a Literary Bucket List 📋 books I want to read before I die

good morning one day i'm going to die i'm going to perish and there are books i will never ever get to read but that's not the topic of today's video a very nice start to your morning i'm so sorry welcome back to my channel my name's emma we're not talking about doom and gloom we're talking about the books that we can get to before the doom and gloom sets in so today i wanted to take you through all of the books um mostly just physical books that i've picked off my shelf as you can see it's a mess behind me but don't look at the mess look at me the other mess like i said mostly books that i've picked off my shelf that i want to get to before i die but more than that i mean of course i want to read all the books i own before i die but like these ones specifically i want to put an emphasis on i want to make these a priority as well i want to do a couple other things with these books most of them are classics um so with that in mind i would like to devote kind of a whole reading vlog a reading experience to them sort of a cinema cinematographic oh my god cinematic um experience to them capture kind of my first reactions to these on camera most of these i've not no no what am i saying all of these i have not yet read that's the whole point of this video and as well i would like to do hopefully a whole review video on these if any of these books i'm about to mention you want to read yourself please let me know because i would be more than happy to host a read-along to announce when i'm picking these books up because a lot of these being classics being bigger books being books that are more often than not found on lists of books you should read before you die they are quite intimidating and so i would love friends to read these books with and i'm sure you would too and this community is just such the perfect little place to pick up books together and hopefully take off that literary bucket list of books these are also books that i could definitely see myself writing on whether that's essays at uni if they ever come up on a syllabus or something or books that i just want to be able to talk about books that i think are going to be important to me that i think i'm going to love and essentially are going to change my life like that's what i think these books are going to do whether that's in a very small way by maybe letting me know how this author is writing and i've never been witness to that kind of thing before or whether it's huge life-changing thematic ideas phenomena historical information that i will be bestowed um via these books and so that is what i want to talk about today so we have a huge stack like a huge huge stack um much bigger than this but i just can't lift them all my wee arms most of these like i said are big old books but yeah let's just get right into it i i kind of want to tell you just what i mean start with an example because war and peace was definitely one of the ones that was on this bucket list of books i wanted to read before i die and as you can see i did take it off it came with a huge annotation system and process and like it's just so wonderful i will have a whole video coming about how i annotate because this like system just let me pull out things that i wanted to talk about it let me sit down and write out notes and notes and notes and pages and pages of stuff i want to talk about with one piece because i would like to do a whole video perhaps on this coming soon and like i said i do have vlogs about war and peace which is kind of the goal and the mindset and the project and the plan that i want to do for all the rest of these books but this was the first one on my list and it is done it doesn't feel like it's done like i still feel like i'm reading war and peace i don't feel like it's over but it is it was phenomenal i gave it five stars and i think it's just the absolute perfect place to start get a little bit of confidence and like a boost to start this bucket list of books that i want to read because this was huge this was 1 317 pages long and i did it and now kind of nothing scares me nothing scares me all right let's get into the ones that i have not yet read um this list i was going to go chronologically but they're all honestly kind of a mess and i don't think i'm actually going to be picking them up in a chronological order except for this first one this one i'm going to start today which is why i wanted to sit down and film this video today because this is dante's inferno um i am so excited to pick this up i have heard so much about this book i feel like ever since i emerged on the planet as a human being and i have not yet read it i don't think i want to read the divine comedy all at once i want to start with the inferno this one is translated by robert pinsky and it is a gorgeous bilingual as well as illustrated uh copy that comes with a lot of really really cool features and such so i'm going to be picking this up tonight like i said i've been thinking of arranging kind of a read-along of dante's inferno so if you'd like to join in i will be taking this so so slowly i don't think there's any set schedule or anything like that if you have no idea what the inferno is about we are following the descent into the circles of hell um which just sounds like so much fun i think this book will just let me understand so many references that at this point when people make reference in other books that intertextuality that i am not privy to um will finally you know i will finally be able to get in on that a little bit and as well this is just so influential and it's dante it's dante so we're gonna read the inferno inferno yes we are yeah that's the first one all right so there are definitely a few um russian literature picks on this list for sure i love russian literature i'm just getting so into it targanya is someone who i didn't put on this although i did just read my first targanya which was incredible fathers and sons is really up there