By "Must read" list, I don't necessarily mean just books. I mean pieces of artistic legacy which have, regardless of their original quality or merit, gone on to influence later art and hold a place in Western popular cultural memory.
The sorts of pieces I am looking for are pieces that, while not necessarily the best pieces of art themselves, but improve and enhance later art if you know about them.
For example - Star Wars, love it as I do, is not the greatest film. It's Space Opera. That said, how much of current pop cultural reference flies over your head because you haven't seen it? What about Citizen Kane's "Rosebud"? Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp"?
To go further, what about the masked characters of Commedia Dell'Arte? or Botticelli's the Birth of Venus?
So, much like the Smithsonian's Anthology of of American Folk Music, I think it would be cool to put together an Anthology of Western Pop Culture.