Elftown's choice - 30 Books To Read Before You Die

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Browsing the book forum in Gaia, I found a thread containing a list of '30 books to read before you die'. It was a crap list, it really was. Very few of the books on the list deserved to be there. I'm sure if I browsed the internet for all of 20 seconds, I could find a whole bunch of other lists. But I'm not interested in those.

I could have made this list on Gaia - but I know how it'd turn out '0mgz0rx! Artemis Fowl, lol! & His Dark Materials, liek, best series eva!!11!' ... I think not. So instead, since I believe the average IQ of ET is slightly higher than that of Gaia, I'm going to do the list here.

Voting In Progress: 30 Books - Voting

Voting: Since an Elftown poll would be impractical due to the amount of nominations, here’s how it’ll work: create a wiki titled ‘30 votes – your_username_here’, e.g. 30 votes - SilverFire. You are allowed to vote for thirty books each, list each of the books you are voting for as they are displayed on the nominations list – including what number in the list they are (this will just make my job a lot easier). Once you have completed your voting page, please send a link to your wiki to me, [SilverFire], and add a link on 30 Books - Voting. This wiki is for your peace of mind, so you can be certain I am not rigging the votes.

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Nominations:

1. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
2. Skellig - David Almond
3. Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare
4. The Fellowship of the Ring - J. R. R. Tolkien
5. The Two Towers - J. R. R. Tolkien
6. The Return of the King - J. R. R. Tolkien
7. Iliad - Homer
8. Odyssey - Homer
9. Dragonlance 'Dragons of Autumn Twilight' - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
10. Tempest - William Shakespeare
11. Around the world in 80 days - Jules Verne
12. Das Kapital - Karl Marx
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
15. The Left Hand of Darkness – U. K. Le Guin
16. Crime and Punishment – F. M. Dostojevski
17. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
18. The Satanic Bible - Anton Szandor LaVey
19. Rose Madder - Stephen King
20. Prey - Graham Masterton
21. Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
22. Tietam Brown - Mick Foley
23. Speeldrift - Juli Zeh
24. 1984 - George Orwell
25. Bible - Various
26. Koran - Various
27. The liar - Stephen Fry
28. The discovery of heaven - Mulisch
29. The Darkroom of Damocles - W.F. Hermans
30. Also Sprach Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
31. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
32. Swords of Corum - Michael Moorcock
33. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
34. Orientalism - Edward Said
35. The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
36. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
37. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J. K. Rowling
38. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
39. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
40. Mein Kampf - Adolf   
41. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
42. BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo - Yoshio Sawai
44. The Outline of History - HG Wells
45. The Metamorphoses (or, the Golden Ass) - Lucius Apuleius
46. Dao De Ching - Lao Zu
47. Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft
48. The Shining - Stephen King
49. Wild Swans - Jung Chang
50. The Darwin Awards 3 - Wendy Northcutt
51. Backwards - Rob Grant
52. Adventures in a TV Nation - Michael Moore
53. The Gay Science - Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Animal Farm - George Orwell
55. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
56. High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
57. Shadow - K. J. Parker.
58. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
59. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
60. Cat's eye - Margaret Atwood
61. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
62. The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
63. Othello - William Shakespeare
64. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
65. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
66. Going Postal - Terry Pratchett
67. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
68. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
69. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
70. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
71. The Road less travelled - M. Scott Peck
72. The elephant man - Christine Sparks
73. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
74. The Whitsun Weddings - Phillip Larkin
75. Magician - Raymond E. Feist
76. Orcs - Stan Nicholls
77. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
78. Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho
79. Lord of the Night - Simon Spurrier
80. The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway
81. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
82. Stone Angel - Margret Lawrence
83. Fahrenheit 451 The Temperature at Which Books Burn - Ray Bradbury
84. Pet Sematary - Stephen King
85. The Outsider / The Stranger - Albert Camus
86. The Magician's Guild - Trudi Canavan
87. The Iron Lance - Stephen Lawhead
88. The Scarlet Letter - Nathanial Hawthrorne
89. Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind
90. The Gunslinger - Stephen King