but this one i'm much more interested in at the minute and that is the master and margarita by mikhail bhulikov so i'm so so excited this was a lovely gift from my aunt this is the beautiful beautiful yes beautiful is a word 50th anniversary edition oh i'm so excited um i know a little bit about this book but it also just so intrigues me not the similarity necessarily between this and 100 years of solitude even though they did come out so close together this was published in 1966 but this is also magical realism i believe and i'm just so interested in i think russian magical realism as well i really do not want to know any more than i already know about this which is that we have a devil a talking cat and lots of weird crazy crazy things going on but i think this is going to be so so good this is the translation by richard previer and larissa velakonski so ah yes i don't know when i'm going to be picking this one up but i really do want to get to this book before i bite the dust another one i want to read for sure is the memory police by yokogawa i got this book last summer i just been hearing everyone talk about it and i'm really intrigued by the themes of memory that are in this book as well because we're on an unnamed island and things keep disappearing and people can't seem to remember what has gone missing or what even their life used to be like but this all changes when our protagonist starts to harbor a writer and he does remember things so i just think it's gonna be such um an interesting study yeah i really really wanted to get to this one hopefully soon because i would love to do a whole video on it as well i would also love to say a huge thank you to audible for sponsoring today's video if you've never heard of them i make this joke every time i must stop they're the leading provider of spoken word entertainment ranging from audiobooks to podcasts to health and fitness i listen to audiobooks almost every day so i just love working with audible so let me tell you a little bit about them if you want an audiobook companion to be with you by the pool side or maybe you're doing some summer cleaning maybe you're going for a very long hot road trip and you want a cool breeze of a book to cool you down so with audible you get one title each month that you can keep forever for as long as you want i still have so many books in my audio library that i'll be able to come back to again and again which is really nice audible's plus catalog has a lot of really really cool things for example those sleep tracks i was talking about those meditation tracks i was talking about so i did listen to one a few months ago that was um voltaire's micro magus and it was really great because i would like listen and get a really good dose of like fun well-written philosophy in there and then like five minutes later i would be passed out it's like the best of both worlds and as well of course audible members do get one free audiobook each month as well as full access to that plus catalog and actually right now even better for a limited time amazon prime members can get four months of audible at 53 off which works out to 6.95 a month which is pretty good the summer audiobook love of my life that i've been gushing about is heart of the fae by emma hamm i love when audiobook narrator's voices are so perfectly married to what they're narrating and with heart of the fae i just felt that and as well it was such a compelling wonderful encapsulated little story of coziness and bread and flowers i cannot stop talking about it so that is that one i would really really highly recommend i loved it if you would like to take advantage of this limited time offer you can go to audible.com emmy or you can text me to 500 500 so thank you so much audible and let's get back into some books that i want to read before i perish this next book i don't know why it intimidates me because it really shouldn't but i just think it's one of those ones that are so built up in the canon of english literature i tried listening to the audiobook of this i think in 2019 and i put it down because i just did not want to do it that way and i think this is also going to be a really hard book for me to read because animals do play a key role mammals more specifically whales so it is moby dick um this is a beautiful copy that i found at a thrift store for two bucks two whole bucks can you believe that it's just absolutely gorgeous so moby dick um released 1851 i have to read it i do have to read it although i'm honestly not looking forward to it but i think this book would definitely change my mind i've heard lots of people advocate for melville's writing in here saying it's actually really really gorgeous which i do hope um and this one does come with little funky illustrations too so as you can imagine this does follow a group of whalers and a great big old whale moby dick i don't know why i have this like premonition or fear like when i think of moby dick i'm just like that is dry that is boring even though i've never read moby dick like where am i getting these thoughts from i think probably from the general mindset of the public but um i think honestly i would like it and i'd like to dive deeper dive deeper get it because we're in the ocean a lot of the topics and themes that are discussed in here i think that's fascinating i love books that are set on the ocean and set about the ocean so i think honestly i would love this and i do just need to step into it give it a try and besides that it's literally like wafting and emanating gorgeous book scents into my nostrils at the minute so that is another incentive to pick this boy up another one i've been meaning to pick up for a while is the shadow of the wind and similarly to moby dick i did pick up the audiobook of this also in 2019 but i also put that down because so many of these i just want to read myself and with an audiobook i find it a little bit easier to lose grasp of the words especially when i want to kind of really intensely