This is a post I’ve been thinking about for a little while. My sister has a bookmark pinned up in her bedroom of 50 books to read before you die (of which, I just checked, I have read 19) and, in all honesty, it’s kind of a boring list. It’s mostly classics (some of which I had to force myself through) and very white and straight. None of these observations are at all new, I know.
But it made me think: what 50 books would I put on a personal “books to read before you die” list? And hence, this post.
Before we get to the list itself though, a few notes:
- It’s not exactly 50 books, of course, because I actually let myself pick books or series (where series counted as a single entry).
- I forced myself to keep to one book per author, else we all know this list would have been 20% Melina Marchetta.
- There are books that aren’t yet out on here, which I’ve been lucky enough to read ARCs of, but I have tried to limit that to only a few.
- This was really hard and just because a book I loved didn’t make it, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t wholeheartedly rec it. The way I chose for here was asking myself under what circumstances would I rec a book, i.e. would I take into account what I know of a person’s reading taste vs. my own, or not. If I went with not, the book made this list.
- This list is wholly made up of fiction (and I am including plays and graphic novels in that). That was just so it’d be easier to cut it down, really.
