1001 Books to Read Before You Die List

Cosmos Books Read 2020

RevisedBooks Read 2020

Books read 2019books read during 2018

books read

Cosmos’s Reading List 2021

Goals:  100 Books

Read Classics

One Thriller Per Month

One history/politics book per month

Read A Lot More Poetry

Read At Least One Book A Year in Spanish

Read At Least One Book A Year in Korean

I will year try to finish reading classic books.  I have a collection from Kindle of 50 books to read before you die, in three volumes – 15O books in total see list below.  I have read many of them already which I have noted.  As I read them, I will add them to the chronological listing below. I also have the Harvard 50 volume Classics books collection, I will read from both sets, and from the 1001 books to read before you die list.

Accomplishments:

Loving Words Anthology – published Chains that Bind Me and Dream Girl, Ink Pantry, Two Drops of Ink, Spill Words, and Creativity Webzine have published recent poems.

Cosmos’s Reading List 2021 

The List

Best American Poetry 2018

Allison Adair Miscarriage

Kaveh Akbar Against Dying

Julia Alvarez American Dream

David Barber Sherpa Song

AR Amnov Finishing Up

Andrew Bertaina A Translator’s Note

Frank Bidart Mourning What We Thought We Were

Bruce Bond Anthem

George Bradley Those Were the Days

Joyce Clement Birds Punctuate the Days

Brennan Constantine The Opposite Games

Marianne Cobbett Prayer Concerning the New More Accurate Translation of Certain Prayers

Robert Cording Toast to My Dead Parents

Cynthia Cruz Artaud

Dick Davis A Personal Sonnet

Warren Decker Today’s Special

Susan De Sola the Wives of The Poets

Dante De Stefano Reading Dostoyevsky At 17

Nausheen Eusuf Pied Beauty

Jonathan Galasso Oriental Epithalamion

Jessica Goodfellow Test

Sonia Greenfield Ghost Ship

Joy Harjo An American Sunrise

Terrance Hayes American Sonnet from My Past and Future Assassins

Ernest Hilbert Mars Ultor

Nemo Hill the View from The Bar

Tony Hoagland Into the Mystery

Anna Maria Hong Yonder a Rental

Paul Hoover, I Am the Size of What I see

Maria Howe Walking Home

Mandy Kahn Ives

Ilya Kaminski, We Lived Happily During the War

Stephan Kampa The Quiet Boy

Denika Kelly Love Poem Chimera

Mary Jo Salter We Will Always Have Parents

Jason Schneiderman Voxel

Nicole Sealy Violence

Michael Schumacher Advent

Carmen Gimenez Smith Dispatch from Midlife

Tracy K. Smith an Old Story

Gary Snyder Why California Will Never Be Like Tuscany

An E Stallings Pencil

Anne Stevenson How Poems Arrive

Adriene Su Substitutions

Natasha Trethewey Shooting Wild

Agnieszka Tworek Grief Runs Untamed

Waldrep Dear Office in Which I Must Account for Tears

Wang Ping Lao Jia

James Matthew Wilson On A Palm

Ryan Wilson Face It

 

