Books you are ashamed never to have read?

Piggy, no, I’m not... funny, that... bet you prefer wuthering heights to Jane Eyre too..

Just heard Hardy's Far from the madding crowd it has such a modern voice, I love that book and wished now I had use Bathsheba as my DD name

Aargh, they, Jude and Lear drive me to despair...

And the House with a Green Shutters is soooo depressing. Sunset song...oh god...

Yay: Humiliation as in Changing Places: I hope MauriceZapp joins.

Virginia Woolf said Middlemarch was the one of the few English novels written for grown up people, or some such. I think I agree with her.

For entry level Dickens I’d suggest Great Expectations or David Copperfield. I love Bleak House, great symbolic mystery story, and Our Mutual Friend, ditto symbolism, but both far too long as entry level.

My gaps: I cannot be doing with Henry James. An elephant in a small room looking for a pea was how he was described. The Ambassadors, yawn. Have I read every word? Prob not. And I’ve never managed to do anything other than skim Lord of the Rings.

Ulysses on the other hand is funny and moving, take it quickly . Imagine you’re in an Irish bar with the craic going on around you, it falls into place easily.

For Persuasion, one of my fave books ever, the first half before she gets to Lyme is really funny scenes to tell you how nice Anne is compared to her family and how deluded Captain Wentworth is. Great satire and irony, unkindness, Mrs Musgrave with her fat sighs, Mary with her headaches, the awful Elizabeth and Sir Walter, but it’s Lyme where it really gets going in plot terms. And yes, I think it does pass the Bechdel test, Anne and her ill friend talk about a lot of things other than men.

I did English and the great unreadable for me is Sidney’s Arcadia.

I mentioned I was reading Middlemarch and not one of my colleagues had read it and two of them hadn't heard of it!!!

What??? Sorry to be judgemental but...that is actually quite shocking.

I have read several of Hardy's novels but somehow never felt any desire to read Tess. I know the plot now anyway.

I read 'North and South' for A level and enjoyed it in parts but haven't felt any desire to go back and have another go.
I haven't read Middlemarch and am not that keen on the idea of it. A friend was reading 'Adam Bede' last year and raving about it so I might give that a go this year.
I've not read any Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, I've not read 'Wuthering Heights' either.

I do enjoy reading Dickens, though. He is long winded in places but I enjoy them nonetheless.

I finally read my first Austen last year, Pride and Prejudice, and enjoyed it more than I'd expected to.
Never read any Tolstoy, Dostkoevsky, Joyce, Hardy or Dickens other than Oliver Twist and a Christmas Carol. I did read The Trial and Metamorphosis when in my early twenties though just so I could understand what people were on about when they described something as "Kafka-esque"

I've never read Tess of the Durbervilles, despite writing about it extensively in a uni essay! Thomas Hardy just depresses me so much - after Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge I just couldn't bring myself to actually read it

I've also had David Foster Wallace's The Pale King on my bedside table for about two years. Infinite Jest is my favourite novel but I can't quite bring myself to start The Pale King for some reason. Maybe because when I've read it there's no more DFW left to read, maybe because I'm worried I'll hate it due to it being an unfinished novel, I don't know. I'm determined to start it this year though.

Since watching your thread OP I have downloaded some classics on to my kindle for free that I fancy reading but never finished or got round to reading.
I've just started Jane Eyre, never finished it at uni.
I've also downloaded Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations and Hard Times.
Thanks for the inspiration!
Are you going to start any OP?

I don't feel I'm doing too badly on the 19th century classics as I've read most of Hardy, Austen, some Dickens and Elliot but I realize there are still so many authors I have never touched! I think the biggest gaps in my knowledge are from earlier - especially the Roman and Greeks! I also have a copy of Dante that I have been trying to get into for YEARS...and it's in translation so there really is no excuse. We didn't study any of these at school (even though I did English A-level) and I have never tackled them myself. In the twentieth century there is so much I should have read; Woolf, Orwell, Lawrence, Greene, Lessing, Atwood - I have probably read only one or two of each. The trouble is they all wrote so MUCH!

I read Tenant of wildfell Hall and enjoyed it much more than JA or WH. It was also highly controversial at the time, so worth a look just for that. Anne is the most talented, and underrated, of the Brontës imho.

Any get into Brontes or Austen. Liked Emma though.

I read Middlemarch on a gap year a million years ago and absolutely loved it, but the place I was living in had many similarities to England in the 19th century

I have it on good authority that you can't read all of ulysees but if you do, choose some random chapters and imagine it being the pulse of a heart beat to give you focus.

I haven't.

I read Anne bronte's classic The tenant of Wildfell Hall last year and found it tedious beyond compare. I felt I had to read it as I had just read a book based on it (The woman who ran) which I really enjoyed, but it made me realise I didn't know what it was supposed to be compared to.

I have modern classics on my list: Primo Levi and Italo Calvino.

I too have an Eng Lit degree.

Have never managed Middlemarch and find Dickens a bore.