Has anyone else seen
this list that Publisher's Weekly just put out? I thought it was actually a pretty good list (or I wouldn't mention it) though I haven't read all of them.
Here's the list without the descriptions and links:
James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son" (originally appeared in Harper’s, 1955)
Norman Mailer, "The White Negro" (originally appeared in Dissent, 1957)
Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp'" (originally appeared in Partisan Review, 1964)
John McPhee, "The Search for Marvin Gardens" (originally appeared in The New Yorker, 1972)
Joan Didion, "The White Album" (originally appeared in New West, 1979)
Annie Dillard, "Total Eclipse" (originally appeared in Antaeus, 1982)
Phillip Lopate, "Against Joie de Vivre" (originally appeared in Ploughshares, 1986)
Edward Hoagland, "Heaven and Nature" (originally appeared in Harper’s, 1988)
Jo Ann Beard, "The Fourth State of Matter" (originally appeared in The New Yorker, 1996)
David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster" (originally appeared in Gourmet, 2004)
I haven't read all of these just the Baldwin, Mailer, Sontag and Wallace, but I've heard of a lot of these, and thought this was a good list of things I probably should read eventually.