On the subject of reading lists and how they can constrain rather than liberate: the canonical reading list, whatever form it takes — the Western Canon, the Booker Prize archive, the New York Times 100 greatest books — is a set of choices made by specific people at specific times with specific criteria. The canon is not neutral and it was never meant to be.

This doesn't mean canonical books are bad. Most of them are good. It means that the canon is one map, not the territory. There are entire continents of excellent literature that canonical reading lists don't cover: African literature, Latin American speculative fiction, translated Japanese contemporaries, Indigenous writers.

I read canonically and anti-canonically. The canon gave me the vocabulary for talking about literature. The anti-canonical reading gave me the perspective to see the canon clearly.