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

I just added four books back to the list.
The Bible seems to be a particular problem. As soon as we add it back someone deletes it again.
If you have a problem with the list, just leave the list. Please.

Well, I personally think One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez & Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina should make it to the list. And speaking of non-western authors, the late Pramoedya Ananta Toer is brilliant.Anybody read his work before?

This is an amazingly eurocentric list. Doesn’t matter who compiled it, in this day & age there’s no excuse for totally ignoring the non-western world. For that matter, I don’t see any western authors of non-European descent represented here either.

Personally I feel a lot of the so-called “classics” are in the “overrated just because so many generations of high school kids were forced to toil through them” category. I have read many of the classics on this list and, while they may be of historical interest, don’t really feel most of them have all that much in the way of deep universal truths to offer… and they certainly don’t have a lot of pure entertainment value.

I do agree that the Bible belongs on this list, if only for reasons of cultural literacy. Whether you are a believer or not, the impact of the Bible on Western culture can’t be denied. And a lot of it is actually pretty entertaining reading if you’re into high drama blood & fire stuff.

While I’m slightly bitter at the number of Western authors on here, I can’t help but agree with a lot of it… so we’ll see

by deleting “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. This is one of my all time favorite books (it’s on my Top 10 Books list on this site!), but sadly it’s NOT on the “Museum, Libraries and Archives Council’s “30 Books Every Adult Should Read Before They Die”” list, so can’t be included here.

I think I could easily die without having read Lord Of The Rings, but I am encouraged to see that The Time Traveler’s Wife was included on this list.

Have you ever read Tolstoy? It’s not good, it’s just big and unwieldy. Like lots of things in life. Swords, for example.

out of this list i have only read The Lovely Bones and i actually just finished reading it today..its a really good book…really good…yeah

I was going to complain, but this list makes sense when you look at who created it.

So I added it back. Please don’t delete items from definitive lists that you don’t agree with.
And if there was some confusion, both the bible and the poisonwood bible are on this list. If in doubt, check the listsource.