Just See the Movie: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Part IV:

 Like a student trying to get out of reading the book by seeing the movie, I decided, while browsing through the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die that for many of the listings, just seeing the film version may be preferable to trying to slough through the book. After you see the movie, you can then decide if the book interests you enough to read it or not.  

1. The Age of Innocence

2. Casino Royale (2006 version, which is the film version that actually follows the book--and represents the only Fleming/Bond book on the list--so if you're a Bond fan, you'll probably read every book, if you're not, you're probably not interested, period.)

3. Closely Watched Trains

4. Death in Venice

5. Day of the Dolphin

6. Far from the Madding Crowd

7. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

8. Get Shorty

9. The Go-Between

10. Jakob the Liar

11. Like Water for Chocolate

12. Lolita

13. The Lost Honor of Katrina Blum

14. Madame Bovary

15. Mansfield Park

16. Of Human Bondage

17. Rashomon

18. Quo Vadis 

19. Requiem for a Dream

20. The Shipping News (This book by Annie Proulx makes the 1001 list but Brokeback Mountain doesn't.)

21. Sometimes a Great Notion 

22. The Black Dahlia (which isn't considered that good a movie, which may make one suspicious of the quality of the book)

23. The Graduate

24. The Big Sleep

25. Things Fall Apart

26-27. Dangerous Liaisions (and its sequel Valmont)

28. In Cold Blood

29. The 39 Steps

30. The Tin Drum

31. Breakfast at Tiffany's

32. There have been so many versions of, and riffs on, Tarzan. The 1918 silent movie is considered the most faithful to the book, and it only dramatizes the first half, while the second half was adapted into another silent film that is now lost--but whether the many media adaptations justify reading the book or not, may be a decision left after determining how much one enjoys spending time in the Tarzan universe.

33. Wings of the Dove

34. A Town Like Alice (adapted into a TV mini-series, and whether the series is available or not, and whether one enjoys the series or not, may determine whether one thinks reading the book is worthwhile)

35. Z (The people who made the selections for 1001 Books appear to have been especially fond of modern Greek literature, while ignoring the great classic Greek literature--this is one of at least three modern Greek novels on the 1001 list, but this one and Zorba the Greek are better remembered as classic movies.)

But I've Seen the Movie: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Part III

 You know how schoolkids sometimes try to get out of reading the book by seeing the movie? Well, here are the books listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die that, as far as I can tell, I haven't read the book--but I've seen the movie (or at least a TV or stage dramatization), sometimes multiple versions, and in many cases, that'll do:

1. Anna Karenina 

2. Before Night Falls 

3. Ben-Hur

4. Casino Royale (although the 60's movie is nothing like the book)

5. The Cider House Rules

6. A Clockwork Orange

7. Catch-22 (I tried to read the book, too, but gave up)

8. The Count of Monte Cristo

9. Crime and Punishment

10. Cry the Beloved Country

11. David Copperfield

12. Doctor Zhivago (and I didn't like it)

13. A Dry White Season

14. A Farewell to Arms

15. The French Lieutenant's Woman

16. For Whom the Bell Tolls

17. The Godfather

18. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

19. Ivanhoe

20. All Quiet on the Western Front

21. Kiss of the Spider Woman

22. Zorba the Greek

23. Life of Pi

24. The Little Prince 

25. Les Miserables

26. Oliver Twist

27. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

28. Out of Africa

29. A Passage to India

30. The Postman Always Rings Twice

31. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

32. The Razor's Edge

33. The Reader

34. Room with a View

35. Rebecca

36. Sense and Sensibility

37. The Talented Mr. Ripley

38. Tess (full title, Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

39. They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

40. The Time Machine

41. War and Peace

42. Women in Love

43. Tom Jones

44. To Kill a Mockingbird

45. The Maltese Falcon

46.  The Man With the Golden Arm

47. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

48. The English Patient

49. Look Homeward, Angel (TV production)

50. Lord of the Flies (1990 version)

51. Schindler's List (based on the book Schindler's Ark)

52. The Thin Man

53. 2001: A Space Odyssey

54. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass

I've read the book and seen the movie:

55. Around the World in Eighty Days 

56. Wuthering Heights

57.  Gone With the Wind

58.  Jane Eyre

Books I've Read: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Pt. II

While browsing the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, to see what I've read and haven't read, I found these were the ones selected which I've either read, or a parent or teacher has read to me:

