My Bookshelf of Shame vs. Television

Everyone has one. I know you do. Here's a brief, off-the-cuff list of books I should have read by now. (That's a picture of my REAL bookshelf with books I have actually read. Except for Swann's Way. I have not read all of that. See list.):

The Dubliners (James Joyce), Swann's Way (Marcel Proust), An American Tragedy (Theoodre Dreiser), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers), anything by Jane Austen, Absalom, Absalom (William Faulkner), Main Street (Sinclair Lewis)

Also, here is a link to the 100 best American novels, ranked by I don't know who: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html. I am sad/mildly annoyed there is no such list for nonfiction. Maybe that is my next blog. Probably, yes it is.

Obviously there are more books I would like to read, but the problem is twofold: One, great books continue to be written and I fall further behind, and Two, television is so damn compelling, particularly The Riches, which if you're not watching, you're just crazy. This is actually very much like a Faulknerian family in its sense of insistent loyalty beset by internal meltdown. Watch it. Quentin ain't got nothing on Dahlia for angst.