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Gary Wheeler wrote: This list was for serious literature, not that populist tripe.
And that's why Lord of the Rings was on the list? Serious literature? Well, maybe the elven poems could be considered such. 
Marc
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You'll note that Lord of the Rings was entry #100, the bottom of the list. I have a feeling the only reason it was included was that Tolkien was English, and his trilogy has earned more money been read more times than the rest of the entries on the list combined.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary Wheeler wrote: been read more times than the rest of the entries on the list combined.
Or at least watched.  I'm constantly surprised by how few people I meet haven't actually read the books, even The Hobbit. I obviously run in the wrong crowds!
Marc
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I'll admit I haven't read them recently... well, since 1985. That's more of a reflection that I've been reading a lot of 'hard' science fiction lately, and haven't been interested in reading fantasy.
Software Zen: delete this;
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19!
"I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability!"
Ron White, Comedian
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I've read magister ludi when I was on a Herman Hesse binge in college, but I'd never put it on a must read list.
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With my reading habits I was surprised that I have read about nine and started (add abandoned) another three.
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10; normally on a list like that I'd score around 20....
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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18.
Software Zen: delete this;
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The list title is incorrect. It should be "Books that I want everyone to think I personally have read, so they will have to show me respect as a smarter man than they".
I'll bet the compiler has read even less than you have.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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17
No more than that because
a) never heard of it
b) feeling barfish just contemplating it
or
c) too busy with better books
Saw the movie "Crash". Can't bear Ballard's writing, so didn't rad the book, but the story was good.
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Why don't they just say "Everyone should read 100 novels"?
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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Don't feel bad. I have a private library of nearly 13,000 volumes -- yes, I've read them all; I'm a novelist as well as a software engineer, and reading widely is a novelist's occupational requirement -- and of the 100 books on the Telegraph's list I've read only 23. But the list contains quite a number of novels I consider garbage, having read snatches of them and tossed them aside with a snort.
What comes to mind in this connection is Ambrose Bierce's definition of a classic: "A book everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read." That applies to quite a number of the most frequently cited "classics," and sometimes for very good reasons!
(This message is programming you in ways you cannot detect. Be afraid.)
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The list is invalid without War and Peace on it.
Although, it did have Hitchhiker's Guide...
"I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand."
- Douglas Adams
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Well hardly invalid. It's a list of 100 novels that should be read. It doesn't say anywhere that it's the only 100 novels you should read nor indeed that these are the 'best', 'greatest' or any other superlative you care to mention. It doesn't even claim that the list is any kind of definition of 'literature' as we know it.
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Member 9082365 wrote:
It doesn't say anywhere that it's the only 100 novels you should read nor indeed that these are the 'best', 'greatest' or any other superlative you care to mention.
Though my reply was tongue in cheek, all of the above are implied when the title states I "should" read them.
My intent was to add a different opinion to the mine's-bigger-than-yours conversations by everyone's claim to how many they've read.
Another reason not to take me more seriously, is that I think The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the greatest novel of all time - with War and Peace coming in a close second.
"I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand."
- Douglas Adams
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I don't think there's any such implication. In fact, on the whole, things you should do are often on the less than enjoyable side. I agree, for example, that one should read Ulysses for an understanding of 'stream of consciousness', the Irish voice, and the beginnings of surrealism and absurdism as the first World War's horrors began to impinge on the universal consciousness and conscience. That doesn't for one second suggest that I think you're likely to find it an enjoyable read or that it's going to be a favourite.
I'm far from sure that the 'greatest novel of all time' is in any way meaningful. I'm happy to agree that HGTTG is the greatest sci-fi pastiche featuring dolphins and white mice as super intelligent beings with a special interest in really hot tea and towels but to suggest that there is any actual point of comparison between it and a translated Russian novel about the the causes and effects of conflict is almost as mad as actually believing that white mice are super intelligent beings and ultimately responsible for everything that constitutes the history on which 'War and Peace' is grounded! At the end of the day (or the beginning or any point in between) just what does 'great' mean in relation to literature? The longest, the funniest, the bizarrest, the most grammatical, best use of the subjunctive ........ ?
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17, plus three on the to-read pile. But mostly when I was a teenager, before I had internet.
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For me, 20. I am not a Philosopher so I never read Proust and partners. At this time I think a must did it, but I do not have enough time because I am reading not Philosophy books but novels (Sci-Fi, mystery...) 
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In what way is Proust philosophy? Certainly it's an exploration of the human condition but that's true of pretty much all good writing and especially so of sci-fi. If any genre can be accused of being 'philosophical' then sci-fi is right up there among the usual suspects!
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Yeah sci-fi is the most philosophical of genres, more so than mainstream literature. Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, etc. Certain works by Kafka, Hesse, Vonnegut, etc. could be considered sci-fi as well.
Many common sci-fi themes such as alien contact, the effects of technology on people, artificial intelligence, and the like are all inherently philosophical.
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In certain way you are right. Every good written book has philosophy inside. When I refer Proust as a Philosopher, I am telling that his books are more aimed to a life philosophy rather than a story by itself. They have a story inside, but every chapter includes many human conditions that, in my point of view, make the reading difficult. The analysis of life has been always a hard matter and if you are looking for a 'soft' reading (as you said, Sci-Fi is not necessarily an easy reading) may be Proust, Sartre and even Kafka are not the kind of writer you are going to give a try. May be you prefer Asimov, Clarke (Sci-Fi) Garcia Marquez (folkloric) Stephen King, Peter Straub (Horror), and many others who write 'easy-to-understand' novels (note the quotes) that are really good written, but in which the analysis of human condition is not the most relevant part.
All the previous, is taking into account that Philosophy as we understand in our time, is referring to the study of human being and not as was understood by the ancient greeks as 'Hunger of Knowledge'.
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I hit 15 only counting the books I finished.
Ulysses is bull s**t on a stick. Get drunk (really drunk), talk into a recorder and you will have made as much readable material. Pseudo-intellectuals sop up this kind for garbage and claim to "so get it" when there is nothing there. Emperor/clothes much?
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30. I think. but some of them are so boring I'm honestly not sure if I read them or not.
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I count 29 of those I've read at least once.
Though I don't agree with some of them as a "must-read" and then omitting some others which I might feel has entertained me much more, taught me some thing interesting, made me think, or any combination.
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