Tom Rachman chooses 6 books to read before you die

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)

I'm midway through my life (I think) and considering books to reread at the end. This novel, often regarded as one of the greatest ever written, is among them, a swirling masterpiece that contains far more than Russian aristocrats bickering. It's about idealism and youthful hopes, worn down by time and by tumult — a process that remains as true today, albeit with fewer horsedrawn carriages. Buy it here.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)

Virginia Woolf lingers over her characters' twitchy perceptions, slipping from mind to mind with such insight and craft; it awes me. But this novel is also moving, on how family nestles around its members and how a death may alter everything. "To the Lighthouse" can be challenging on the page. If you falter, try Juliet Stevenson's superb audiobook reading. Buy it here.

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (1957)

This episodic novel about a nebbish émigré professor is — like most comedy — about sorrow. The book recounts Pnin's blunders in America, the pangs of exile, the wounds of 20th-century political evil, and one professor's struggle not to lose his lecture papers. Buy it here.

The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg (1962)

Ginzburg, who's among the great Italian writers, survived horror in World War II, when the Nazis tortured her husband, Leone, to death. These memoiristic postwar essays touch on everything from Ginzburg's relationship with her second husband to raising kids to old shoes. Humble, witty and delightful. Buy it here.

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (1860)

Another book I hope to reread before my demise. I'd better not die suddenly, for it's 700 pages long. Descriptive old-fashioned novels such as this one demand patience in our distracted times. But this tale justifies the concentration: It's among the great portraits of siblinghood. Buy it here.

The essays of George Orwell (various editions)

Orwell wrote with unshrinking honesty. That is too rare. Pieces such as "Shooting an Elephant," "Politics and the English Language," and "Notes on Nationalism" help explain the world we all occupy, even decades after Orwell left it.

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