The AV Club made a list of 35 odds 'n' sods albums as essential as official releases and the first surprise is that they found that many worthy ones. The writers certainly admit that all aren't perfect but that's not the point - the point is that these are up to the standards of the other albums and by the ones I'm familiar with (about half) that's true. I would have added Joy Division's Still and The Great Lost Kinks Album and maybe even the Sex Pistols' Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle which has always seemed more a stray tracks collection than a soundtrack (especially since it doesn't have much to do with the film).
A different note is IO9's 75 Books You Should Own for DC Comics' 75 Anniversary. The whole "own" bit makes this too aggressive, especially considering that several selections are Absolute/Omnibus editions that are too much (too much money, too much size) for even many fans. There's one real slip - Mad and The Spirit are now owned by DC but aren't in any sense part of its history. Some of the selections really shouldn't have been (Golden Age, 52, Blackest Night) but more importantly the emphasis on what can currently be bought means large chunks of DC is missing - nearly all of the Western, SF, horror and war comics, completely all of the romance, comedy and teen (nobody really wants a Binky or Scooter revival but trust me that some of the Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope issues still hold up), and genuine but unreprinted treasures such as Sugar & Spike. Otherwise, the list is pretty decent and it's nice to see recognition for often overlooked titles like WE3 (one of the best works in any medium I've encountered in the past decade), Doctor 13: Architecture and Morality, Sleeper and the finale to Grant Morrison's Animal Man.