In college, many courses had required reading. A list would be handed out, and posted in Widener Reading Room.
You did not have a prayer of passing the exam if you did not read those books or articles before indulging in the luxury of reading other things that seemed likely to be valuable to helping you become "well rounded" and intellectually developed.There was no time for pleasurable browsing.
The miserable thing was that some bastards would get to the only available copies and hide them so the rest of us could not find them until they were through with them, and even then they did not always put them back in the proper place.And the profs would not even punch your TS card.
This is why I have such bitter recollections of required reading lists.

And any list of ten books is a obscenity Procrustean bed.