All the way back in high school, I got this list of classics to work my way through; by thirty, I expected I'd have polished the thing off, but hey, as Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
It helps that a lot of the lost time, I was not sitting around drunk and passed out in an armchair, but reading other things (though drunk in an armchair did take up an inordinately large amount of time). Over the years, I've had people point out the rather flimsiness of a 'canon' list of authors and classics. These are valid points, of course. Some of the selections also raise questions about when the list was created—before or after The Painted Bird's accusations of plagiarism? Before or after the author of The Tin Drum's past serving as a member of the Waffen-SS came out?—and a quick look will show that it certainly could use more of that word which conservatives fear above all others: diversity.
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is an excellent example of this: Conrad's famous novella (and, of course, many viewers will be more familiar with the Vietnam epic it inspired, Apocalypse Now) gives us the perspective of an outsider European looking in on Africa as opposed to an African voice. I would say the lack of a name like Chinua Achebe on the list reinforces this: though Achebe was Nigerian, not Congolese, an African voice on African issues is a bit more helpful for getting an authentic voice than a European colonialist view on African issues.
Especially given the atrocities of Leopold's Congo—from the chicote to mutilating natives who did not gather Leopold's agents' demanded amount of ivory/rubber (and I'm hardly scratching the surface; a simple search for 'atrocities Leopold's Congo' will give you a lifetime's supply of horrific accounts and nightmares—a native voice akin to Okonkwo in Achebe's Things Fall Apart might help to teach students in the classroom and give flesh and reality to the story that it otherwise lacks.
I know when I was taught Heart of Darkness, most of the students slept or skimmed through it instead of getting any grasp on the horrors of colonization. But then, I've always been a bit at odds between my two majors: English lit teachers only ever want to talk about literary technique, allusions, repetition, all that old bullshit, I want to know about the history and the inspiration that drove the story. Given the little I know about Achebe, I get the impression he'd be baffled by the essay prompt when I was taught Things Fall Apart (Something about yams and coconuts looking like skulls and reflecting an inherent savagery on the part of the natives, an inherently racist prompt with the 'savagery' part) and prefer one that has more grounding in what he was speaking about: things falling apart as a result of white settlers invading and forcing colonization on the people already living in the land while trying to change their entire way of life.
Rambling aside, however, Mega Lit is a generally good introductory list of reading and the books on this list have often provided me springboards into other subjects and avenues of learning.
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