Book Log 2014 Extra: Esquire.com Book Lists

I suppose one could troll the Internet for lists of books that you should read and find no end to them, but these found me while I was getting my daily dose of Charlie Pierce.What's interesting is that I found lists of 75 and 80 books all men should read, and a list of 10 books men should read before they die, and there were some books on one list but not another. How does one of the 10 books I need to read before I die not get on the list with 80 books all men should read? Someone over there needs to straighten this out before I expire!

In any case, it turns out I've read very few books on any of these lists. From the 80 books every man should read (warning, slideshow), I've covered:

• A Sense of Where You Are, John McPhee's book about Bill Bradley, which I enjoyed greatly.
• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer's WWII epic that I also enjoyed greatly (if you can used the word "enjoyed" in that context).
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I read for AP English about a million years ago but remember liking.
• Master and Commander, which I didn't like as much as I thought I would. Probably worth another look.
• A Confederacy of Dunces, also read a long time ago but remember enjoying.
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which introduced me to the concept of the literary spy novel.
• Winesburg, Ohio, which I didn't care for all that much. 
• Lolita, which caused me some conflict between the great writing and the awful subject matter.

 I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by the number of war books on the list. I was also reminded of the books that I'm surprised I've never read (Slaughterhouse-Five, for example). Overall it's not a bad list for something billed as "an unranked, incomplete, utterly biased list."

Moving on to the ten essential books for life (the "read before you die" tag was in the link to yet another slideshow), I seem to be missing most of the essentials, except for U.S.A. (the John Dos Passos trilogy that I never quite finished but found interesting if for nothing else than its format of mixing fiction in with news and biography from the period) and A Sense of Where You Are.

The list of 75 books took me back to the list of 80 books, which I guess is a good thing as it keeps us from having one more list floating around.