the school and then leaving for a governess job - Jane enters the gothic, creepy, mysterious and dark Thornfield Hall where she will be pulled around, gaslit and yet, fall in love with the terrifying but witty Edward Rochester. A Heathcliff-like character, he is a man of wealth, but few manners at the start of the meeting. Ghosts and fire will haunt the novel then on until Jane must make a decision that will almost not be made at all. The novel is simply beautifully gothic.

10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

We don’t refer to this novel as one of the greatest to be written in the English Language for no reason. This novel is a dark and brooding coming-of-age gothic about a young boy called Pip who starts the novel by meeting a strange convict in a graveyard. Wanting to help but not wanting to get involved - this young boy will rise through the ranks by some unknown benefactor only to realise that the top does not look the same once you’re there in comparison to when you’re on the bottom. My favourite character is Mrs Havisham, obviously. She lives in Statis House, a decaying and decrepit mansion filled with dead plants and dirt. She prances around in her wedding dress lamenting the time that could’ve been with the young Estella following close behind. A brutal and heart-wrenching novel about fighting the system, it really is one of the greatest novels to every be written in English and one of Charles Dickens’ best pieces of writing.

11) Perfume by Patrick Süskind

Not really on the list of my favourite books of all time, but I think it is very important if you want to study the modern gothic and the modern grotesque. A mad and dangerous tale about a man named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who has an incredible sense of smell and tries to create the perfect perfume by bottling the smell of 25 young, beautiful virgin girls. It is a sickening and often strange tale of baffling grotesqueness and the modern gothic has really hit its best here. Resonant of the romantic gothic, this book takes the obsession of Victor Frankenstein and the tragic desire of Basil Hallward and makes it twisted like you have never seen it before.

12) The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I don't think I have ever read something so terrifying mainly because it is all true. It isn't made up, it isn't gothic fiction, no hauntings, no monsters, just reality. In reality unfortunately, there are monsters and one of them is the communist dictatorship. A critique of the Soviet Union where people were sentenced to die almost every single day, this book details the terrifying reality of one man's journey through it. I'll let my literary investigation do the talking if you just click here.

13) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited is a book I hold very close to my heart and is definitely one of my favourite books of all time. It is about a man called Charles Ryder who is warned against making friends with the Marchmain family. But, whilst at Oxford, he meets a grown man who carries around a teddy bear - his name is Lord Sebastian Flyte - the son of the Marchmain family. What begins then is a turbulent love affair with a dangerous and broken family who seek to hold on to their aristocratic past as it fades into obscurity. It is a brilliant, volatile and beautiful novel.

14) Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

When I first read Swann's Way I actually didn't realise there was a next part, that was mainly because my edition was tattered and missing the cover, which meant it didn't say In Search of Lost Time: Volume 1 on the front. There was no indication. About a boy with some very clear mummy issues, Marcel Proust shows off his best philosophical writings through the character of the friendly and yet, strange, Swann. Some of the most beautiful modernist writing is right there at your fingertips and, with some themes of conflict within families, the atmosphere of Charles Swann's weird love affair with Odette and symbolism involving hugging someone - this book is not to be missed. If you're interested, yes I did read the following volumes in time.

15) Richard II by William Shakespeare

It is probably not my favourite Shakespeare play of all time, but it is probably one of the best written. About the final years of the reign of Richard II, it starts with the banishing of Henry Bolingbroke and the death of John of Gaunt. When Bolingbroke returns, he wants his inheritance from his father, John of Gaunt - inheritance which he accuses Richard II of stealing. As they begin this conflict, people begin to idealise Henry Bolingbroke as Henry IV of England. Was this an abdication or was this a deposition? Was this an abdication by choice or by force? Shakespeare hides clues in the language everywhere.

16) The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima

Quite possibly one of the most beautifully disturbing books I have ever read, it is my favourite Mishima novel and when I read it for the first time, I couldn't believe what I was reading. A book about a boy called Noboru and his youth gang who despise the father role in society. Noboru's widowed mother takes her son to a ship since he is so interested in them, there she meets a man called Ryuji. Ryuji is idolised by Noboru, but only when he is a soldier at sea, never when he is behaving as the father figure to the boy. As Noboru and his gang discuss the on-coming wedding of Noboru's mother and this sailor, they come to only one conclusion of what they must do - and it is more horrific than what you're thinking about.

17) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas is one of my favourite books of all time because of the fact it is written so beautifully. From the South Pacific Journal to the narrative letters of the composer and fraud, Robert Frobisher all the way down to the life and times of Luisa Rey. This book has some really great characters to investigate. My personal favourite character is Robert Frobisher because I have a theory about the story of Robert Frobisher (I won't tell you what it is because there is a spoiler in it) and how the course of the book actually happens. It is such a brilliant book.

