The New York Books Canon

I feel a little ashamed of going all listy on you for the second day here, but I couldn't resist commenting on New York magazine's New York Books Canon, for books judged on "all-around literary merit, and... the degree to which a book allows itself to obsess over the city." Say what you will about how New Yorkers are obsessed with themselves and this list proves it -- I still want to read all of these which I haven't read yet.

As it turns out, there are quite a lot of those. Here's the full slate, with the books I haven't read in italics:
Norman Mailer, THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT
Ron Padgett and David Shapiro (ed.), AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW YORK POETS
Bernard Malamud, THE TENANTS
Charles Mingus, BENEATH THE UNDERDOG -- I had no idea the jazz musician ever even wrote a book!
Roger Kahn, THE BOYS OF SUMMER
Don DeLillo, GREAT JONES STREET
Grace Paley, ENORMOUS CHANGES AT THE LAST MINUTE
Robert A. Caro, THE POWER BROKER: ROBERT MOSES AND THE FALL OF NEW YORK -- This is one of my dad's favorite books ever. Every year I intend to read it and never get around to it. This summer maybe I'll break down and buy a copy, along with the XXL beach bag I'll need to go with it.
Woody Allen, WITHOUT FEATHERS
E.L. Doctorow, RAGTIME
Susan Sontag, ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Rem Koolhaas, DELIRIOUS NEW YORK
Philip Roth, ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND
D. Keith Mano, TAKE FIVE -- I've never even heard of this book! But it sounds insane.
Mark Helprin, WINTER'S TALE
Martin Amis, MONEY
Jay McInerney, BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY -- Funny, I just checked this out and joked on Goodreads that new young residents are required to read it. Not true, but perhaps a good idea; I'll find out soon.
Tom Wolfe, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES
Mary Gaitskill, BAD BEHAVIOR
Luc Sante, LOW LIFE: LURES AND SNARES OF OLD NEW YORK -- I keep seeing references to this book everywhere; I guess it's in vogue now?
Toni Morrison, JAZZ
Anatole Broyard, KAFKA WAS THE RAGE: A GREENWICH VILLAGE MEMOIR
Michael Chabon, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, RANDOM FAMILY -- one of my best books of 2006. The rare nonfiction book I want to read over and over again; New York calls it a "nightmarishly exaggerated Jane Austen novel."
Anne Winters, THE DISPLACED OF CAPITAL
Richard Price, LUSH LIFE

Two of my favorite New York books, Betty Smith's A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN and Dawn Powell's THE LOCUSTS HAVE NO KING, missed the cutoff (they had to be published within the last 40 years) but I don't have any specific quibbles about the list.

If you did better on the list than I did, the brag box is below! Otherwise, time to add all of these to Goodreads (sorry, friends on same).