study these pull out information examine quotes and really do kind of a deep analysis of it as if i were taking it in a uni course or something and so i decided to pick this book up physically this is actually an old copy of lucy's from crescent pages um i bought it off of her so thank you so much for shipping it all the way over here but this is also a gorgeous gorgeous copy this one is set in 1945 in spain and a man brings his 10 year old son daniel to a library of forgotten titles hidden in the old city of barcelona and so this is actually about the shadow of the wind which is a book in the shadow of the wind which is the one that daniel pulls out and discovers by an old author named carax this is gonna be so good it's gonna be so good like the audiobook was actually really good so i'm excited to see how my own mind kind of interprets the words on the page too so that is the shadow of the wind 1984 by george orwell um so many people have screamed at me emma why have you not read this yet i don't know i don't know it just hasn't really called to me yet in my life i don't know when i'm gonna pick this one up but i also read animal farm i hated animal farm i really did please don't take that personally because it's not personal i just didn't like animal farm so i think 1984 is somewhere of a better place that i'm going to enjoy george orwell's writing especially now um and so many people have told me it's just incredible it was on it was one of the books on the list of people's favorite books when i asked a thousand people this one was quite high up so i am excited i do need to get my hands on a physical copy of it but um i do really want to see what this is all about because i remember in high school it being one of those books that everyone was talking about but i just never read it then so i will be reading it in the future virginia woolf is also an author that i've yet to read hardly anything from other than some of her essay and pieces of a room of one's own so i do have a couple virginia wolf books on my shelf but the one i would love to put on this list is to the lighthouse which is the one that i've kind of grown up hearing the most about and i've been so intrigued about it for years and years and years and i've just never read a proper virginia wolf novel so i'm really excited about this one i do need to get my hands on a copy and as soon as i do i would like to start i don't know if this is the best place to start with reading her but this is the one of hers i'm most intrigued about anyway so i plopped it on this list isabella allende's the house of the spirits is also another one i really really want to get to um this is once again more magical realism by a chilean author i've heard so much of this compared to 100 years of solitude and that it is a generational saga we follow different tragedies of three generations of the turiba family and yeah the women in the family have like a connection with the spirit world which just sounds so interesting and this copy is just absolutely gorgeous so really really really once you get to this soon i think it would be crazy to read it maybe at the same time as 100 years of solitude or i might like to do like a whole magical realism video and study in these so yeah all right another huge huge book that i really do want to read is the brothers caramels of by dostoyevsky yeah yep yep yep um this is definitely the dostoevsky that i'm most excited about i have read crime and punishment but that's all i've read crime and punishment it didn't really it really affected me but i wasn't like oh my gosh this is the best thing i've ever read whereas honestly like the quotes that i've heard pulled out from karamazov i'm just like wow wow in this one we are following a father and his three sons who i believe all have different kind of um affinities for different things like passion religious fervor and stuff like that so i am excited i'm also a little bit scared um people seem to like either revere dostoevsky as a god of some sorts or like hate him and put him on the bottom of every single list so i think that's really interesting as well and especially because we are doing the dickens versus toll story book club right now and so many people always scream oh it should be you know dostoevsky i think he needs his own i think he needs his own book club and so i'm really really interested to read a lot of these um and i know a lot of you guys are as well to read dostoevsky's work so hopefully maybe carolyn and i i haven't even talked to her about this might be able to arrange something in the future so that is that one tony morrison is an author that i've been meaning to pick up literally all of her works especially since i read beloved which was one of my favorite books of last year just incredible absolutely blew it out of the water and so i have a few that i want to pick up i think the one i'm most looking forward to and the one that i would put on this list is the bluest eye this is a book i know next to nothing about also a book that i heard a lot of talk about in high school when people were picking what books to write their essays on and i'm just honestly expecting greatness i don't have any reservations for any tony morrison book after the way she just absolutely dazzled me in beloved it was incredible um that's also a book beloved honestly that i would love to do a whole other reread vlog of because i just yeah absolutely need to do a reread of it because there's so much in beloved as well so i'm expecting also great things from the bluest eye so yeah porjez is an author that i've been meaning to pick up for so long this is one of the first books that i bought when the pandemic hits and i still haven't read it because i don't think i'm ready for it like i just want to wait a little bit more before i read borja's because there's a lot i know he's a lot and i'm so excited to get into this this is just um collected fictions or fizziones and this is translated by andrew hurley so this has tons of