Collecting By List

Reading this article in the Atlantic about Thomas C. Foster's new book, Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America, prompted me to think about "book collecting by list." The ones Foster picked for his book would certainly make a neat little collection, as would the shorter list created by Jay Parini in his Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America. The Private Library has a wonderful post on collecting by lists, e.g. Booker Prize winners. I recall that "the man who loved books too much," a.k.a. John Gilkey, used the Modern Library 100 as his guide. One could even go with the NYPL's Books of the Century list and create one heck of a collection of modern firsts. What other lists might collectors use? How about you?