Blogger vows to read all 1001 'must-read' books on some stranger's list

By Rosemary Twickenhilfer
Books Editor

NEW YORK -- Katie Sutton, a 16-year-old high school sophomore and blogger from Elk Falls, Kan., vowed to read all 1001 books on the hot new "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" list she discovered on the Internet today, despite the fact that she has no idea who compiled the list, where it came from, or whether the books on it are worth the 15,000 hours of her life it would take to read them all.

"I'm totally going to read all those books," Sutton confided to the six readers of her blog, "Tortured Poetress," after discovering the list on one of the literary blogs she regularly reads while her friends are out socializing.

"I was thinking about majoring in English at KU, but now that I have this list I probably don't have to bother with that," she wrote. "I just have to read these 1001 books before I die, and I'll be all set! Thanks, mystery list compiler!"

Though the list excludes history's most influential books -- Plato's Republic, The Bible and The Koran -- and contains not a single work of Shakespeare nor any poetry, drama or non-fiction, Sutton expressed confidence that dedicating nearly two full years of her life to reading only the books on the list was a sound decision.

"Why should I read what some teacher or professor tells me to read?" she wrote. "I'm my own woman! I don't need authority figures to tell me what to do! I'm perfectly capable of using the Internet to find someone with no authority whatsoever and doing what they tell me to do!"

Comments

[hukes]

I wouldn't trust any book list that contains Paulo Coelho.