A bucket list (from "kick the bucket," according to the Urban Dictionary) is a list of things you want to do before you die. Since we're all readers here, my list is the 10 books I've been meaning to read, but haven't gotten around to yet:

1. GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell.
I saw the flick a few times but I figure the storyline is syrupy while the prose is overwrought. Not true at all, say her fans. So, GWTW goes as #1 on my bucket list.

2. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey.
Like #1, I saw the flick when it hit the theaters eons ago. Love his poetry. He was the writer-in-residence where I went to college. I recall seeing him with his guitar. Later on, I met him at a Library of Congress gala.

3. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller.
This is one of those taboo novels from my youth. It's probably tame by today's standards.

4. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO by Boris Pasternik.
Its doorstopper 558 pages sounds daunting, but I like the cool-sounding name of the novel title and its author.

5. Anything by Jack Kerouac but ON THE ROAD.
The guy had to have carried more than one big book in him. Don't tell me my boyhood hero was a one-hit wonder. His DHARMA BUMS sounds colorful and inviting.

6. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayan Rand.
I used to see this book mentioned everywhere. I've heard good things and bad things about it. I guess I'll have to read it and make up my own mind.

7. ROBINSON CURSOE by Daniel Defoe.
What makes me hesitate is slogging through the 17th-century prose style. My reader's patience wears thin real fast nowadays.

8. MOBY DICK by Herman Melville.
I read several other Melville books in college. That should suffice, I believe. Still...

9. SANCTUARY by William Faulkner.
I've started it several times before I got lost and chucked it. Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Fitzgeralds from the same generation of scribes appeal to me more than Faulkner does.

10. ??? by ???
I'll leave the tenth slot open on purpose. I hate the finality of ending my bucket list.

So: what and who go on your bucket list?