Good reads: 20 books you should read before you die

MANILA, Philippines – We live in the era where reading is centered around tweets and Facebook statuses. When was the last time you took a break from your daily routine to read a book?

The Internet has taken the civilization by storm, which kept people busy browsing on their iPads, laptops and phones. But opening a book once in a while can do you no harm, in fact it cuts off stress levels and promotes mental stimulation. Moreover, it saves electricity and battery.

In line with the celebration of National Reading Month this November, here is a list of books you should read in your lifetime, as put together by the users of Goodreads.

To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

1984 by George Owell

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 

If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez 

A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears. 

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the If you look for perfection, you'll never be content. that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White 

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden 

This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. 

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.