Gauntlet, thrown: UPDATED PART DEUX!

I'm approaching my one-year blogiversary (4.14) and am thinking of setting A Goal of some sort. This seems to be a theme of mine since turning 30: the Yearly Big Book-ish Goal. In 2005 I decided to keep track of all the books I read in a year (150, plus at least 130 magazines and 365 newspapers); in 2006 I started this blog.

In 2007 I'm toying with the idea of reading or re-reading some Important Books: books that everyone seems to know about, books that I have often alluded to without actually having read, books that I read years ago but can't really speak intelligently about anymore. I figure if I can read 40 or 50 of these by next April, that wouldn't be too shabby. Here's my tentative list so far, in no particular order:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
4. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
5. Wringer by Jerry Spinelli
6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
8. Democracy in America by Alexis d'Tocqueville (I'll...uh...probably just skim this)
9. The Federalist Papers (skim this one, too)
10. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
11. the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (some of them, at least)
12. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
13. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
14. The real Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A. A. Milne
15. Either The Iliad or The Odyssey, if I can find a good translation (I made it through The Inferno only because of Robert Pinsky) *Lee suggests Stanley Lombardo's translations.
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
18. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (lo, how I hate Dickens)
19. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
20. The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban
21. Octavian Nothing by M. T. Anderson (whatever the full title is; too lazy to look up)
22. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
23. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
24. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
25. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
26. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
27. Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson
28. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
29. A View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg
30. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
31. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
32. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
33. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
34. Forever by Judy Blume
35. A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
36. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
37. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
38. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
39. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
40. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (thanks, g elliot)
41. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (thanks, bookbk)
42. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (thanks, bookbk)
43. Personal History by Katharine Graham
44. Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
45. I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
46. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
47. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
48. Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
49. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (might not be able to finish due to uncontrollable sobbing)
50. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
51. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
52. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.

Okay, looking at that list makes me sweat a little. Suggestions for other titles?

UPDATE: I think that's gotta be it. Now I just have to read everything in my TBR pile before April 14, and I'll be all set. . . . yeah. At some point I'll try to make this a sidebar, so I can track my progress. Unless that makes me want to cry. (The coding or the tracking, either one.)