1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die (1001 Must Before You Die) [Paperback]

As a biblioholic this was guaranteed to have me slavering with anticipation: a book about the 1001 best(?) books ever, with each one receiving a eulogy of around 300 words. It's quite a hefty tome: a bookshelf-bending 2kg in fact, nearly half of which must be due to all the photographs. Someone even managed to find a snap of JD Salinger - extra kudos for that.

Inevitably everyone will quibble about the selection, so why should I be any different? The omission of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers is an unforgivable oversight. Other surprise absentees include Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess and anyone called Bradbury (there is no sign of The History Man, or Fahrenheit 451). And it's probably best not to mention Watership Down or Terry Pratchett - I don't envy the publishers having to deal with all those irate fans.

Maybe they were collateral damage in an editorial decision to avoid "children's" books - something which enabled them to sidestep Harry Potter, but also resulted in there being no place for Louis Sachar's Holes, or anything by Philip Pullman, Malorie Blackman or even Roald Dahl. (Is there a 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up in the pipeline I wonder? If so, can I be a compiler please?)

Such omissions are made harder to understand by the presence of quite a few insubstantial novels from recent years, and some of the choices make no sense at all. For example: two books by Paulo Coelho have been included, neither of which is The Alchemist; while BS Johnson is represented by three books, none of which is his legendary book-in-a-box (The Unfortunates). There is also a page where Youth by JM Coetzee sits next to Dead Air by Iain Banks, despite much stronger novels by both authors being absent. (I would have certainly included Coetzee's Age of Iron.)

The compiler also shows a treacherous predilection for the cinema: too many books seem to have been chosen because they spawned classic films. The Graduate and The Postman Always Rings Twice spring to mind. So The Third Man is here, but not Our Man In Havana; while Arthur C. Clarke is represented by the novelisation of 2001: A Space Odyssey rather than Childhood's End (or Rendezvous With Rama, or The Fountains of Paradise). Cassell also publish 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, but somehow I doubt the compiler of that book has chosen any mediocre films of great novels.

One more minor quibble: the title index at the front and the author index at the back are both riddled with errors and omissions, which seems sloppy. Despite all that it is a wonderful compendium to dip into over and over again - but beware: you will end up with lots more of books to add to your must-read list.

This is a great book for "dipping into" rather than reading from start to finish. One of the members of the reading group I belong to brought it along to one of our meetings and I knew I had to buy my own copy. Like many people I had to do a count of how many of the 1001 books I had actually read - it was about 140. So I have a long way to go......

However I don't think the purpose of the book is to spur us on to competitive reading or to demoralise us if we haven't read a lot of the books selected. What this book is great for is to alert you to works you may want to read at some time in the future but have simply never got around to - such as To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf or The Idiot by Dostoevsky (both sitting on my bookshelves gathering dust).

It is also a good reminder of some books read long ago - The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, Germinal by Zola and The Razor's Edge by WS Maugham.

Obviously any list of this type is contentious and we all bring our own prejudices to such a venture. (No William Boyd? Shame on you! Six Margaret Attwoods....hooray)

And it is beautifully illustrated throughout with pictures of writers and original book covers.

Even if you're not counting on dying any time soon, you should get reading immediately if you hope to get through every book included in this bibliophile's companion. Luckily though, you don't have to actually read all those classic and influential novels, because this superb reference book provides enough information in itself to give the reader an excellent literary overview. With this single volume, you can avoid feeling that you've read so much that dying might be a merciful release from all that goddamned literature; instead, each pleasantly brief entry provides enough to grasp the essence of the book in question, and allows the reader to decide if they want to read the novel itself. The little fact boxes reveal some interesting kernals of trivia too - for example, Anne Rice was christened Howard. And OK, there are a few mistakes in the index, but frankly that does little to mar an excellent, fascinating and useful book.