William Grimes wrote in the New York Times last Friday about the 2006 book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (Universe). He offers a realistic take on said list, pointing out its merits while acknowledging that any such catalog should be taken with several grains of salt (perhaps sea salt of the Moby Dick variety?).

Here, without further ado or embarrassment, are the books (from that list) I’ve read from start to finish:

1) The Body Artist, Don DeLillo

2) The Human Stain, Philip Roth

3) The Hours, Michael Cunningham

4) Memoirs of a Geisha, Arther Golden

5) Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

6) Possession, AS Byatt

7) Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood

8) The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

9) The Color Purple, Alice Walker *

10) Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison *

11) Surfacing, Margaret Atwood

12) The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles

13) In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

14) The Collector, John Fowles

15) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey

16) Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

17) To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee *

18) The Once and Future King, TH White *

19) On the Road, Jack Kerouac

20) Lord of the Flies, William Golding *

21) The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

22) The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger *

23) The End of the Affair, Graham Greene

24) Animal Farm, George Orwell *

25) The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

26) Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier

27) Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston *

28) Brave New World, Aldous Huxley *

29) All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque *

30) Steppenwolf, Hermen Hesse

31) The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

32) Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

33) The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald *

34) Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

35) A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man *

36) Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

37) Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad *

38) Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad

39) The Awakening, Kate Chopin

40) The Turn of the Screw, Henry James

41) Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

42) The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

43) The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy

44) The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

45) Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

46) Middlemarch, George Eliot

47) Little Woman, Louisa May Alcott

48) Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

49) Silas Marner, George Eliot

50) Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

51) The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

52) Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

53) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

54) Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley *

55) Emma, Jane Austen

56) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

57) Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

58) Foundation, Isaac Asimov **

59) The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck * **

* Read as part of a high school or college class

** The list is presented chronologically from most recent-oldest; Foundation and The Grapes of Wrath are out of order because I saw them the second time I read through it.

 
If you combine those 59 with the handful that I’ve started and know I won’t finish (including The Handmaid’s Tale and *gasp* White Noise), I’ve dispensed with a mere 6.59 percent of the list, according to the handy Excel spreadsheet available here.

 
Just 93-ish percent to go before death! That’s encouraging, especially considering all the books on my mental To-Read list that aren’t included on this one. Sigh. I began The Brothers K last night, so that’s a start. And I recently discovered Lydia Davis, so her 2004 novel, The End of the Story, might come next.

-- Deirdre Fulton 

From the inbox:

Brookline Booksmith is pleased to announce that broadcasting legend Barbara Walters will be appearing at your favorite local independent bookstore on Thursday, May 22nd at 7pm.

She will be signing copies of her best-selling book Audition from 7-9pm.

If you would like to attend the signing, copies of Audition must be purchased through the Brookline Booksmith.Your Booksmith receipt for the purchase of the book is your ticket to the signing line.

This is a book signing only. Barbara will be only signing copies of her new book. In the interest of time, no photos or personalizations will be allowed. For any further questions, please all the Booksmith at 617-566-6660. If you are unable to make the signing, but would still like a signed copy, place an order with us today for no extra charge by calling the store at 617-566-6660.

 GO TEAM BARBARA! Her memoirs are so much dishier than the whole Al divorce and nip-tuck surgery. We mean, really.

New books blog alert: The Book Bench at the New Yorker.com is publishing. Above, a photo of the blog's namesake:

When an e-mail is sent out announcing the arrival of new stacks, it is not unlike a drop of blood entering shark-infested waters. Newcomers to the magazine, shocked by the frenzy, are gently reassured by an editor: “But it’s for books.”

Lori's Brookline Booksmith's blog is on their blogroll! We're delighted.

Can we just say that we're 100 pages into Anna Karenina, and now we're FINALLY fully able to vet Janet Malcolm's joke about Gossip Girl's Nate Archibald, who she describes as "a kind of Vronsky manqué, with a grande-dame mother, like Vronsky's, and a Navy-captain father who is 'a master sailor and extremely handsome, but a little lacking in the hugs department." Here's a passage from Mr. Tolstoy himself, which we just read on the train this morning and totally knocked our head sideways it was so delicious.

"There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man's calling at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner-party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it seemed strange and not right to Anna."

Now that is how you foreshadow a scandal the likes of which one expects and is aware of but the hints, the subtle hints! Josh Schwartz, kindly take note. We are looking forward to tonight very much.

The Harvard Book Store has some lovely events and readings scheduled for early June -- the main one we're excited about is David Sedaris on June 6, though we just found out it was sold out! Oi. Obvs the HBS would have hosted the former Christmas elf at a larger venue -- like, say, the Orpheum?!? -- but due to the literary rock star's contractual obligations he can only read from his new book of pseduo-memoirish stories, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, in small locations. Lucky ticket holders are in for an intimate and exciting event. We are exceedingly jealous and, as usual, scold ourselves for not being more timely with the ticket-buying. Whenever we read essays about things like how his mom gave him cigarettes in his Easter basket in The New Yorker, the voice inside our head actually reads them IN SEDARIS'S VOICE, which sounds like a talking baby kitten on speed. We heart him so. And yet! The HBS understands our needs and yours. We've been told:

However, we will have an audio feed for folks outside, and anyone wishing to wait can have their books signed by Mr. Sedaris after the ticket-holding folks inside the store are taken care of. Anyone who was unable to purchase a ticket is welcome to join the signing line outside of the store on the night of the event. We will have an audio feed for these folks, and we hope to have video as well. Once the audience inside has had its books signed, we'll let the patient people into the store from the signing line outside. 

It's worth noting that tickets ARE still available for Lewis Black (Me of Little Faith) on June 7 at the First Parish Church, as well as our beloved Andre Dubus III (The Garden of Last Days) on June 9 at the Brattle. Not to mention Barbara Ehrenreich's  discussion of her latest tome, This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation. Tickets for that go on sale June 9, so begin with the mental-planning...now!

An exciting new deal announcement, via GalleyCat:

 "MySpace and MTV sensation Tila Tequila's HOOKING UP WITH TILA TEQUILA, no-holds-barred thoughts on love, fame, happiness, and success and the remarkable story of how the child of Vietnamese immigrants singlehandedly harnessed the web to become a popular sex symbol, to Brant Rumble at Scribner, for publication in December 2008, by David Vigliano and Michael Harriot of Vigliano Associates (world)."

 No-holds-barred! Love! Fame! A remarkable story!

Of course this won't be in the $1 Barnes & Noble discount section a month after it pubs. Why would anyone assume something like that?  Remember, Tila, if round one doesn't work out, you can always launch a follow-up season--er--sequel. Aren't second chances wonderful?!