91. The Princess Bride - William Goldman
92. The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
93. Ishmael - Daniel Quinn
94. Desperation - Stephen King
95. Of Mice And Men - John Steinbeck
96. White Noise - Don DeLillo
97. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
98. London - Edward Rutherfurd
99. Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
100. The Master and the Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
101. Tarnished Gold - V.C Andrews
102. The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
103. A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
104. The Gods Drink Whiskey - Stephen T. Asma
105. The King of Elfland's Daughter - Lord Dunsany
106. The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath - H.P. Lovecraft
107. Baudolino - Umberto Eco
108. The Mask of the Sorcerer - Darrell Schweitzer
109. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
110. Dune - Frank Herbert
111. Fairytales - The brothers Grimm
112. Matilda - Roald Dahl
113. The Winthrop Woman - Anya Seton
114. Lucas - Kevin Brooks
115. The Horse and His Boy - CS Lewis
116. Conquest - Elizabeth Chadwick
117. Death's Acre 'Inside the legendary body farm' - Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson
118. Servant of the Bones - Anne Rice
119. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
120. Skallagrigg - William Horwood
121. Inferno - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
122. The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
123. Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
124. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
125. Songs of Innocence And of Experience - William Blake
126. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
127. The Brothers' War - Jeff Grubb
128. Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
129. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
130. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
131. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
132. Midnight Blue - Nancy A. Collins
133. Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon
134. Night - Elie Wiesel
135. Imagica - Clive Barker
136. The Neverending Story - Michael Ende
137. Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
138. Battleaxe - Sara Douglass
139. Enchanter - Sara Douglass
140. Starman - Sara Douglass
141. Sinner - Sara Douglass
142. Pilgrim - Sara Douglass
143. Crusader - Sara Douglass
144. Paradise Lost - John Milton
145. The Marriage of Heaven And Hell - William Blake
146. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
147. A Child Called It - Dave Pelzer
148. Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde
149. Shaman's crossing - Robin Hobb
150. Forest Mage - Robin Hobb
151. Accelerando - Charles Stross
152. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
153. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms - Guanzhong Luo
154. Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence - Paul Feig
155. Dracula - Bram Stoker
156. The Green Mile - Stephen King
157. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
158. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
159. Will There Really Be A Morning - Frances Farmer
160. You wouldn't be dead for quids - Robert G Barrett
161. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
162. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
163. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
164. Through the looking-glass - Lewis Carroll
165. War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy
166. The Dark Tower - Stephen King
167. IT - Stephen King
168. Lord Foul's Bane - Stephen R. Donaldson
169. Red Storm Rising - Tom Clancy and Larry Bond
170. A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin
171. The Longest Day - Cornelius Ryan
172. A Bridge Too Far - Cornelius Ryan
173. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
174. The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
175. Elric of Melnibone - by Michael Moorcock
176. The Cardinal of the Kremlin - Tom Clancy
177. Daughter of the Blood - Anne Bishop
178. Apology - Plato
179. Metamorphoses - Ovid
180. Sir Apropos of Nothing - Peter David
181. The Taming Of The Shrew - William Shakespeare
182. The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
183. Taste Berries for Teens - Bettie & Jennifer Youngs
184. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
185. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
186. Brick - Rian Johnson
187. Archangel - Robert Harris
188. The City of Dreaming Books - Walter Moers
189. Rumo: And His Miraculous Adventures - Walter Moers
190. Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
191. Idées Noires - Franquin
192. Le Grand Pouvoir du Chninkel - Grzegorz Rosinski and Jean Van Hamme
193. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
194. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
195. Why Government Is the Problem (Essays in Public Policy) - Milton Friedman
196. King's Dragon - Kate Elliot
197. Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales - Marie Louise von Franz
198. The Language of the Goddess - Marija Gimbutas
199. The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell
200. The Way of the Shaman - Michael Harner
201. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard

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Other interesting book related wikis:

Book_List

The Elftown Book Club

Other '30' lists:

30 Songs

30 Movies