You can never read enough books. All the book lovers know that one lifetime is not enough to read all of them. Still, it is fun to make a TBR list to know what books you want to read more than others. The to-be-read shelf rarely becomes empty as some books can lie there for years without being crossed off from the list but here’s to trying. A few months of 2023 have passed already but I believe it’s never too late to make a TBR list. So here’s my list that includes some of the best-known books of all time that I cannot wait to read in 2023.
- The picture of Dorian Gray– “The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.”
I chose this one because I wanted to read something of Oscar Wilde. It is the story of Dorian Gray, a man with exceptional beauty who sits for the artist Basil Hallward. Through him, Dorian meets Lord Henry and is influenced by his hedonistic worldview. He understands that his beauty will fade and decides to sell his soul so that instead of him, his portrait will bear the marks of his ageing. It is the only novel written by Wilde and a classic example of Gothic fiction.
2. Anna Karenina– “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
After reading Rebecca, this seems like an appropriate choice although the novels are not similar, they do share some common themes of jealousy, fidelity, marriage, and society. Written by Leo Tolstoy, it is the greatest work of literature ever written. It is about a Russian married socialite, the titular Anna, who has a doomed love affair with a younger and affluent military man, Count Vronsky. The affair is full of passion but it leads her toward paranoia and anxiety, and at the end of the novel, the consequences of her decisions and rejection from society lead Anna to suicide. The novel is often seen as Tolstoy’s message against infidelity and is also criticized for his portrayal of suicide.
3. Frankenstein– “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
What can arouse more curiosity than the world’s first science fiction and that too, written by a woman at a time when they didn’t even have the right to vote? Written by 20-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, it tells the story of a monster created by a scientist and explores themes of life, death, and man versus nature. The main message is the danger in the pursuit of knowledge and advancement in Science and Technology as we see Victor trying to push forward the limits of science by creating a creature from old body parts, referred in the novel as ‘the monster’. However, it backfires on him once the creature escapes.
4. Inferno- “The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called Denial.”
Inferno by Dan Brown is the fourth book in Robert Langdon series. Brown’s this novel is inspired by Dante Alighieri’s epic poem ‘Inferno’ which is about the nine circles of Hell and the hero Robert Langdon travels to Florence to solve mysterious clues found in great works of Renaissance art to stop a threat to mankind. In a typical Dan Brown style, this novel is fast paced and suspenseful and I hope it will keep me engaged till the end.
5. Ulysses- “The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”
This James Joyce work is called the greatest novel of the twentieth century and one of the most important works in modernist literature. It follows a day in the life of Leopold Bloom but is portrayed as something bizarre and extraordinary. It is considered one of the hardest works of literature to read still it hasn’t won the favor of some critics. T.S. Eliot said of Ulysses, “The next generation is responsible for its own soul; a man of genius is responsible to his peers, not to a studio full of uneducated and undisciplined coxcombs”, when people said they do not understand it.
6. The Metamorphosis– “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
It is a novella written by Franz Kafka. We all have heard the phrase ‘Kafkaesque’. It means a situation that is disoriented, illogical, unpleasant and confusing as suggested in Kafka’s writings. In this novel, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into “monstrous vermin” (a cockroach). It deals with an absurd, or wildly irrational, event and the story operates in a random, chaotic universe. Would be fun read.
7. The Secret History– “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
I have been wanting to read this for so long. It is the first novel by Donna Tartt. It is an inverted detective story narrated by Richard Papen, who remembers something that happened years ago and that led to the murder of his friend Bunny. It takes place in a college campus with a group of six students and Papen is one of them. It makes the point that any secret, big or small, can have a major impact on someone’s life and relationships.
So, this was my TBR list and I fully hope that I am able to finish all these books by the end of this year so I can move on to the next ones I haven’t even heard about yet. Will keep you updated as I read these books. Till then, Happy reading!
Share the books in your TBR list in the comment section below.
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