Best American Poetry 2017

Christian Wiman Assembly

Dan Allerbotti Weapons Exchange Report

David Barber on A Shaker Admonition

Dan Beachy-Quick Apophatic

Bruce Bond Homage to a Painter of Small Things

John Brennan Intrigue in The Trees

John Ashbery Commotion of Birds

Jericho Brown Bullet Points

Nicole Brown The Dead

Cyrus Cassells Elegy with A Gold Cradle

Isaac Cates Fidelity and The Dead Singer

Allison Cobb, I Forgive You

Leonard Cohen Steer Your Way

Michael Collier A Wild Tom Turkey

Billy Collins Presence

Carl Dennis Two Lives

Katia Claudia Emerson Spontaneous Emission

David Feinstein Kaddish

Carolyn Fouche The Boatman

Viva Francis Given to Those proclivities By God

Amy Gerstler Dead Butterfly

Reginald Gibbons Canasta

Margaret Given Passage

Aracelis Girmay From the Black Maria

Jeffrey Harrison Higher Education

Terrace Hayes Ars Poetica With Bacon

RJ Herbert Mounting the Dove Box

Tony Hoagland Cause of Death Fox News

John Hogan Hamlet Texts Guildenstern About Paying Upon the Pipe

David Brendan Hopes Certain Things

Major Jackson Trends A Well Light Summer Cocktail

John James History

Rodney Jones Homecoming

Fatty Judah Progress Notes

Meg Kearney Crackle

John Koethe the Age of Anxiety

Yusef Komunyakaa from the last bohemian of Avenue A

Danusha Lammers The Watch

Jordan Laux Lapse

Phillip Le Van Rain in Winter

Amit Majumdar Kill List

Jamal May Things That Break

Judson Mitchem White

John Murillo Upon reading that Eric Dolphy transcribed Even the calls of certain species of birds

Joyce Carol Oates To Marlon Brando In Hell

Sharon Olds Ode to The Glands

Matthew Bozeman Letter Beginning with Two Lines by Czeslaw Milosz

Gregory Orr Three Dark Proverb Sonnets

Carl Phillips Rockabye

Rowan Picado Phillips Halo

Robin Robert Pinksy Names

Stanley Plumly Poliomyelitis

Paisley Rekdal Assemblage of ruined Plane Parts Vietnam Military Museum

Michael Ryan the Mercy Home

David St John Emanations

Cheryl Santos, I Went for A Walk in Winter

Taiji Silverman Where to Put It

Charles Simic Seeing Things

Danny Smith Last Summer of Innocence

Maggie Smith Good Bones

RT Smith Maricon

RE Stallings Shattered

Pamela Sutton Afraid to Pray

Chase Twitchell Sad Song

James Valvis Something

Emily Van Kley Dear Skull

Wendy Videlock Deconstruction

Lucy Waigner Scheherazade

Crystal Williams Double Helix

Christian Wiman Prelude

Monica Yoan Green acre

C Dale Young Precatico Simplex

Dean Young Infinitives

Kevin Young Money Road

Matthew Zapruder Poem for Vows

 

Best American Poetry 2019

 

