30 Before 30: Book Edition

 I turned twenty-nine two days ago, and I've seen a lot of people make "30 before 30" bucket lists. I started making one only to realise it was mostly books I am really eager to read, so I decided to turn mine into a mini book bucket list. 

I can read about 30-50 books in a year, so I should be able to get through this list with room for mood-read picks in between. It is a mix of "bucket list" classics (the ones you find on those everyone should read once in their lifetime lists), nostalgia picks and some contemporary choices by authors I've previously read and enjoyed. 

If you want to follow my progress, I'll be ticking them off as I go on my listography!

War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace is the ultimate bucket list book for me. But it's so long I feel like I'll never actually sit down to read it unless I put it on a list like this! On a good month, I read around this number of pages anyway, so I'm trying to remember that it's not as long and scary as it seems. I will probably start it soon and take it as a slow read. I already have Anna Karenina, but it feels like a winter read to me so I'm saving it for a couple of month's time!

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I recently read East of Eden, and I read Of Mice and Men in secondary school. I enjoyed Steinbeck's writing, and found that people seem to disagree on whether East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath is his best work, so I thought I would read the latter whilst the former is still fresh in my mind. 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I recently read Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson and immediately fell in love with her writing. These two choices seem to be her most widely recognised books so I wanted to read these first, and then move onto some of her short stories and other novels. 

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

I rarely feel the need to read new releases when they're brand new. As an e-book reader, new releases are too expensive for something I don't technically even own (it's £12.99 for the eBook edition at the time of writing) so I generally wait until the price has come down. I'm good enough at avoiding spoilers that it's never really a problem to wait, but I loved Babel and Yellowface so much that I will likely read this one a lot sooner than I normally would! I love an academic novel and the reviews I've seen so far only make me want to read it more. 

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt is Booktok's favourite author, and she's also one of mine. I loved The Secret History and The Little Friend , and I bought a copy of The Goldfinch a while ago. Part of the motivation to make this list was to cross off some of the books that I already have, but haven't gotten around to yet. I just keep pushing this one back for authors that are new to me. 

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

I love Romeo and Juliet. My favourite film is the 1996 Baz Luhrmann adaptation, I use my R&J tote bag every day (which has my favourite quote from the play on the back), and my favourite piece of classical music is Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. But I haven't read through the play since I was in secondary school! I plan to read it through and then watch a recording of the play being performed. Unfortunately, none of my local theatres ever seem to do Shakespeare.

Revelations by Mary Sharratt

I started reading this a few months ago but then got distracted by other books. This is a fictionalised account of the life of Margery Kempe, a Christian mystic living in Norfolk in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. She is a fascinating historical figure to me, and I really want to finish this book soon! 

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs

This is one of the nostalgia picks. This is the first book in the Temperance Brennan series, which later became the TV show Bones. I read this book when I was a teenager because I was obsessed (and still am) with the show, but I never read any more of the series. I want to re-read the first book and then maybe continue with the rest! There are over 20 books in the series so this could keep me going for quite a while.

Short Stories in French for Beginners by Olly Richards and Richard Simcott

Rouge by Mona Awad

Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca was my first du Maurier novel, and I fell in love with her writing almost immediately. I knew I wanted to read more of her works, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I wasn't sure which du Maurier to go with for this list, but I figured that I planned to read the others eventually anyway so I picked the one that was available for free via Kobo Plus. 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I'm British, so I didn't get to read a lot of American literature in school (except for Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men). I realised this year that I really enjoy the American literature that I read, so I made a reading list to start working through. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those classics that everyone seems to have read - except for me. From my understanding of the plot, I think it's probably an important one to read in the current climate. 

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

On Writing by Stephen King

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh 

Have you read any of the books on this list? Let me know in the comments what your thoughts are! And I'd love to hear what books you'd put on your own book bucket list

- Rowan x