Original - Books you should read if you want to consider yourself well-read

Where is the list from? Just off the top of your head?

Sounds like a plan. I apologize for adding stuff in the middle. If anything else gets added I'll be sure to mention it here. I don't want you guys to have to go hunting through the entire list. I had to do that several times myself when typing the list up and it drove me nuts.

Actually, I believe the flood in Gilgamesh is completely unrelated to the one in the bible. There are similarities but it's from ancient Sumerian culture.

Excellent, now there are only 423 to read! But what else have you removed? I've still got 424 on my version...
Did you like any of the Poe, because I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought. They're not quite as dark as I expected, and most of them are barely holding my attention! However, I just started The Pit and the Pendulum last night, and it's just what I expected.

It was on a list and stupid me I confused the story with "Brigadoon" you know the one with the Scottish village in the moors that only appears once every 20 years.

I will not be making that mistake again.

I'm pretty sure there are a few of us kicking around. I can't think of any other regulars off the top of my head, though.

Miss Curly, I didn't realize you were a fellow Canuck. Happy belated Canada Day!

I agree wholeheartedly, but the Greeks are a necessary evil. And I've also been uber busy with school, which all but stops my personal readings.

Why is there no EM Forster on the list? I recently finished Howard's End (not the best, I admit) and I'm working on a new one now as well. I hear his name a lot in relation to 20th century authors... any reason for the oversight?

Hey! not everyone can be cunning.

There is absolutely no way that I got "all pissy at" Penelope. Why wouldn't she have suitors? She's the sexiest mortal who ever drew breath. Why else would I spend a decade trying to get back to rocky, rainy, dreary Ithica?

By Athena! she is the hottest babe who ever walked 'neath Mount Olympus... and I've seen Helen. Remember, I was at Sparta with the rest of Helen's suitors but I wasn't there for Helen. I was there for Penelope. She makes Helen look like a three-headed mutt.

Penelope spent three years weaving my dad's burial shroud. Okay, two years weaving and a year unweaving. You think you've seen wiley? Now that is wiley. Besides, after twenty years, who could blame her for picking out a boy toy or two? (Or five... I'm looking at you, EN'synceus. erm... Make that four.)

But still she remained faithful. A woman pushing forty does have needs. Let me tell you, when she was in her teens it was all that I could do to keep up. That woman would shtoop at nothing.

As for Calypso, I had no choice, she kept me prisoner for seven years. All day I'd cry on the beach and compose odes to Penelope. "Entropy," "Calliope"... Now I just need a rhyme for "smokin' hot gluteus maximus."

Every night Calypso would force herself upon me. I had to close my eyes and pretend that I was shtooping a bust of Penelope. If Hermes hadn't convinced her, Calypso would never have let me go. She even offered me immortality if I'd stay... thank goodness for Hermes' silver-tongueing.

Calypso and immortality, Nausicaä and her dad's kingdom, lotus-eating, Sirens, even Circe were no match for my wonder woman.

You might not be aware of it but Penelope was a grifter without equal. When I finally do get home she knows exactly who I am. Do you think that we had never played the game where she's a horny princess and I'm a dirty old beggar? Instead of a sponge bath from a naughty nurse she arranges for a bath from an old nurse... my old nurse.

Under the suitors' very noses she lays out her last and biggest con. She arranges for the suitors to bring all of their treasure into the palace, gets them all drunk, sneaks Telemachus and Eumaeus into the room, puts my own bow into my hand and locks the doors from the outside. Martinus Scorceseus couldn't have envisioned a bigger bloodbath. 107 suitors chopped to bits and me without a scratch. That woman is amazing.

And when it's all over and I have taken a bath and oiled myself up... what does she do? She teases me and makes me wait. Penelope stands there in her tightest, finest robes, dressed for a wedding she made sure would never come.

Penelope gets back at me for telling her tales of Circe, wine dark seas and leaving her and and the baby to survive on her wits alone. At least I was a King, I had men-at-arms, boats, weapons and a King's cloak.

Penelope had none of that. She had to raise Telemachus alone, rule Ithica and fend off suitors with only her wits to help her. So, to get even, she pretends that she doesn't know me. She challenges me and makes us wait. We'll see who cracks first...

...and I would have won the contest except that she smelled so good and made me jealous by saying that someone had rearranged our bedroom. Then she gave me that special little smile and I couldn't wait a moment longer. Even until the last Penelope had to win. She can't even allow me one little victory before we turned our bed into a pile of sawdust.

By Zeus! ain't that a woman.

Hardly! I was reading War and Peace. Does that explain?
(My mother laughingly teases I'm the only person to read and enjoy the whole thing)

So add on the last Harry Potter to round out that collection.

After you've read all of these, will you revise the list and remove the ones you didn't like?

It's much better than "The Trial".