Notes from a Simple Librarian: Could this be the mother of all reading lists?

Maybe, maybe not. This is a big reading list. Arukiyomi has compiled the list of 1001 Books to Read before you die in a somewhat convenient spreadsheet (you have to download, then unzip a file, then calculate). I took a look over the list, since I can't resist a book list, and I sure as heck can't resist seeing how I stack up. However, this is one of those lists full of highly literary books, the kind that I rarely read these days. There are reasons why I left the English doctoral program I was in to pursue library school; the freedom to read what I want when I want without some pretentious snob telling me how I should read a book is one of them. Don't get me wrong. I do like some aspects of literary analysis, but I also like reading the cool stuff, and this list is not it (in my humble opinion). So, how did I do?

Out of 1001 books, I have read 85.
I marked only 17 as "to be read." And those are ones where I like the authors, like Mario Vargas Llosa, or books I did intend to read anyways.
A lot of the books I read on the list were books I read in graduate school or that I was forced to read in school. Yes, I use the word "forced." There are some items on that list that probably should not have been inflicted on a high schooler. As for the ones I read in graduate school, a good number of them actually bring back bad memories. When I think about it, it's a miracle I still like to read. But then again, graduate school did have some cool classes (like Dr. Papa's drama classes. Wherever you may be now Doc, thank you for igniting an interest in theater and the powerful messages it can convey. Oh, for the cool stuff too).
And by the way, my selections from the list I did read are heavy on classic Spanish and Latin American because I went to high school in Puerto Rico. Had I gone to high school in the states, it would probably be more heavy on classic United States literature.

The likelihood that I will pick out books to read from this list in the coming year is next to none. The chances are slim and fat. There are authors on the list that I simply do not care for, like John Updike. Still, it is interesting for me to see a list like this and to see what I have read. The calculator on the spreadsheet says I would need to read 25 books per year to complete the 2008 edition of the list. If I focused on the list, that would be pretty easy since I can easily read about 100 books in a year. But I dislike the idea of giving up on my pleasure reading in order to follow the whims of some snobbish high brow list. If this was the Hugos list or something like that, I would be there.

And in case my three readers are curious, here are the titles I have read from the big list. I will note the ones I read in Spanish. Oh, and when I note "Spanish edition" as opposed to "Spanish," it means that author does not write originally in Spanish, but I read him or her in Spanish translation. This usually applies to people like Coehlo (Brazilian, writes in Portuguese) or Saramago (Portuguese):

Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat (in Spanish).
Paulo Coehlo, Veronika Decides to Die (in Spanish).
Arturo Perez Reverte, The Dumas Club (in Spanish).
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried.
Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia.
Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry.
Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate (in Spanish).
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions.
Toni Morrison, Beloved.
Isabel Allende, Of Love and Shadows (in Spanish).
V.S. Naipaul, Enigma of Arrival.
Alan Moore, Watchmen.
Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (in Spanish).
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale.
William Gibson, Neuromancer.
Marti Amis, Money: A Suicide Note.
Isabel Allende, The House of Spirits (in Spanish).
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children.
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose.
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Mario Puzo, The Godfather.
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (in Spanish).
Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God.
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange.
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook.
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths (in Spanish).
Gabriel García Márquez, No One Writes the Colonel (in Spanish).
Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
T.H. White, The Once and Future King.
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man.
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger should be grateful anyone wants to do a sequel of this piece of tripe. No wonder Salinger has been a recluse. What people see in this novel is beyond me).
Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude (in Spanish).
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
George Orwell, Animal Farm.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (in Spanish edition).
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
E.M. Forster, A Passage to India.
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt.
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.
Juan Ramon Jimenez, Platero and I (in Spanish).
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth.
Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening.
Bram Stoker, Dracula.
H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau.
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island.
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady.
José Hernandez, Martin Fierro.
Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days.
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.
Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick.
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo (in Spanish).
Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum.
Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels.
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote (in Spanish, and baroque Spanish nonetheless, not some sissy abridgement. In high school. Just for this I should get a pass on a lot of the list).
Anonymous, Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (in Spanish, back in high school).
Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo, Amadís de Gaula (in Spanish, and similar to Don Quixote too, and read it in high school).
Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina (in Spanish, another high school selection).
Anonymous, The Thousand and One Nights.

And for the curious, if they stuck this far, here is what I marked as "to be read." It mostly means to me stuff I would like to read, but I may or not read it.

Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (yes, in Spanish).
Paulo Coehlo, The Devil and Miss Prym (likely in Spanish ed. I happen to like Coehlo, so pretty much anything he writes is on my TBR list).
Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives (in Spanish).
Tomas Eloy Martinez, Santa Evita (in Spanish. This author has been on my TBR for a while now).
Jose Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (in Spanish ed. This is another author that has been on my TBR for a while).
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (been on the TBR for a while too. I am a bit reluctant since I am told he can be similar to Terry Pratchett, and I did not like the one Pratchett novel I read. But I did like the film, so maybe there is hope).
Anais Nin, Delta of Venus.
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire.
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Time of the Hero (in Spanish).
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz (in Spanish).
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land.
Juan Carlos Onetti, The Shipyard (in Spanish).
Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (I have seen the film, so curious about reading the book).
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye.
Ian Fleming, Casino Royale.
Isaac Asimov, Foundation.
Isaac Asimov, I, Robot.