1001 books to read before you die

I tend to spend a lot of time wandering Barnes and Nobel when I'm trying to find a decent book. If only the chick lit wasn't mixed in with all the actual literature, I wouldn't get so confused. Romance novels and fantasy are separated out, why not take out the books with shoes on the cover? I always get overwhelmed and end up with a book, I think I might have heard something good about one time. That is not a good enough reason to buy a book.

Thanks to the Ravelry forums, I just discovered a really fun way to pick my next book! It's the 1001 books before you die spreadsheet. It includes a list of 1001 important books, sorted by century, and allows you to mark which books you've read. Then it does a calculation of how many books you'd need to read each year in order to read them all before you die (you plug in your age). According to the excel sheet, I've read 72 of the books, and it means I have to read about 16 books a year if I live to be the age of a "typical western female". If I'm reading the formulas correctly, the typical death age of a western woman is 80.84.

I'm going to use this as a way to keep track of what I'd like to read next and what I thought of the books that I just finished. I added a column to the excel sheet that averages my ratings from 1-10. Right now my average is 6.458333333. It's a little high, but if you think about it, this is supposed to be a list of the most worthwhile books ever. If you look at it that way, I might actually be a little too picky for my own good.

My first choice from the list is Vanity Fair. I've tried to read it a couple of times, and somehow got distracted, so I got it for my audible book this month. Hopefully having someone read it to me will keep my attention.