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I've read only 19 on the list, but then I don't read a lot of popular fiction and virtually no popular current fiction. Most of my reading is nonfiction history and biography. What fiction I do read is largely scifi/fantasy.
The problem with lists like these -- and the lamentation that few will have read many on the list -- is that the list represents one person or group's view of what is worthwhile reading. Yes, Watership Down is a decent book, but I wouldn't cast in the same plane as Sherlock Holmes. The only thing remarkable about Ulysses, to my way of thinking, is that someone thought it worth reading at all.
How many of these same list makers have read, for example, any of Dashiell Hammett's novels or the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin? They cited Zola's Germinal, but not his J'Accuse, which is certainly a more important work. No mention of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt. Of course, some of the most important books in history are omitted, as well as some of the most important authors -- books and authors that truly impacted the world.
Lists of must read books are simply a way to say I read x books and you didn't, so shame on you! Consequently, I never feel embarassed that I read so few on a list. The beauty of literature is that there are no true must-read works.
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