Dilruba Ahmed Phase One

Rosa Alclad You and The Raw Bullets

Margaret Atwood Updates on Werewolves

Catherine Barnett Center Park

Joshua Bennett America Will Be

Fleda Brown Afternoons on The Lake

Sumitra Chakraborty Essay on Joy

Victoria Chung Six Orbits

Glen Chan, I Invite My Parents to A Dinner Party

Leonard Cohen, I Drank A Lot

Laura Cronk Like A Cat

Kate Daniels Metaphor Less

Carol Dennis Armed Neighbor

Tori Derricotte Apology to The Reader

Thomas Devaney Brilliant Corners

Natalie Diaz Skin- Light

Jean Dominique Duryer Declined in The Adoration of Jack in The Pulpits

Martin Espada, I Now Pronounce You Dead

Nausheen Eusurf The Analytic Hour

Vievere Francis Cazonian Blue Than Bluer

Gabriela García Guantanamera

Amy Gerstler Update

Camila Guthrie Virgil

Yona Harvey Dark and Lonely After Takeoff A Future

Robert Hass Dancing

Terrance Hayes American Silent My Past and Future Assassin

Juan Felipe Herrera Roll Under the Waves

Edward Hirsch Stranger by Night

Jane Hershfield Ledger

James Hock Sunflowers

Bob Homan All Praise Cecil Taylor

Garrett Hongo The Brothers Cassia

Ishion Hutchison Sympathy of a Clear Day

Major Jackson In Memory of Derek Alton Walcott

Ilya Kaminski from testament

Ruth Ellen Kocher We May No Longer Considered the End

Deborah Landau Soft Targets

Quraysh Ali Lansana Higher Calling

Li-Young Lee the Undressing

David Lehman, It Could Happen to You

Ada Limon Cannibal Women

Rebecca Lynn Berry A Brief History of The Future Apocalypse

Nubile Lovelace The S in I Love You Porgy

Clarence Major Hair

Gail Mazur At A Lands End

Shane McRae The President Visits the Storm

Jeffrey Mcdonald Fired from A Parallel World

Campbell McGrath, Gray Miles Davis Birth of The Cool at The Founding in Brasilia

Ange Milinko Sleepwalking in Venice

Kamela Aisha Moon

The Last of England

Paul Moulton Aubade

John Murio on Confessionalism

Naomi Shihab Nye My Own State Department

Sharon Olds Rasputin Aria

Michael Palmer Nord-Sur

Morgan Parker The Black Saint, And the Sinner Lady, The Dead, and The Truth

William Perdomo Head Crack Head Crack

Carl Philip Star Map with Action Figures

Ishmael Reed Just Rolling Along

Paisley Rekdal Four Marys

Sonia Sanchez Belly, Buttons and Straight Spines

Nicole Santalucia #Me Too

Philip Schultz Encore

Jane Shore Who Knows One

The Greatest Personal Privation

Ae Stallings Harms Way

Arthur Sze The White Orchard

Natasha Trethewey Through Her A Duty

Ocean Voong Partly True Phone Reflecting in A Mirror

David Wojahn Still Life Stevens Wallet and Key West Hotel Dresser

Kevin Young High

 

Frederick Forsythe Icon

George Elliot  The Mill on the Floss (1860),

 

 

To Read

 

Elliot Novels

Adam Bede (1859) read,

The Lifted Veil   read

The Mill on the Floss (1860), read

Silas Mariner (1861),

Romola (1862–63),

Felix Holt, the Radical (1866),

Middlemarch (1871–72)

and Daniel Deronda (1876).

Harvard Classics

Poets Companion Finish

Art and Craft of Poetry Finish

Whitman Leaves of Grass

Dickenson Collected Poems

Robert Service Poems (From Alaskan Gold Rush Period)

Milton Collected Poems

Mira Nair Beyond and Back Indian short stories

Robert Buswell The Zen Monastic Tradition

  50 Books to Read Before You Die – three volumes 150 books total. I have read the following

Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy

Jane Austen Emma

Jane Austen Persuasion

Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre

Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights

Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote

Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders

Charles Dickens Bleak House

Charles Dickens Great Expectations

Charles Dickens The Pickwick Papers –

Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol

Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Gambler –

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Notes from The Underground –

Marcus Aurelius Meditations –

1. Frank Baum the Wonderful Wizard of Oz –

Dale Carnegie the Art of Public Speaking –

Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe

Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle The Sign of Four

Arthur Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskervilles

Arthur Conan Doyle The Lost World –

Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers

-F. Scott Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise

Henry Rider Haggard King Solomon’s Mines

Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Jack London the Son of the Wolf

HP Lovecraft The Dun ich Horror

HP Lovecraft At the Mountains of Madness

Plato The Republic –

Mary Shelley The Last Man –

The Complete List, Volume One

Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy

Jane Austen Emma

Jane Austen Persuasion

Honoré de Balzac Father Gorgio

Anne Brontë The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre

Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights

Samuel Butler the Way of All Flesh

Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote

Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad Nostromo

Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders

Charles Dickens Bleak House

Charles Dickens Great Expectations

Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Idiot

Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo

George Eliot Middlemarch

George Eliot Daniel Deronda

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper

Nikolai Gogol Dead Souls

The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales

Homer the Odyssey

Homer the Iliad

Victor Hugo Les Misérables

Washington Irving The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Henry James the Portrait of a Lady

James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

D. H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers

Gaston Leroux The Phantom of the Opera

Jack London The Call of The Wild

Herman Melville The Great God Pan Moby Dick

Marcel Proust Swann’s Way

Mary Shelley Frankenstein

Stendhal The Red and the Black

Robert Louis Stevenson Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Bram Stoker Dracula

Sun Tzu the Art of War

Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Leo Tolstoy War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray

Grant Allen What’s Bred in the Bone –

Lucius Apuleius The Golden Ass –

Marcus Aurelius Meditations –

Jane Austen Lady Susan

Jane Austen Northanger Abbey

Frank Baum, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz –

Dale Carnegie the Art of Public Speaking –

Margaret Cavendish The Blazing World –

G. K. Chesterton The Innocence of Father Brown –

G. K. Chesterton Heretics –

G. K. Chesterton -The Dennington Affair

G. K. Chesterton The Wisdom of Father Brown –

John Cleland Fanny Hill –

Wilkie Collins The Moonstone –

Joseph Conrad Lord Jim –

Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe

The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Gambler –

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Notes from The Underground –