his shorter fictions as the title suggests um as well as some really really iconic works of his too what i've heard about what he writes about like it just sounds like everything i'm so deeply interested in and love when these themes and topics are brought up for example we have dreams duels labyrinths mirrors infinite libraries the manipulations of chants knife fighters tigers and the elusive nature of identity itself yes i honestly have no idea where to start with this collection as well which is something that i would need to kind of figure out but i am so like borges is one of the authors that i just know like i know he's gonna be a favorite so that is that one next up we have the book of disquiet by fernando possoa this one is translated i believe by margaret jolcosta i guess um yeah this one i'm absolutely intrigued i'm excited for it i am so looking forward to it i have two beautiful editions of this book and so um i think this is one kind of like boar has that i would like to read over a very long period of time and maybe do like a whole video journey with it where maybe i just take it really slowly over a course of maybe even a couple of months because the book of disquiet is essentially kind of journal entries it is speculation just a bunch of thoughts plunked down this was pieced together painstakingly by pages and pages of manuscripts that they found in a box i don't know if i'm prepared at the minute to have everything that the book of just quiet is about because i think one of you guys commented and said be prepared for it because it's like watching dead flowers which is such a beautiful description like it's beautiful but there's also despair and hopelessness in here so but it's also a mosaic of dreams and hymn to the streets and cafes of 1930s lisbon so yes um this one definitely has to be on this list i might start this soon and then like i said take it over a very slow period of time and just let it sink in like a dream all right now we're gonna move to some fantasy i think these have all been pretty much classics but there are a lot of other genres um that i want to try out there's some really significant science fiction pieces i want to read before i die fantasy as well this first one this first one i don't know if it's gonna ever happen and not because of my own death but because of the authors it's a game of thrones it's a song of ice and fire george r.r martin where are you so yes i have read a game of thrones all the way up until a feast for crows i kind of i'm refusing at the minute to read the last one until i know there will be another book out just because i'm not ready to pick it up anytime soon and then wait another millennia for the next book to come out so um i do really want to read this i don't know if i read it now if it would live up to what i felt when i first read it because a game of thrones actually helped me out a lot i picked a game of thrones up in my last year of high school and at that point i was in a really low place i was barely reading anything i was so miserable i was it was one of the most miserable periods of my life i was planning to shut myself away from books and literature and go into biology and a game of thrones was kind of one of those books that i just picked up on a whim and then for months i basically just binge read them all and for a while it just provided me so much escape it reminded me why i love stories like i was literally reading nothing but then i just picked up a game of thrones and i was like wow and it kind of just brought me back a little bit into what i loved so much and i just got so invested so attached i was so impressed and for a while i just really sunk into the world of a song of ice and fire um and so it does mean quite a lot to me but i do want to do a whole reread of the series hence why it is on this list i think that would be so interesting it's been so long now since i've read them that is also a very big journey but i would like to get back into them and especially finish it finish the series if that is at all possible in my lifetime so that is that one also in the realms of fantasy another one that i've just been hearing so much about is the poppy war which i really really want to get to i haven't read any um books in the series yet but the way that people keep talking about it it makes me so interested to um get into these and i know works a lot of actual history into the fantasy as well which i'm really interested in so this one's definitely kind of higher up on this list of books i want to read before i die because i'd like to get to this soon so that is another one for fantasy another generational saga is pachinko by min jin lee which i really really want to read so many people have recommended this to me which is where i first heard of it and then when i found out we're following a bunch of people as they move back and forth from korea and do different things in their lives and meet with different tragedies and stuff i was really interested in it also i've heard the writing is just wonderful mind bending and all of that good stuff so this one is definitely on this list as well although i don't know too much about it but that is kind of how i like going into bigger um generational saga books about family and stuff like that as well uh love and the time of cholera i always want to say corona oh my gosh to be fair 100 years of solitude is also on this list because i want to reread that do a deep dive do a little video essay on it like i've been really having fun doing with certain books that i've been picking up so love in the time of cholera this is the gorgeous illustrated edition actually just so stunning um this is translated by louisa rivera and again this is a book i don't really know much about except for the title and with 100 years of solitude that was also kind of the only impression of the work that i had and so that's kind of the way i want to maintain it as well for this one but um marquez 100 years old is like the best book