[David Landrum]

Famous books I read and didn't think they deserve the reputation they have:

Life of Pi--it was okay, but everyone raved about it as a work of great spiritual insight. I'm still looking for the spirituality.

Jude the Obscure--my fellow grad students loved it, called it "Jude the Obscene." I found it well-written but rather boring. And it seemed unbelievable that a six year-old boy could hang his brother and sister and himself and leave a suicide note explaining why he did it.

Cold Mountain--struck me as a lot of overblown naturalism. Naturalism? That went out of style with Jack London.

The Old Gringo--started out fine but then in the last half he turns into a pornographic novel. Now I've got nothing against eroticism, but Fuentes ruins a perfectly good book with a lot of violent, clinical and (I think) unnecessary descriptions of people having sex. Too bad.

The worst novel I've ever read: A Hazard of New Fortunes by William Dean Howells. For God's sake, don't read it unless you're forced to. And if you're forced to, endure the torture bravely.

dwl

[Janet Kenny]

I don't want to reread a lot of fine books that I treasure in my memory. Life is short and my needs keep changing. I don't think that therefore the books are no good after all. I know they are tremendous but they're not what I need now. I keep the books because their presence recharges my memory and my respect. And I also may suddenly change and need to read them again.

I have read "Candide" and indeed Sciascia's "Candido". And if anyone hasn't read "Penguin Island" by Anatole France, they should read it.

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited July 30, 2008).]

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally posted by David Landrum:
Famous books I read and didn't think they deserve the reputation they have:

Life of Pi--it was okay, but everyone raved about it as a work of great spiritual insight. I'm still looking for the spirituality.

Jude the Obscure--my fellow grad students loved it, called it "Jude the Obscene." I found it well-written but rather boring. And it seemed unbelievable that a six year-old boy could hang his brother and sister and himself and leave a suicide note explaining why he did it.

Amen on BOTH of those counts, David.

I read Life Of Pi at the beginning of this year, and words cannot properly express how horrible I thought the book was, especially in light of all the hype it received. It reads like it was written by a teenager who had just read Old Man And The Sea and The Satanic Verses a month prior. I had honestly thought I was doing myself a favor by reading an alleged "modern classic"...and it was such a waste. There are literary authors I don't like, but for almost all of them I can at least admit that their work has literary merit, and that I can understand their allure, even if their work isn't my cup of tea. But I consider Life Of Pi an affront to my intelligence, and a cruel joke on all of the people who champion its success.

As for Jude The Obscure, it had the unfortunate effect of making me not want to read ANY other Thomas Hardy. I'm sure his other work might be more to my taste, but I just can't bring myself to pick any of it up, thanks to that book.

[Gail White]

Like Janet, I read mostly 19th century fiction, though now that we're in a whole new century, I'm creeping up as far as the 1930s.

So here are the novels I should have read but haven't:
Ulysses
Anything by Saul Bellow
Anything by Nabokov

On the other hand, I think I've read more fiction by Harriet Beecher Stowe than anyone who wasn't writing a thesis on her.

(PS - I can't believe no one but me has made a post since
1:00 today!! Where are you, people?)

[Roger Slater]

Katy, of the ones you haven't read that I have read, I'd most encourage you to drop everything and read (1) David Copperfield, and (2) Paradise Lost, through.

Paradise Lost was another surprise peak reading experience of my life. I had read it before, but in an edition with at least three footnotes per page telling me what this or that word meant. Years later, someone gave me a nicely printed hardcover edition that didn't have a single footnote (just a few Blake prints here and there). I ended up reading it like a wonderful novel, and if I didn't understand a word or two here and there without footnotes, I just pushed on and it didn't matter in the slightest. I would urge anyone to find an edition without footnotes (hard to find, I think) and curl up for an amazing read.

Oh, and (3) Robinson Crusoe is also pretty fabulous, though not on the same level.

I've also not been able to read Don Juan straight through, though I did barely manage Childe Harold. And I've read only one book by Bellow (Humboldt's Gift) and nothing by Philip Roth.

For a while I tried to strike it rich by writing a legal thriller like Grisham, but one day it occurred to me that I had never succeeded in reading a Grisham so the odds of writing one were not good.

And I haven't read Trollope.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Yeah, I know, I'm just so crap at anything long... Crap, isn't it! I do dip INTO Paradise Lost... but I just can't see me reading David Copperfield at this stage. I'd rather read the Proust.

I had a terrible shock one day at about fifteen, when I suddenly had a sharp sense of the finiteness of one's reading life, and realised I would probably never read Le Rouge et le Noir. It was like, well, you can talk all you like about Stendhal... but he just isn't really THAT likely to get to the top of my list!

Shocking.

[Janet Kenny]

Katy, I had the advantage of growing up in a country that didn't get television until I was a student and too poor to buy one. I have read nearly everything published that I could get my hands on up to the time I was in London and went to visit a friend who had a television set. I said: "Do you mean to say that you can watch films and exciting stories on television?"
Everybody in the room laughed.


By the time I had said that I had already read almost everything that you say you will never read. I had several friends who had read "Finegans Wake". I read morality plays, every French novel in English translation, the complete works of Thomas Hardy, most fashionable English writers. If I was less well read in American writers it was because the books were not available. I did read "Portnoy's Complaint".

Since then, I have watched an awful lot of television.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I have never read any of Timothy Murphy's books. The reason is that he's read all of them to me over the phone, making my own efforts irrelevant and unnecessary. Does this count?

I have not read Finnegan's Wake but have looked at it quite a bit. Does this count?

I have read The Naked and the Dead, twice. Does this count against me?

I have read all books by John Whitworth--the long and the short and the tall. This will get me into heaven if I convert to the C of E.

I have read almost everything else except any novels by James Fennimore Cooper, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Danielle Steele. I have read almost all of Waugh except Brideshead Revisited, which sounds entirely too serious to be any fun. I have also not read anything by Walker Percy or Confederacy of Dunces. I have even read, god help me, The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac, where a character says, "Mardoux, go naked in the world." And she responds by walking around with no clothes on until she gets arrested. I have read more Maugham than Lawrence and had a better time than those who favor the latter. I stand by these omissions and inclusions and will punch out anyone who says I ain't literate.

Signed,

Arse Gwynn, bibliophile and book-lover

Oh, I had to skim Middlemarch to get ready for an exam. But I do play to go back to it, eventually. I swear.

[Mary Meriam]

I adored Middlemarch, Arse.

[Janet Kenny]

Sam,
You're really on the hard stuff when you read Romola.