I am a big fan of book list. Everytime I see a “100 must reads” headline, I pause to read all of the names on the list and write down books that I haven’t heard of. And since I’m starting this book blog, I might as well publish a list that has all the books I plan on reading (some day). Naturally I plan to read also books that are not on the list because reading the ultimate classics of all time will be quite a challenge.
I searched the Internet for a good list and found several lists that seemed to have the right mix of books. I don’t want to focus on a single culture alone (for example the 100 Best British books), but on the other hand I’d like to have a few Finnish classics on the list too. However, every nationality tends to evaluate their own works of literature higher than the others. The Norwegian Book Club‘s list seemed to me the most varied in terms of culture, but then again – I’m a sucker for texts written in their native language. BBC compiled a list in 2003 of books their listeners thought you needed to read – hence BBC The Big Reads list. The only problem with this list is that for some reason I can’t find anything new or surprising on the list – which doesn’t mean I’ve read all of them. The Finnish list (the page is in Finnish only!) features several books that have been mentioned in the earlier lists, but also an array of books I’ve never heard of which is definitely a plus.
So I was almost at the point of flipping a coin to decide which list to choose when I came upon this: http://fiktiivi.blogspot.fi/p/100-kirjaa_21.html. A wonderful person had experienced the same dilemma and combined the three lists! The joy! Only drawback might be that instead of 100 books, the list has 254 titles – but at least I have enough books to read to last a lifetime.
UPDATE: 20 titles added 22.01.2015
Dawn of books 