MLA's "30 Books Every Adult Should Read Before They Die"

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  1. 1.
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    by Harper Lee

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  2. 2.
    The Bible

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  3. 3.
    The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary, One Vol. Edition
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

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  4. 4.
    Nineteen Eighty-four (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by George Orwell

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  5. 5.
    A Christmas Carol
    by Charles Dickens

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  6. 6.
    Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)
    by Charlotte Brontë

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  7. 7.
    Pride and Prejudice (Bantam Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  8. 8.
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    by Erich Maria Remarque

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  9. 9.
    His Dark Materials
    by Philip Pullman

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  10. 10.
    Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War
    by Sebastian Faulks

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  11. 11.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck

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  12. 12.
    Lord of the Flies
    by William Golding

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  13. 13.
    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
    by Mark Haddon

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  14. 14.
    Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Bantam Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

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  15. 15.
    Winnie-the-Pooh (Pooh Original Edition)
    by A. A. Milne

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  16. 16.
    Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Emily Bronte

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  17. 17.
    The Wind in the Willows
    by Kenneth Grahame

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  18. 18.
    Gone with the Wind
    by Margaret Mitchell

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  19. 19.
    Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

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  20. 20.
    The Time Traveler's Wife
    by Audrey Niffenegger

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  21. 21.
    The Lovely Bones
    by Alice Sebold

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  22. 22.
    The Prophet
    by Kahlil Gibran

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  23. 23.
    David Copperfield (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

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  24. 24.
    The Alchemist (Plus)
    by Paulo Coelho

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  25. 25.
    The Master and Margarita
    by Mikhail Bulgakov

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  26. 26.
    Life of Pi
    by Yann Martel

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  27. 27.
    Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

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  28. 28.
    The Poisonwood Bible (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Barbara Kingsolver

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  29. 29.
    A Clockwork Orange
    by Anthony Burgess

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  30. 30.
    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Signet Classics)
    by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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Created by Misty on Mar 28, 2006.
 

Comments

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Atlas Shrugged — 9 weeks ago

This list is missing the #1 book of all time – Atlas Shrugged.


Someone has altered the list — 17 weeks ago

The MLA list claims to have 30 books, yet there are only 29 on the list…


No — 22 weeks ago

Nobody should have to read Jane Austen. GARBAGE!


Balkonskiy_a
Boulder

Untitled — 50 weeks ago

Well, Bible is number one bestseller of all times so that one should stay, but how did Lord of the Rings or Gone with the Wind made it on the list over so many others I can not understand.


whollycrusader
Harrisburg

Religious texts? — 1 year ago

If the Bible is going to make the list, I don’t see why the Koran, the Torah, or the Bhagavad Gita aren’t on here as well.


Untitled — 1 year ago

Dostoevsky, Nabokov and Gogol are all well and good but actually if you asked people nowadays which ones they have read, Lolita or the curious incident, the diary of a madman or the time travellers wife then chances are it would the the latter.

Yes, they are classics but curious incident is a modern classic and is actually a very good book.

Although I agree this list isn’t that good at all.

JD Salinger, DH Lawrence, Nick Hornby...where are they? Ok I'll admit Nick Hornby...not so much but you know.

But it was the majority that claimed these are the top 30 so who are we to question really?

Could be better (:


Untitled — 1 year ago

...no Oscar Wilde? o_O;


Untitled — 1 year ago

Wow.. the Bible?
Really?


The Alchemist. — 1 year ago

My one word review of the Alchemist: Trite.

It was not the worst book I have ever read, but it was certainly in the bottom one or two percent. I could list several thousand books that I have read that i would recommend over reading The Alchemist. Makes me wonder if the librarians that selected these books ever bothered to actually read any of them.


llull
Shambhala

MLA — 1 year ago

I prefer other acronyms: TLS for one. I betcha they would have a more adventurous list. Also, what’s with the morbidity? Are we not allowed to read some “in the next life (and don’t be late)”*?

  • Jimi Hendrix et al.



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