Climbing the Literary Pile

...still obsessed with conquering "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". Although it's mostly due to my often-counterproductive competitive nature (me, in the toilet at work, trying to pee faster than the woman in the next stall), I've also thought my reading is a little scattered - I've never stuck to any one genre long enough to feel as though I'm well-versed in it - today it's the magical realists, tomorrow it's an account of a reporter's work in Africa. So this is my effort to not have to fake it anymore when talking about books at a party and someone mentions The Vicar of Wakefield.

Okay, if you've ever been at a party where The Vicar of Wakefield is discussed and no one had a British accent, you really need to find new friends. But you see my point.

So, my list:

Vanity Fair (I know, I know - but I did just read Middlemarch, so I'm not completely hopeless)
Brave New World (probably even worse than not having read Vanity Fair)
Wide Saragasso Sea (haven't cracked it yet, on the nightstand)
Midnight's Children (recommended by Bub, who hasn't read One Hundred Years of Solitude and therefore doesn't see the similarities in voice but has already moved onto Pale Fire anyway)
The 9/11 Commission Report (just to stay somewhat based in reality; I'll be trying to shoehorn myself into a corset before long)

I recently finished Old Goriot (Balzac, on the list) and while the Francophile in me enjoyed it, I'm not quite sure it deserves a spot on the 1,001 list. Is it because of the universal story of unconditional parental love? the soul-crushing atmosphere of upper-class Paris at the time? the flowering and death of the idealism of Rastignac? While it's an engaging read, I'm still not convinced it's unique. I feel some of the books on the list are there because if you mention it enough, it becomes a great book - feel free to argue that there should be that many Ian McEwan novels on there.