Books you are ashamed never to have read?

Piggywaspushed. It was an Everyman edition. I still have it. I remember the introduction which said that the reader would find it like climbing a hill at first but once upon the top he would view a wonderful panarama. This allowed me to expect a slow start but even at that young age I was absorbed straight away. Tolstoy has a habit of stopping from time to time to inform the reader about his views on war and how it comes about. The battle scenes are really interesting as Tolstoy is depicting real and correct happenings. The love and romance is lovely. Natasha Rostov is a delight. The thing to remember when reading Tolstoy is that his main characters are depicting himself. Hence his guilt about his rakish behaviour in his early years and his struggle with this. Golly, hope I haven’t put you off!

I asked my English teacher which book did she consider to be the greatest novel ever written. I was thirteen at the time. She considered and selected War and a Peace. Asked for it as a Christmas present. It came in three volumes which is definitely the way to read it as there are only about 250 odd pages in each volume. (Everyman edition). I started it on Christmas Day evening and had finished it by the end of the holidays. I fell in love with Peter Basoukov. I Loved it. A couple of years ago I reread it as as a 74 year old and I still loved it. Cannot understand what all this talk of it being difficult or too long is about. There are a lot of books just as long and not nearly as informative or interesting. And I am definitely not lying.

I read lots of classics as a teenager; all of Jane Austin's books, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre etc and most of Thomas Hardy's (v. Painful!). Jude the Obscure has forever retained its #1 slot on my list of worst/depressing books ever.

I tried to read Middlemarch but it was so dull. I forced myself to read a page a day but gave up before long. Never fancied Dickens. Also tried and failed to get into Vanity Fair.

Have to pretend you a Victorian lady spending a shilling on each monthly instalment. I may buy a bonnet and wear it while reading my few chapters a month.

I’ve ever read any Dickens but am going to join the goodreads readalong of Bleak House starting in March... and finishing in Sept 2019. Reading it in the same time frame as it was published originally. I reckon that’s pretty doable.

None! I read what I fancy reading and don't feel under any obligation to read anything. Especially not since I read Brave New World, detested it, read it again to try and get from it what everyone else raved about, continued to detest it and was told by someone else that I must not have understood it. No, you fool, I just thought it was rubbish, that's allowed.

I’m ashamed about my lack of 20th century classics like ‘On the Road’ etc. Although as my English education stopped at GCSE I don’t feel too bad.

Lord of the Rings I have never got through (‘they met some orcs, they fought some orcs, they sang a song about beating the orcs’). But I think that trying the book is probably more important than finishing it, no? I’m never going to be able to read everything so picking and choosing based on good information is the way to go!

Tale of Two Cities is my favourite Dickens. I also really like the Shakespeare history plays. I did Richard III with a GCSE class in the days when we had controlled assessment - he is such an outrageous villain - really engaging.

I love the bit in David Copperfield possibly not David Copperfield, but I'm pretty sure it is where David gets drunk for the first time and it captures the feeling of being young and drunk so well. Also the family who paint Happy Cottage on their interior wall and get the proportions slightly wrong, just because I wouldn't have imagined Georgians/early Victorians doing that, but someone obviously did and Dickens wrote about it. Orlanda I really like the imagery in Our Mutual Friend too - all that dust - but I'm struggling to remember the plot!

I have tried reading Tolkien several times, but gave up after a few dozen pages. It’s just tripe.

Ulysses - pretentious tripe.

I enjoy most of Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies but can’t get on with the histories. Henry IV part 7, or whatever? Historic tripe.

Completely agree with squirrel. Other than a few purple passages, the fog in bleak house, the fog and pip’s fear in GE, read quickly. He’d have been writing for TV these days, that soap about schools, can’t recall its name. Or west wing. Or something about the nhs. Bleak house, which I adore, works as a biting indictment of how we treated and indeed continue to treat “ the poor” as well as the legal service, and do goodery...added to which there’s a murder interest...yum. And some very strange and nasty people ..extra yum. . I think Our Mutual Friend works brillíantly like that, the two intertwined plots, the symbolism of the dust heaps looming over you. It would make a great serial.

I've enjoyed Dickens much more since approaching them like watching a soap, and not trying too hard to follow plot, etc. The characters are great, and stay with me, the plots....get a bit hazy, tbh

I’m just coming to the end of The Moonstone and I’ve really enjoyed it!
Another I have started but not yet had time to finish is My Antonia. What I’ve read of it so far has been interesting.
One I loved reading years ago was Lark Rise to Candleford. That’s not really fiction though!

I love Wilkie Collins and have read quite a lot of his more obscure stuff... but have never managed to get through The Moonstone.

English teacher here too, with a predilection for crime fiction when off-duty.

Have finally read Great Expectations as my son is studying it for GCSE, but Dickens makes me irrationally cross because he is so universally praised and I find him long-winded and not as clever as he thinks he is.

George Eliot is another big gap in my knowledge: studied Silas Marner for A Level and that was the beginning and end of my time with her.

Love Shakespearean tragedies, love Gothic and dystopian generally, love a lot of new literature.

I am put off by anything that seems to worthy or try-hard, or that seems to be self-consciously desperate to be different. Hence never having mde it through Ulysses because it’s all a bit Emperor’s new clothes for me.

However, I did read War and Peace as a pretentious teen