i've ever read so i really do have high hopes for this one although i've heard people really don't seem to like this book so i'm intrigued this next book is definitely not the first book by this author that i'm going to start with in the series that i plan on doing on him because it is murakami and i just picked the biggest and most intimidating book because um it's just giving me a little bit of drive and inspiration but what i plan on doing with murakami is reading all of his works in chronological order and i would love to do a whole video series on that because he is one of my favorite authors um this big boy this big old book is 1q84 which is definitely not the first one that i have to pick up yes so there will be a murakami series coming to you soon whenever i feel like i want to pick up his first novel and then go in chronological order which i am really really excited about because i really do love murakami so um this book is huge and i cannot wait to get to it in the list of publications so it also says on the back that it is a dystopia to rival george orwell's 1984. so it is called one qa4 as well so i did just realize that so that's really interesting but that's more call me all right backing it up all the way to ancient times i have the aeneid by virgil this one's translated by robert fitzgerald i don't know if this is the best edition ever in the world but i cannot believe i've not read the and the during all my time studying classical studies so this is one i really do want to get to as well i honestly don't plan on picking this up anytime soon because i have a lot of other ancient works that i want to get to first but this is definitely on this list another one on here is don quijote by cervantes i really do want to get to this one once again kind of for the same reasons as the inferno because it is the groundwork for a lot of things and um i mean we have the whole word quixotic from don quixote so i do really want to get to this i think it would be so fun i've also heard it's really funny and charming and brilliant so this is another one that i want to get to more for like english literature purposes studying purposes it's the lord of the rings um i do really want to read this whole series again as you can imagine i have read the hobbits and i have read the fellowship but for some reason i just stopped there and didn't keep going um but i do really want to read the whole thing again i think i know i'm gonna love it i love this world there's some of my favorite movies of course i'm gonna love this whole series but i just haven't got all the way there yet but we will um and i know lucy will be so happy um when i do i would actually love to read this with her because that would be just the most sublime experience i think but i think what i would do is again with a game of thrones start at the hobbit and then go from there and probably work in a lot of tolkien's other works in there as well so that is this guy things fall apart might be the book probably after the inferno that i would like to pick up next from this whole list this one is quite a recent addition to my shelves and it's also a nice short one compared to a lot of these chunky ones so i would really really like to pick this up this is about a warrior named okonkwo and he is banished from his village when i believe he accidentally kills someone yes it's an accident he kills a klansman and he is exiled and things begin to fall apart so eventually when he gets back he returns to find missionaries and colonial governors that have arrived in the village and his world is thrown radically off balance he can only hurtle towards tragedy so this was published in 1958 and i've just heard is amazing amazing amazing amazing and like i said i think i'm gonna be picking this one up soon so um if you are interested in reading any of these or reading any of these along with me i would love to do that with you so um let me know in the comments which ones um you're most excited to read and then maybe i can also prioritize my own list based on yours and finally i do feel like i do want to read all of shakespeare's works before i die macbeth is the one i'm most excited about also the one that i'm most surprised that i have not yet read um since i have read most of the shakespeare that i own but of the ones that i have that i have not yet read we have macbeth the merchant of venice king richard viii and no that's it i've read the rest so macbeth is the one i do really really want to read i think this could be my favorite potentially shakespeare so that is that one that is the last book on this list although we all know there's tons more books i want to read before i die but that's just kind of what i had to show you and what has been in my mind of books that i really want to pick up soon that i've been thinking about in the last few weeks so um if you have your own list of books um you want to read before you kick the bucket maybe comment them down below or if there's any books on this list you think that i should really get to before the worms eat my corpse then also comment those so i hope this was morbid i hope this was fun i hope you found some book suggestions and like i said if you do want to read any of these along with me also comment maybe your top two in the comments so that i know kind of what your priorities are and maybe when you guys would like to read them as well all right so until next time thank you so much for watching thank you so much audible for sponsoring today's video and i will see you very soon in my next video hopefully with some updates on the inferno which i think is the first one i'm going to try to take off this list before the universe takes me off of it until we meet again on the internet i hope you have a really good day and that's about it for me so ciao [Music]

Channel: * e m m i e *

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Id: ULHMo4GOVjY

Length: 27min 55sec (1675 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 20 2021