18) The Diamond as Big as the Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald

When John Unger meets Percy Washington, he thinks they could be friends. Percy invites John over for the holidays, telling John that his father has a diamond the size of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Not believing it, thinking its either something of a lie, or at least hyperbolic - John goes and finds out that Percy wasn't lying or being hyperbolic at all. It really is a diamond the size of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. But, within the walls lies something much darker and inside the family history, John finds something out that may not make him want to stay after all. From people going missing to his love for the daughter - Kismine all the way to why he is even in this strange family's house - John finds out the hard way. A brilliant short story filled with symbolism, historical context and what I believe to be Fitzgerald's best writing, this is one hell of a narrative to really sink your teeth into.

19) The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

About a strange and stunning voyage across the ocean for ten days, this book is a work of nonfiction. It is about a young man who seeks out Columbia by ship with his fellow men as he boards the boat filled with contraband. Within a few days, the ship gets lost, it begins to break down and a few people go missing. After some days, everyone is declared dead and our main character - Luis. Luis travels for ten days upon the sea to get to Columbia and is welcomed by media and government - but his journey doesn't end there. A beautifully written book told in the first person perspective and given the real Luis' own blessing, Marquez makes a great excuse for this to be one of the greatest nonfiction books ever written.

20) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Again, another great nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood deals with the murders of the Clutter family in 1959. Even though there are some parts of the book whihc differ from the actual case, there is nothing more shocking than reading not just about the four people murdered, but the way in which the two people arrested kept trying to give the police something else with one stating that it was all the other and the other stating that his accomplice killed two people. Within the subsections of this text, things get dicey and surreal as Truman Capote paints us a picture that begins with one cold night in November.

21) The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Starting with the death of 'Rosa the Beautiful' this book covers generations of a family living in Chile at the time of war and revolution. It covers the life and times of a conflating man named Esteban Trueba who seeks redemption after he knows of a fateful prophecy coming his way thanks to his sister. Through his marriage to Clara, he will begin to experience aspects of magical ingenuity at the hands of the other people in his life. However, Esteban knows he has been cruel, unkind and possessive and that it will haunt him to his death if he continues this way. He seeks to make amends whilst his marriage becomes more and more disillusioned. With an amazing cast of characters, this book is one of my favourite novels of all time and seriously cannot be beaten in its culture, its fantasy and its almost Shakespearean nature.

22) The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

Born to an Irish father, Meggie is the only daughter of the family. She and her family move from New Zealand to Australia and begin a new life, one they think will be better. But plagued by ill will, family strife and death after death, Meggie sees the true extent of family violence after her brother runs away, her other brother dies and a lightning fire causes serious damage, killing two people she holds close. Meanwhile, Meggie meets a priest called Ralph and in her attempts to court him, he moves further away. Things will change for Meggie but not always for the better. In this book that is called Australia's answer to Gone with the Wind, this epic narrative centres around a woman torn between her wants and her needs in a time of extensive tragedy. One of my all-time favourite novels, this is definitely the best piece of literature to come out of Australia.

23) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Eleanor is a woman who has been kicked around all of her life and now, she wants out. She applies to be a participant in a project run by Dr Montague in Hill House. Even though it doesn't state that Hill House is actually haunted, there is something seriously wrong with the house that Eleanor notices when she arrives. After this, Eleanor starts to experience strange things, noises and sights at the mercy of the house and everywhere she turns, there seems to be something grotesque to encapture her soul. A brilliantly beautiful novel which terrified me when I first read it, this is a book solely dedicated to exploring the depths of manipulation of the mind and how we can become trapped by our own thoughts, our own past and yet still blame it on something or someone else.

24) Moby-Dick; or The Whale by Herman Melville

When I first read this book I think I was most astounded by the philosophy that was in it. Previously, I had thought the book mostly about whale-fishing and when I read it, it really did floor me. About a man and his view of the rough, machiavellian Captain Ahab, the revenge tragedy upon the sea and the great whale that breaks through the very fabric of the novel. When I initially read the book I think the first thought I had was about how beautifully it was worded. The quotations seemed to flow almost seemlessly, as if Ishmael's very own thoughts were penned just as they were - almost like poetry.

25) The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

I read this for the first time at nineteen years' old and it absolutely shocked the daylights out of me. From the very outset of the book we have a grim reality of the 1348 plague and how it is tearing Italy apart. These images of death and destruction start the ball rolling on the atmosphere and, in the run-up, we have the beginning of the journey which will take us to the 'decameron' or the 'one hundred stories'. Inspired by the '1001 nights' and inspiration to Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' - this book is a book I used to write my undergraduate dissertation and it is something I would love to turn back time to and revisit, research and revise all over again. It is simply amazing.

26) Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

I cannot stress enough how much Emile Zola's writing has inspired my own. His writing is so fluent and so picturesque that he can make even the most vile and grotesque scenes have an element of beauty to them. This is exactly what he does in this twisted, turbulent and toxic manipulation of what I think is supposed to be Romeo and Juliet gone even more wrong. Zola warps the plot into something horribly extreme and this relationship becomes something far more than simply 'toxic' - it becomes fatal. Therese Raquin is a powerful tale of manipulative, dominant and sociopathic love in a volatile time in European history.