What to read when you're done with this blog

Our society is obsessed with lists. We have shopping lists, to-do lists and checklists. We loooove being on guest lists. There are blacklists, mailing lists and listservs. We list complaints and list houses for sale. Hell, even the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights are lists. In fact, the only lists we don't seem to like are waiting lists. 

Anyhow, Esquire.com has come up with yet another list you can add to the, well, you know. It's of the 75 books every man should read. I feel like I'm pretty well read. My roommate and I have two bookshelves -- one for fiction, the other non-fiction. Yet, after giving Esquire's list a look, I have some reading (and amazon.com shopping) to do. 

If 75 seems too daunting, or you have read all of the books Esquire recommends, here's my offering of the 10 great* books everybody should read, in alphabetical order of the authors' mothers-in-law's maiden names:

Ball Four - Jim Bouton The most intimate and truest look at professional sports ever published. And it's damn funny.

Atonement - Ian McEwan Every list needs a love story, and it might as well be one about betrayal, distance, class, warfare, neverending passion and misunderstandings. In addition to one of the most erotic and nuanced sex scenes ever penned, it's got a hell of a twist.

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini Close to the perfect book. 

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote A classic study in reportage, but also a finely tuned story that helped launch the "New Journalism" movement and paved the way for the great writers of the last half century. There would have been no Hunter S. Thompson without this book. 

Big Russ and Me - Tim Russert Who would have believed Big Russ would have outlived Little Russ? The Father's Day Gift of the Year for the rest of time. 

Summer of '49 - David Halberstam The first book to ever portray sports as more than just sports. Paints colorful portraits of legends we've only ever seen in black and white. Halberstam's best sports book, far and away. 

The Tower Treasure - Franklin W. Dixon The first, and best, of a long, long string of Hardy Boys books. Over time they became either more tame or amped up, opting for the quick thrill. Not this one. It has all the elements of a great story, and really launched a genre that is now flooded with books about kid (and sometimes pet) detectives. 

All the President's Men - Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein As much about journalism as political corruption. Inspired many to become journalists. If only its 21st Century equal could come by and do what it did for our industry

Good Friends, Good Guns, Good Whiskey - Skeeter Skelton It's every Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Larry McMurtry book, every John Wayne movie and every Tim McGraw song between two covers. Skelton experienced a West that was rarely recorded as candidly and flavorfully as he tells it. 

Alaska - James Michener Admittedly easier to conquer this 868-pager if you opt for the book-on-tape version, but it's a raw, real portrayal of life on the Last Frontier long before Sarah Palin came around. It's exhaustively detailed and probably more informative than anything else you'll ever read about the state. Plus, there's a bear attack scene. 

*The opinion that these books are "great" are solely mine and I cannot be held accountable when you disagree. When you do agree, fruit baskets and soft-core pornography are welcome.