AOL has a list of Ten Books to Read Before You Die. I don't know how they came up with the list but here it is:
- Gone With the Wind
- Lord of the Rings (that's actually three books)
- Harry Potter (that's actually seven books)
- The Stand (a 1978 Stephen King novel)
- The DaVinci Code (!?)
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Angels and Demons (!?)
- Atlas Shrugged
- Catcher in the Rye (Count me as one who never could see what all the swooning was about over this book)
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I never read The Stand nor The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy so I have no comment about them. I mostly enjoyed Dan Brown's two books (#5 and 7), despite having to swallow a character parachuting safely out of a plane with an umbrella or something, but I would hardly say they're books one should read before they die.
I do tell my students from time to time that there are three books they should read before they graduate, however:
- Les Miserables (unabridged, of course)
- The Brothers Karamazov
- Tale of Two Cities
How any of these could be left off the above list is beyond me unless the authors of the list just think they're too hard for the average reader.
RLC