The top 100 things you don’t need to do before you die

The internet these days is chock full of must-reads, must-sees, can’t-live-withouts, and lists (oh, the lists!) of things you need to do before you die.

As I understand it, we are now all legally obliged to watch Breaking Bad by the end of 2013. Our prisons are already full to bursting with people who failed to watch The West Wing or The Wire when they were expressly told to. I even saw a woman prosecuted last week for not having read Gone Girl. What was she thinking?

Richard Osman offers a way out of the must-see mess so that you can enjoy life again.

Of 100 Greatest Novels, you can happily ignore all of them except Scoop and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I am assuming you’ve already read To Kill a Mockingbird for O-level. Read Shakespeare if you want to, but you don’t have to. (Though if you don’t ever read him, you’re not allowed to say he’s rubbish. Deal?) You should probably read Great Expectations, but feel free to leave Dickens there. And I think Wuthering Heights is the only Emily Brontë novel worth reading (someone will rise to this, just you wait and see).

• lists
• Richard Osman