I’ve had this list saved on a page in Evernote for months; when I realized I didn’t have any ideas for today’s blog post, it seemed like just the thing to do. What are we doing exactly? We are embarrassing ourselves with how not well read we are. This is Time’s 100 Best Books of All Time. The list was compiled by Time magazine’s critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, and I’m about to show you how many I’ve actually read cover to cover.

The Adventures of Augie March
All the King’s Men
American Pastoral
An American Tragedy
Animal Farm
Appointment in Samarra
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret 
The Assistant
At Swim-Two-Birds
Atonement
Beloved
The Berlin Stories
The Big Sleep
The Blind Assassin
Blood Meridian
Brideshead Revisited
The Bridge of San Luis Rey 
Call It Sleep
Catch-22
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
The Confessions of Nat Turner
The Corrections
The Crying of Lot 49
A Dance to the Music of Time
The Day of the Locust
Death Comes for the Archbishop
A Death in the Family
The Death of the Heart
Deliverance
Dog Soldiers
Falconer
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The Golden Notebook
Go Tell it on the Mountain
Gone with the Wind
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Great Gatsby
A Handful of Dust
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart of the Matter
Herzog
Housekeeping
A House for Mr. Biswas
I, Claudius
Infinite Jest
Invisible Man
Light in August
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Lolita
Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Rings
The Moviegoer
Loving
Lucky Jim
The Man Who Loved Children
Midnight’s Children
Money
Mrs. Dalloway
Naked Lunch
Native Son
Neuromancer
Never Let Me Go
1984
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Painted Bird
Pale Fire
A Passage to India
Play It As It Lays
Portnoy’s Complaint
Possession
The Power and the Glory
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Rabbit, Run
Ragtime
The Recognitions
Red Harvest
Revolutionary Road
The Sheltering Sky
Slaughterhouse Five
Snow Crash
The Sot-Weed Factor
The Sound and the Fury
The Sportswriter
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Sun Also Rises
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Things Fall Apart
To Kill a Mockingbird
To the Lighthouse
Tropic of Cancer
Ubik
Under the Net
Under the Volcano
Watchmen
White Noise
White Teeth
Wide Sargasso Sea

So… 10 out of 100. That’s terrible. And to be perfectly honest, most of those were books I read for school. There were a few titles I am so ashamed I haven’t read (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Slaughterhouse Five, A Clockwork Orange, 1984) that I almost didn’t post this list, but I figured it would be a good catalyst for discussion. So here is my literary shame. Also, I didn’t count the ones I have only seen the movie of (Lord of the Rings, Never Let Me Go, etc).

How many have you read on this list? Why do you think we often shy away from these classics? How important is it that we read them? Let me know in the comments!