( CNN ) -- I 'm a lover of books , great ones and not-so-great ones . And I also love lists . So it did n't surprise me when Amazon recently came out with its 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime . I was , however , more than a little shocked by the list , which crudely mixes categories , putting in a few classics , such as George Orwell 's `` 1984 '' and Charles Dickens ' `` Great Expectations , '' alongside `` Kitchen Confidential '' by Anthony Bourdain , `` Moneyball '' by Michael Lewis , and `` Gone Girl '' by Gillian Flynn . Really ? And do you think `` The Very Hungry Caterpillar '' by Eric Carle should sit on the shelf of must-reads-before-dying with `` Pride and Prejudice , '' the great masterpiece by Jane Austen ? In the novel category , should one read Jacqueline Suzann 's truly terrible `` Valley of the Dolls '' instead of , say , Mark Twain 's `` Huckleberry Finn '' or -- the greatest of all novels -- `` Middlemarch '' by George Eliot ? For poetry , Amazon recommends Shel Silverstein 's `` Where the Sidewalk Ends '' instead of the poems of Robert Frost or Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson . For a great biography , we get Robert A. Caro 's admirable life of Robert Moses . But what about James Boswell 's `` Life of Johnson , '' arguably the finest biography ever published ? Certain books here are familiar to high school students , including `` To Kill a Mockingbird , '' `` Slaughterhouse-Five , '' and `` Catcher in the Rye . '' I do n't myself like any of these much , if truth be told . One of my sons recently graduated from high school , and he complained that in the past six years he had been asked every single year to read `` To Kill a Mockingbird . '' Surely there are other books about race relations in the American South ? I also wonder about including so many recent popular novels , such as Jonathan Franzen 's `` The Corrections '' or `` The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao '' by Junot Diaz or , even more puzzling , `` The Secret History '' by Donna Tartt . These books made a splash , and continue to find readers , but any one of a dozen or more books could have been substituted for these , and the books in this category would certainly change with the decades . In the '20s , everyone thought you should read `` Java Head '' by Joseph Hergesheimer . In the '30s , you would have been asked to read `` Seven Who Fled '' by Frederic Prokosch . I liked certain choices here , however : Tim O'Brien 's `` The Things They Carried '' is certainly the best book about Vietnam ; more than that , it 's a dazzling work of art . John Irving 's `` The World According to Garp '' will always deserve readers , as will `` The Road '' by Cormac McCarthy and `` Lolita '' by Vladimir Nabokov . But are these the 100 books you must read before you die or the 100 books Amazon will probably sell you before you die ? The latter , I think . If you 're going to die soon , I suggest reading `` Walden '' by Henry David Thoreau , which did n't make Amazon 's list . It 's a sublime work of literature , a better memoir than any of the memoirs included here . And read `` The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin '' before you read `` The Liars ' Club '' by Mary Carr or `` The Year of Magical Thinking '' by Joan Didion . The latter are fine books , but they should not crowd out Thoreau or Franklin . It 's sad to see that Shakespeare and Tolstoy do n't make the Amazon list . Nor do John Updike or Saul Bellow or Mark Twain . I 'd say that only about a third of the books on Amazon 's list are in any way essential reading . Buy these books , if you must . And die , if you must . But if you want to know what books you should really read before you die , look elsewhere . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jay Parini .
Amazon recently came out with its `` 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime '' Jay Parini : I was more than a little shocked by the list , which crudely mixes categories . If you 're going to die soon , he suggests reading `` Walden '' by Henry David Thoreau . Parini : Only about a third of the books on the Amazon list are in any way must-reads .