I always perk up when I see a list of books. A friend recently posted an interesting blog entry with a list of books with the challenge to highlight those she had read. I was all set to follow her example when the question occurred to me: “who the heck made this list?” What followed was an interesting diversion in random weirdness. It started when I tracked down the original claim made by someone named Jill that “The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.” This...