For a couple years now I have been lugging around a tattered copy of a list of books that I think I should read. The list was created by combining other lists and eliminating repetition: Time's 100, National Book Award Fiction winners, Man Booker Prize winners, PEN/Faulkner Award winners, National Medal for Arts & Letters winners, Howells Medal winners, an authors' Top Ten list, and Pulitzer Prize winners for Fiction or Novel. Currently, there are 295 books on this list. I have read a pathetically small number of these books. I am hoping that by broadcasting my goals, I will be shamed into reading more of them - hopefully at a reasonably good clip. I certainly don't believe this list includes every important piece of fiction ever written. Nor do I think that every inclusion is important. I just think that a well-read person has got to start somewhere. This is where I start.
Books that I have read are struck through. Hopefully as I make progress on this seemingly sysiphean task, I will have such amazing insight that I will have to share my revelations and wisdom through a blog update. Here's hoping.
Oh, you probably want the list. And I'll give it you.
