Gertsamtkunstwerk: 100 albums you must listen to

It's a list

I've read through, and I would endorse some of the selections, and virulently reject others. Clearly, any such list will be personal. Some of the recommended recordings are so old I have to wonder about the quality of the sonics. Others strike me as being very old-fashioned choices eg for Messiah it seems ludicrous to recommend only a 'traditional' interpretation when there is such a difference between over-egged over-schmaltzy orchestration and the crisp excitement of period interpretations. Also, the subset called 'opera' entirely fails to consider DVD, a bit bizarre considering that very few operas at all (if any) were written as audio only, so to recommend an opera recording without pictures is a bit like recommending a bowdlerized novel.

Years ago, a then friend copied for me a list that the Telegraph had compiled of the 100 books one must read. For years it stayed on my kitchen wall, then I removed it, thinking 'I am not obliged to read any book merely because experts (or one expert, or one bored journalist) thinks it's a 'must read'. And, in any case, the list was very conservative and with rather narrow terms of reference. So I seized on this review of what appeared to be a Bluffer's Guide Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read is an invaluable guide to subverting the reading classes. Setting aside that the review is written in appalling dense prose, it seems it isn't a Bluffer's Guide, anyway. Furthermore, I reflected, do I really want to be the sort of person who , at mythical dinner parties filled with erudite conversation about novels, rather than
a) staying quiet; or
b) saying I haven't read that book because:

with so many books to read and such diverse tastes, it is a bit unthinking merely to follow the crowd
I've probably read books that you haven't
if you have read so many books you probably don't have a great deal else going on in you life

one attempts to sound knowledgeable about something one knows bugger all about - well, that's pathetic isn't. If I am so desperate to appear well-read, I am afraid the only way to appear so is to be well-read. And I question the value in 'appearing well-read', which is pretty shallow, when the goal ought to be 'to be well read'. Being well read would make one a more rounded and thoughtful person, with greater awareness of the pointlessness of pretending; it would bring some entertainment into one's life; and it would simply make one more knowledgeable.

However, I have found Penguin Classics's "100 Classic Books You Must Read Before You Die"

Of these I have read

Diamonds are Forever
A Room with a View
Wuthering Heights
Love in a Cold Climate
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Emma
The Odyssey
The Grapes of Wrath
Alice in Wonderland
The Great Gatsby
Animal Farm
The Communist Manifesto
A Tale of Two Cities
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Prince
The ThirtyNine Steps
Lucky Jim

That's only 18, but with some writers represented - Lawrence, Wharton, James - I have read other works but not those listed. And indeed, for writers like Dickens, I have read a fair few but not many of those listed. Also, I have read some books which I consider to be classics and do not believe I am alone in thinking that. And there are books on that list that, in my opinion, are obscure, or were included because of a fashion or supposed relevance at the time the list was compiled.

I also refer to the BBC Big Read List, from which I can add