Twenty-Four Hours to Go

Less than a day before I start and I have yet to definitely settle on my first book in each category.  The candidates in Fiction are Sir Walter Scott's Waverley; A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; The Metamorphoses of Ovid; The Lady of the Lake by Scott; and the Thirteen by Balzac.  I can't seem to find my copy of Louis Auchincloss' The Rector of Justin, so that one will have to wait a month or two.  It's imperative that my first novel not be a mistake, so that I get off on the right foot.

Fewer possibilities in Non-Fiction:  Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, begun many times but never managed to get past the first couple of chapters; Roman Literature by Michael Grant; The Classical Greeks, again by Grant; Berkeley's dangerous Principles of Human Knowledge; and John Hale's weighty The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, which seems to have the inside track.

Any guidance on which of these to essay first will be greatly appreciated.