Arthur Conan Doyle The Sign of Four

Arthur Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskerville ,

Arthur Conan Doyle the Lost World

Alexandre Dumas the Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas, the Man in the Iron Mask

-F. Scott Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise

Elizabeth Gaskell Curious, if True, Strange Tales

Henry Rider Haggard King Solomon’s Mines

Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book

Rudyard Kipling Captains Courageous

Rudyard Kipling -Kim –

D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Jack London The Son of the Wolf

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz The Einstein Theory of Relativity

HP Lovecraft The Dun ich Horror

HP Lovecraft At the Mountains of Madness

Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince –

Lucy Maud Montgomery The Story Girl

The Antichrist – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Plato The Republic –

Mary Shelley The Last Man –

Mark Twain Life on The Mississippi –

Vats Ayana The Kama Sutra

Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days

Volume two

Grant Allen What’s Bred in the Bone –

Lucius Apuleius The Golden Ass –

Marcus Aurelius Meditations –

Jane Austen Lady Susan

Jane Austen Northanger Abbey

Frank Baum the Wonderful Wizard of Oz –

Dale Carnegie the Art of Public Speaking –

Margaret Cavendish The Blazing World –

The Innocence of Father Brown – G.K Chesterton

G.K Chesterton Heretics –

G.K Chesterton -The Dennington Affair

G.K Chesterton The Wisdom of Father Brown –

John Cleland Fanny Hill –

Wilkie Collins The Moonstone –

Joseph Conrad Lord Jim –

Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe

The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Gambler –

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Notes from The Underground –

Arthur Conan Doyle The Sign of Four

Arthur Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskervilles

Arthur Conan Doyle The Lost World –

Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas The Man in the Iron Mask

-F. Scott Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise

Elizabeth Gaskell Curious, If True: Strange Tales

Henry Rider Haggard King Solomon’s Mines

Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book

Rudyard Kipling Captains Courageous

Rudyard Kipling -Kim –

D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Jack London the Son of the Wolf

Hendrik Anton Lorentz The Einstein Theory of Relativity

HP Lovecraft The Dun ich Horror

HP Lovecraft At the Mountains of Madness

Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince –

Lucy Maud Montgomery The Story Girl

The Antichrist – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Plato The Republic –

Mary Shelley The Last Man –

Mark Twain Life on The Mississippi –

Vats Ayana The Kama Sutra

Around the World in Eighty Days

Jules Verne In the Year 2889 –

Edgar Wallace Four Just Men –

Lew Wallace Ben-Hurl: A Tale of the Christ

H.G. Wells Tales of Space and Time –

Virginia Woolf Jacob’s Room –

Volume Three

Louisa May Alcott Little Women

Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility

M. Barrie Peter Pan

M. Bower Cabin Fever

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett, a Little Princess

Lewis Carroll Alice In Wonderland

Lucy Maud Montgomery Anne of Green Gables

Vatsyayana The Kama Sutra

Jules Verne A Journey into the Center of the Earth

Jules Verne The Mysterious Island

Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

H, G. Wells the War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells The Time Machine 

Oscar Wilde The Centerville Ghost

Virginia Woolf The Voyage Out

William Chambers the King in Yellow

William Chesterton the Man Who Knew Too Much

Wilkie Collins The Woman in White

HG Wells the Star

Dorothy Leigh Sayers Whose Body?

Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe

Margaret Deland the Iron Woman

Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens David Copperfield

Fyodor Dostoevsky The Double

Arthur Conon Doyle the Hounds of the Baskerville

Arthur Conan Doyle Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Alexandre Dumas the Three Musketeers

F Scott Fitzgerald The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

EM Foster a Room with a View

Sigmund Freud Dream Psychology

Thomas Hardy Tess

Hermann Hesse Siddhartha

James Joyce Dubliners

Edgar Allan Poe The Fall of the House of Usher

Andrew Lang the Arabian Nights

Jack London The Sea Wolf

HP Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu

Lucy Maud Montgomery Anne of Green Gables

William Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil

Edgar Allan Poe the Murders in the Rue Morgue

Edgar Allan Poe the Black Cat

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Michael Proust Swan’s Way

Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island

William Strunk the Elements of Style

Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain The Prince and the Pauper

Poetry for Dummies

Abdul Ala Armada Rafi I poem

Ali Ahmad Saeed poem

Alton David translation of a man and a woman white

Mary Bernard, translation of Sofia he is more than a hero

Ingeborg Bachman poem

Willis Barnstone translation of mother’s song if snow

Charles Bernstein writing exercises

Elizabeth Bishop one art Britain

Andre Carter Stephen D translation lady is shichimi if someone would come

William Barnstone she is at island me turn off

Maxine Chernoff writing exercises

Chilam Balam poem

Chiyo various lines

William Corbett Vermont Apollinaire

Robert Creeley the business

EE Cummings In Jest

David Wagner lines and since a call since Elam since summer

Emily Dickinson lines and poems 214

Emily Dickinson poem 262

Emily Dickinson poem 640

Emily Dickinson poem 986

Emily Dickinson poem 1732

TS Eliot excerpt from the wasteland

Enheduanna The Exaltation of Inanna, antiphonal Hymns Praise of Inanna

Elaine Feinstein excerpt from translation Marina Tsvetayeva poems of the end Lawrence Ferlinghetti excerpt from constantly risking absurdity Coney Island of the mind

Donald Finkel excerpt from a translation of Bel Dao

Roberts Elizabeth silent poems

Frances Kathleen vanishing point third black quartet from Wayne

Robert Frost Nothing Gold can stay

Robert Clark translation departure by Pierre Reverdy

Jorie Graham In what matter is the body united with the soul

Barbara Guest Lines from red lilies

HD Dread

HD Sea Rose

Allen Hibbert translation of Adonis desire moving through the Maps of the material

Ronald Hoffman excerpt from deceptively like a solid

Kelly Holt writing exercises

Homer Odyssey

Homer Iliad

Fanny Howe About Face

Linda Jarkesy the bed

Randall Jarred the death of the Bell turret gunner

John Keats absents from the eyes of Saint Agnes

Daniel Langston writing exercise

Lao TZU Rule a Large Nation

DH Lawrence Bavarian Gentians

LiPo Moonlight Pools

Liu Tsung-yuan From One thousand mountains

Audre Lorde lines from coal

Hugh MacDiarmid Another epitaph on the army of mercenaries

Jackson Mac Lou excerpt from antic quartans

Bernadette Mayer writing exercises

WS Merwin excerpts from leviathan

Pablo Neruda leaning into afterworlds

Pablo Neruda and walking around

John Milton excerpts from Allegro

John Milton excerpts from paradise lost

Mariana Moore experts from the monkeys

Laura Moriarty the mouth

Bridge Mullins writing exercises

Ellen Miles honey bear

Lorraine Niedecker now in one year

Charles North excerpt from shooting for line

George Oppen excerpt from psalm

Dorothy Parker resume

Bob Pearlman speaker vibrates through the entire house after from AK

Ezra Pound in a station in the Metro

David Ray translation lines from Chiyo

Kenneth Rexroth translation of Midnight songs

Christopher Sawyer Lucano translation Flight of the Itza

Dominion Searls translation of a kind of loss

Jack Spicer lines for imaginary elegies part 1-111

John Tipán translated Abu Hamza Al online from this world

Dante in the middle of the road ,

anonymous Egyptian poem only one matchless sister

Issa Morning

Beowulf soon saw

Homer then wide ruling Agamemnon

Homer infinite terror

Homer wars spears

Imr el Quais here was the place I watched her

Arthur Rimbaud Bateau Ivre if I desire

Arthur Rimbaud memory

Arthur Rimbaud longing for young arms

Rig Veda there was no such things

Sappho the moon has set

Charles Thomasson lines from Mr. Birdy

David Trinidad monster mash

Anne Waldman excerpt for Lovis 19

William Carlos Williams except for the descent

William Butler Yeats the second coming

Louis Zukofsky in Arizona from 729 songs

The End