I’m in!
I read “1,000 Books to Read Before You Die” in 2025, and this is the review I wrote for Goodreads (it’s not a BB book so I didn’t publish it there).
1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List *****
By James Mustich
At almost 1,000 pages, this is a commitment to read, but it’s a book lover’s dream. All those books! So little time! Author James Mustich’s idea was simple to conceive and complex to execute: What if a bookstore could only hold 1,000 books? What books should be on those shelves? It took him 14 years of work, but this is his answer.
“I wanted to make ‘1,000 Books to Read Before You Die’ expansive in its tastes, encompassing revered classics and commercial favorites, flights of escapist entertainment and enlightening works of erudition,” he writes in the introduction. “There had to be room for novels of imaginative reach and histories with intellectual grasp. And since the project in its title invoked a lifetime, there had to be room for books for children and adolescents.”
And he succeeded. The 1,000 books are arranged in alphabetical order by the author’s last name—from Edward Abbey to Carl Zuckmayer. About half are fiction and half are nonfiction, including books for every age. The topics run the gamut from classics to crime, from science fiction to spirituality, from antiquity to autobiographies, from adventure to advice, from poetry to philosophy, from teen fiction to travel, from science to sports, from writing to war, from essays to the environment, from drama to diaries, from mysteries to mythology, from animals to anthropology, from politics to psychology, from history to house and garden, from fantasy to food and drink, from music to memoirs, from medicine to mathematics, from short stories to sociology, from horror to humor…well, you get the idea. And these are only a little more than half the subjects included. Oh yes, there many, many novels.
Each entry includes a short book review by Mustich that sometimes includes fascinating bits of publishing history or tidbits about the author. This is followed by facts about the book—year of publication, awards won, and “also by” list, tips for further reading, as well as related titles by other authors, which offer even more ideas for that ever-lengthening personal booklist.
In addition, some entries are enhanced with what Mustich calls “Booknotes,” a book review of a completely different title that complements the main entry. For example, “Confessions,” by Saint Augustine is accompanied with a Booknote about “The Long Loneliness,” an autobiography of Dorothy Day, whom some might view as a modern-day saint.
The oldest book featured is The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is at least 1,000 years older than The Iliad or the Hebrew Bible. The earliest surviving texts about a king who ruled the Mesopotamian city Uruk in the first half of the third millennium BCE are written in Sumerian and date from around 2100 BCE.
I found that this ambitious listing of 1,000 books to read before I die did several things for me:
1. I found books I never heard of that I definitely want to read.
2. I found books that I knew of but had not yet read and definitely want to read.
3. I found books that I have already read, making me realize I’m not a total bibliophile deadbeat.
4. I found books that I have already read and treasured from my past—sometimes as a child, sometimes as a teenager, and often as an adult.
And that prompted me to keep a list. Actually, it’s two lists. Books that I have already read (102), and books that I want to read (142). Oh, and there are quite a few on the list of books I have already read that I now want to read again.
The compilation of lists and an index at the end are not to be missed. A Miscellany of Special Lists organizes a selection of the 1,000 books into fun groups, such as books you can read in one sitting, 12 books to read before you’re 12, books that will make you laugh out loud, family read-alouds, war stories, and quite a few more. A General Index of Books and Authors is, of course, quite handy, but even better is the 1,000 Books Checklist alphabetized by author’s last name.
Anyone who reads this will no doubt be disappointed at beloved titles or authors who were excluded. For me that included John Boyne, Lauren Groff, and Maggie O’Farrell. But that’s the way it is!
While I read this book cover to cover—a few entries a day for more than half the year—this is also a perfect volume to stash in the bathroom.