What’s the greatest book
you’ll never read?
We all know what the classics are and we all know where the gaps in our literary experiences exist and mock us. Sure, we can insist that we’ll get to them someday, but most of us have enough trouble finding time for the books we want to read, much less the ones we’re supposed to read. Here’s a quick list of mine:
Moby Dick
War and Peace
The Lord of the Rings
Ulysses
On the Road
And about a thousand more. How about you? What are the unmissable classics that you’ve accepted you’re probably going to miss?
“Moby Dick,” although now that I see mahler9’s post above, I might be rethinking that!
“War and Peace” is on my list too, as well as “Finnegan’s Wake.” I might give FW another go, though.
Also, there are a few classic books I’ve read and kind of wish I hadn’t. Like “Madame Bovary” and “Confederacy of Dunces.”
I work in a bookstore. This could be a long list…
Maybe it’s because I’m and old fart, but I’ve come to believe that there’s only “not yet”. There’s plenty of books I thought 20 or 30 years ago I would never, ever read, and yes I’ve since read them with great interest. I used to think that Cervantes, Dante, Vergil, Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio were things I’d tip my hat to but never actually read. How wrong I was. There’s still plenty of classics I haven’t read, some I can’t see myself ever reading, and some I’ve picked up but then put down again. But who knows what I’ll be reading… Read more »
Lars, I have close to 750 movies in my personal collection I haven’t sat down and watched yet. I guarantee you, I am NEVER reading the books I listed. 🙂
I believe you. I’ve just learned that, for me anyway, “never” is a long time 😉
Ugh… Jack Kerouac. I tried “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums” and I couldn’t get through either of them. I know he’s supposed to be brilliant and the voice of a generation or something, but I just COULD. NOT. DEAL. Maybe it’s a “season of life” thing and I’ll be ready for him later — I tried reading Lord of the Rings in high school and hated it, but just shy of ten years later, it was great.
Ain’t it funny how differently we experience these things. I found On The Road to be lots and lots of fun.
“Ulysses”….I will read books about James Joyce but I don’t have the energy to pick up “Ulysses”…
Didn’t somebody Twitter a line out of “Ulysses” daily for months and months….(that’s probably more my speed!)….plus I am afraid of any flatulent lines I might encounter (didn’t Joyce have a weird obsession with his wife’s queefs?)
Allan :
“Dangerous Liaisons”
by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. The book behind the film
Dangerous Liaisons (1988) with Glen Close and John Malkovich.
The thing about the Proust is that you really don’t have to read all 7 volumes of it to get something out of this wonderful work. Just read the section “Swann’s Way” to get a taste of what Proust is like, then go on from there if you want. Similarly with Joyce: “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is not really a challenge for adult, intelligent readers. And it’s fantastic. Same with “Dubliners” (they’re stories, so just read some of them, or just read the magnificent one: ‘The Dead’). Sample “Ulysses” you won’t be sorry–beautiful language alone makes… Read more »
À la recherche du temps perdu is a book that I would like to have read. I have more pressing things to do than reading it, though. I already have a book of 1,700 dense pages on my current reading list.
Anything James Joyce which makes me feel like a failure as a Lit major of Irish descent and The Scarlet Letter which makes me feel like a failure of an English teacher.
Honestly, I think I’d read The Bible. I just wish I could understand all the weirdness and be the badass who whips out scripture to outsmart the assholes who use religion to oppress others.
Besides that, I’ll never read Russian literature. I try and try and try and other than Anna Karenina, I feel nothing.
Try Nabokov. He’s so much bigger than “Lolita”. “Pale Fire” is just utterly brilliant. It’s a short book, but there’s such a treasure trove of smartness and literary genius in it.
also probably won’t get around to:
The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men
Anything by Jane Austen
Confederacy of Dunces
…..
Everything by James Joyce in my home library has had its pages ruined by nap drool, so there’s that. War and Peace is never gonna happen. I’d like to say Moby Dick will, at some point, but I doubt it :/
Unfortunately, “War and Peace” tops my list. Even before I clicked on the link, that’s the first novel that went through my mind. Ulysses is a close second. Also topping my list? My friends’ attempts at novels. Sorry, but no dice, friends. Make your editor read that shit.
I’ve read enough classics to realize there aren’t any unmisseable ones 🙂
Hi FlyingKal
Have you read all volumes of Knausgård’s “My Strugge”?
Maybe we should invite him to write for GMP? Ask him to share his struggle with becoming a man with us .
Hi Iben,
I firmly believe that Knausgaard’s books are too new to qualify as “classics”. At least just yet.
Hi Allan
That is a good question. Here is two of mine
1: The Quaran
2: “À la recherche du temps perdu “by Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
3: all volumes of ” My Struggle” by Knausgaard
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I’ll give it another try soon, but I expect to fail as miserable as the last times. Somehow I can’t wrap my head around the way Pynchon is thinking and talking. His emotions, ideas and sentences just make no sense to me.
Oh, and the Iliad and the Odyssey as well, but there the problem is that I haven’t found a translation yet which is not old-fashioned and stuffy and pretentious.
Try T.E. Lawrence (Yes, of Arabia)’s translation of the Odyssey.. he was friends with Bernard Shaw and the influence shows..
Good idea. I have only tried classical German translation (my native language), which were written by stuffy old professors 100 years ago trying to be more classical than thou. You know, the German equivalent to faux King James Bible English.
Lord of the Rings. Apropos of nothing, I was reading the LOTR Wikipedia page the other day and, apparently, there was a FIFTH Hobbit, a Pete Best of the Fellowship, named FATTY?
Seriously. His name was Fatty. Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and FATTY. And Fatty stayed behind… presumably for reasons associated with his name, I’m guessing.
So… yeah. I don’t need my fantasy to be quite that twee. I’ll just stick to the Peter Jackson movies, thank you.
Fatty Bolger stayed behind in Crickhollow in order to maintain the illusion that people were still living in Frodo’s House after Frodo left. Unfortunately the Ringwraiths popped in to say hi, and tore the place up. Fatty survived though. He wasn’t cowardly, since obviously he knew there would be danger associated with essentially pretending to be Frodo, But he still did it. He was actually more afraid of the Old Forest than the wraiths… and wasn’t overly “fat” it was just his nickname.. He was actually Fredgar.. so he would have been Freddy to Meridoc’s Merry and Perigrin’s Pippin. He’s… Read more »
My 12 yo finished The Hobbit a while ago, and is eagerly reading LOTR. She says both are much better than the movie. 😉
Ulysses. This should be the start and the end of the conversation.
Nailed it.
“Gone With the Wind” tops my list. I have tried, I really really have! But I just can’t do it…
I have read “The Lord of the Rings” several times though! My dad read that to us for the first time when I was about 7 and I have read the series a few times since then!