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (short story collection) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

3. Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

5. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

6. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

7-8. The Bluest Eye and Beloved by Toni Morrison

9. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

10. Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

12. The Death of Ivan Illyich (usually considered short fiction) by Leo Tolstoy

13. Dracula by Bram Stoker

14. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

15. Fanny Hill

17-18. Giovanni's Room and Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

19. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

20-21. The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

22. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

23. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

24. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

25-26. Lord of the Rings (3 vols. counted as one) and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein

27. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

28. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

29. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

30. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

31. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

32. Native Son by Richard Wright

33. Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

34. Justine by the Marquis De Sade

35. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

36. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

37. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

38. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

39. A Modest Proposal (not a novel, a short satire) by Jonathan Swift

40. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

41. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

42. 1984 by George Orwell

43. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

44. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

45. The Pippi Longstocking stories (children's lit)

46. The Pit and The Pendulum (short fiction) by Edgar Allan Poe

47. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin

48. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

49-50. Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (short fiction) and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 

51. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

52. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

53. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I tried: As for a few other books the book recommends, I couldn't stand any part of The Color Purple and I can never get through more than a paragraph or two of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and I also gave up on Catch-22--although at least for it I can say, "I saw the movie."

Suggested Reading: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Pt. I

I checked out the book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die not because I have some idea that I must read certain books before I die, but simply out of curiousity about which great books--at least according to one bibliography--I've read and which I haven't. I did find a large number of great classic books that I may be wise to consider reading "someday." 

I'll be following up with other listicles based on my browsing though 1001 Books so you may expect to see several more parts to this blog series.  

Great Classics of World Literature (Victorian Era and before):

1. Thousand and One Nights

2. Candide by Voltaire

3. Don Quixote by Cervantes

4. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

5-6. Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

7.  The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

8. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

9. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal

10. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Modern Classics (Victorian Era and after):

 1-11. Animal Farm by George Orwell

2-12. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

3-13. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

4-14. Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

5-15. Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

6-16. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

7-8-9-17-18-19. Bleak House and Great Expectations and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens 

10-20. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

11-12-13-21-22-23. Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

14-24. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

15-25. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

16-26. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

17-27. and 18-28. Jude the Obscure and Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

19-29. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

20-30. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

21-31. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

22-32. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

23-33. and 24-34. The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner by George Elliot

25-35. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

26-36. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

27-37. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

28-38. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

29-39. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

30-40. Nana by Emile Zola

31-41. The Quiet American by Graham Greene

32-42. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

33-43. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre

34-44. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

35-45. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald 

36-46. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Thurston

37-47. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

38-48. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

39-49. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

40-50. The Long Good-bye by Raymond Chandler

41-51. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

42-52. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

43-53. King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard

44-54. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing 

Classic Erotica:

120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis De Sade

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Story of O

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

Problematic Possibilities (the "Definitely Maybe" of selections for reading):

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (or just watch the TV mini-series if it's available)

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (or, just watch the movie?)

Sister Carrie (instead of, or in addition to, An American Tragedy) by Theodore Dreiser

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (although the little bit of Hemingway I'm familiar with, I wasn't impressed with, and For Whom the Bell Tolls may be a more essential choice)

Hesse's Steppenwolf and Siddhartha (probably better to read, than to try and track down the movies)

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (may be too religious-oriented for general reading)

One Hundred Years of Solitude even though I wasn't that impressed w/ Love in the Time of Cholera

The Little Prince (usually considered children's lit) by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

13 Clocks by James Thurber (I'm not sure if it's a children's story, or a children's story for adults)

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (or just watch the TV mini-series if it's available)

I once tried reading Tristam Shandy but gave up, maybe I'll try again, or at least try and see the film version.

Emma by Jane Austin (1001 Books suggests this, which I haven't read--along with Pride and Prejudice which I've read--but perhaps I should read all of Austin's books, not stop with one or two)

Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass have been done as movies and plays (some family-friendly, some not so family-friendly, and one I even performed in), and as children's literary adaptations--some of which I've read, at least parts of, but of course we could read "the real thing" anyway.

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter never appealed to me and I was always glad that I never got it assigned in school, but maybe I ought to at least see what it is anyway.