Janice, I would read The Lord of the Rings Trilogy if somebody paid me.

Nobody living in Sweden could take that northern/nordic stuff too seriously.

Sam, if you have read all of my books you will go to Heaven. I'll have a word with a bishop I know. And of course youdn't have to convert to the C of E. You could even be (gulp!) a CALVINIST, though I wouldn't fancy any Heaven of theirs. I have read Middlemarch (twice) and my wife has read Romola, though I know that doesn't count. She told me what happens. Savanarola gets his. (spelling?) I believe he was considerably less nice than George Eliot makes him, but then she was, at bottom, a kindly soul.

I once bought a book calle Auto da Fe, kept it ten years unread and then sold it for enough to buy P.G. Wodehouse's 'Young Men in Spats'. Or was it 'The Observer's Book of Steam Locomotives', a bit sad that one, but nice pictures. One day, when one of my books makes a really OUTRAGEOUS profit I'm going to buy one of those model steamrollers that go by steam. I haven't told my wife about this though my elder daughter knows. Oh, and I've read everything of Sam's I've got. Larkin is te only other poet of which that is true. What heaven does THAT get me into. Do they play cricket there?

John, what a splendid opportunity for an Auto-da-fé

Lenny Bernstein lets it all hang out and so does Adolph Greene.

And for those of you who haven't read "Candide" LEONARD BERNSTEIN HAS .

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 01, 2008).]

Canetti's Auto de Fe is evilly good, as is his "Crowds and Power" (not a novel).

Now I must confess to having a copy of it somewhere but as yet unread. Now where in the hell is it?
(I moved interstate and I plead the headaches.)

It's disappointing to see so frequently "I won't read this or that genre fiction and Tolkien." Having read some of Dan Brown, I certainly wouldn't read any more, and having seen the first few pages of romance novels I was never enticed by the overblown language. But dismissing any author because of genre in which he or she writes is puerile at best and, in the world of formalist poets, a little at cross-purposes.

Besides, the LOTR trilogy is exceedingly well-written and entertaining. It's certainly better than Finnegan's Wake, which is nothing more than a 500-page joke by Joyce (a funny one, but still, he was being about as serious as Bret Easton Ellis when he wrote American Psycho) and a billion times better than the nonsense / anti-reader novels that ape FW (and just as influential within its own genre).

Besides, the whole ghettoization of genre that supports such behavior is damaging to the distribution of poetry. Dewey decimaling (or LOCing) poetry to a far-away section of the library and banishing it to the back of book stores just isn't good for anyone.

OnT though, I've never read any Faulkner novels, nor have I read Piers Ploughman, finished the Canterbury Tales, the middle/begat/history parts of the Bible, or the Iliad.

M

I just don't like the genre of fantasy and hence my aversion to Lord of the Rings (I liked the films, by the way). That doesn't mean it's bad, just that I don't like it. I can't stand the writing of Flannery O'Conner--and my colleagues are mystified by that. Just preference. Upbringing, mental disposition, social class and God knows what else goes into this.

I once highly recommended the story "The Garden of the Forking Paths" by Borges to a friend of mine who is a self-proclaimed computer geek. When I asked him how he liked it, he said, "It was a bore--I had it figured out by the third paragraph." This surprised me, but upon reflection I realized that as a computer programmer he tended to see literature as a riddle, problem, or program to be deciphered. To me, literature is something to enjoy. To him it is something to "figure out." Which of us is right in his approach to literature? Neither. It's conditioning and taste.

But I don't see how in the hell anyone could like Farmer Giles of Ham! http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

'fess up. There are some "classics" you slogged through -- or didn't even finish -- either for a course, or because you felt like you "had to".

O.K. Here's my list.

1. Moby Dick - maybe not quite as boring as an actual whaling voyage. But pretty close.

2. Proust. I found it very beautiful, but couldn't make it past the first few chapters.

3. War and Peace - The "war" parts are BOR-ING. The "peace" parts are good.

4. Later Henry James. Slogged through The Golden Bowl. Couldn't make it through The Ambassadors." It's like bushwhacking through a jungle of verbiage.

5. Walden.

AND

I admit to loving:

The da Vinci Code

John Grisham

Stephen King - well, earlier works. He's ground out tons of shit.

Harry Potter - 10 billion kids can't be wrong.


Gosh, that felt good. Let the chips fall where they may.

Marion, the first few chapters of Proust (the Overture and Combray) are very different from the rest of the book. They are far more dense and "poetic," and it would be impossible to read all of Proust if he wrote like that for three thousand pages. I believe that a lot of people don't get any further into Proust because they don't read far enough to learn that, after the Combray section is over, it suddenly gets much, much easier. Beginning with "Swann in Love," which is sort of a short novel within a novel, it's just pure entertainment and not at all difficult. There's pretty much nothing in the Overture and Combray that you need to follow the plot of what comes after, so if you just forget about them and start reading with "Swann in Love," you may be pleasantly surprised. (And, "knowing you" the way I do, though of course we haven't met, I think you would absolutely love it).



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited August 01, 2008).]

There’s cricket in Heaven,
All the bowlers zing,
There’s cricket in Heaven,
Hark, hark, those batsmen swing.
There’s cricket in Heaven.
There’s even J. L. Carr.
You get nice white sweaters and
Free rounds at the bar.

There’s cricket in Heaven,
And all rejoice because
The Indians can’t get there
And the Brits rock in Oz.

Okay, full disclosure - I skipped the philosophical chapters of War & Peace. Otherwise, I've read just about everything a 19th c. Russian ever wrote. I think The Brothers Karamazov is the best novel ever written. (When I told my husband this, he read it and joined the Orthodox Church. Beware of what you recommend to people.)

I haven't read much Proust because I find him boring when he's not writing about the French gay life. But I've read most of Flaubert, including Salammbo, a little gem of costumed sadism.

BORING BOOKS THAT I'VE READ:
The Newcomes, The Virginians, and The Adventures of Philip - all by Thackeray
Barnaby Rudge, by Dickens

MOST FAMOUS BOOK I FOUND BORING:
Heart of Darkness, by Conrad (and never read another line of him except The Nigger of the Narcissus, which was forced on me in college).

TRASHY BOOKS THAT I LOVE:
The Three Musketeers and all its sequels, by Dumas.

(RSG - you really should give Confederacy of Dunces a try. As a former New Orleanean - I think it's priceless.)

God bless you Marion.

Thank you Brian. It wasn't easy, coming out like that.

There now, Gail. Didn't that feel good?

Thanks, Bob, for the Proust tip. Who knew? I'll put him on my reading list. In between Rowling, Grisham and Dan Brown, of course.