In 2006, Peter Boxall compiled 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die . The book was beautifully executed, but, to my mind, there were some problems. First, the title should have been the 1,001 Novels You Must Read…, as there were no non-fiction titles. Secondly, there were far too many contemporary authors (I’m a classics snob, sue me). Thirdly, too many novels by specific novelists. More than one for any of the contemporary authors was too many. No one needs to read more than one Don Delillo novel (unless they want to).

I’d read 70 from the first book, 60 from the second book and 58 from the third book. I’ve read 53 from the Core-the books that haven’t changed through the series.

If you want to keep up with what you’ve read, want to read and want to buy, I recommend the excellent spreadsheet on this page. They also have an iPhone app that:

• Has all of the lists from all of the books, as well as specific lists of books added and removed from each edition.
• The ability to mark each book as read/unread/reading/to be read
• A feature that takes your personal stats (age, gender, nationality) and how many books per month you read and tells you if you’re likely to finish the list in that time period. (One quibble with this is that it doesn’t take length of work into account. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is weighted the same as Remembrance of Things Past.)
• You can make notes, rate books, add book covers, post straight to LibraryThing, WordPress, Twitter or Facebook
• There’s a search feature, though it only works on authors and titles, and doesn’t include your notes
• You can sort the list by Title, Author, Rating, whether you’ve read it, want to read it or are reading it, as well as if you’ve made a note or added a quote.

I’m currently only making a note if I have the book in my library, so if I’m in a bookshop I can look at the list to see if I already have a copy of a book I haven’t yet read.

The app is very new and the developer is planning to add some features, but even at this stage it’s worth the $1.99