[D-Machine]

I waffled on choosing 100-250 initially, thinking similarly as you for authors like Shakespeare, Freud, Nietzsche, etc.

But then I kind of thought, for most people, that is probably overkill. If you stick with just one text from each great author, 50 is still a huge variety relative I think to what was available to people in the past. More is great, but not necessary: there are plenty of other sources of depth in life beyond texts, and text doesn't work well for everyone either.

[eudamoniac]

Fair enough. I'd say there are over 500 "worth reading" but I agree with you too that with 50 or fewer you can have enough. People used to re-read texts dozens of times and that may actually be better in some ways than the constant novelty.

[D-Machine]

Yup, don't disagree with you at all here.