so which 'classics' have you never read?

[iwastooearlytobeayummymummy]

For me it's Wuthering Heights and the Russian stuff: War and Peace and Anna Karenina
Also never read Madame Bovary, but I'm sure I've started it before now
I love Margaret Attwood but have not got round to the Hand Maids Tale yet ( but it is beside the bed)

But that's in Texas

Haven't gotten around to yet, but intend to read:
Moby Dick (thank's for the digested version, UptoapointLordCopper)
Madame Bovary
Handmaid's Tale
Tristram Shandy
Vanity Fair

Started and hated:
Little Women

Haven't read, and probably never will:
Steinbeck
Joyce (the short stories I've stumbled upon were more than enough, thank you)
As much poetry as I can get away with not reading
DH Lawrence (have read Lady Chatterley, not inspired to read more)

Love Tolstoy, Dickens, Greene, Austen, Tolkien, and more

Oh god - I read prodigiously (mostly academic stuff) and am no philistine - but I hate most of the classics. Snoresville.

cornsilk678 - I actually gasped at James Joyce being described as "boring crap" - sacrilege!

There are plenty I haven't read. I'm not too good on my American stuff - Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, On the Road etc. (although having said that, The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite books). Equally, I must admit I have never read Dickens, and only dabbled in Austen, the Brontes and DH Lawrence.

Oh God I tried Ulysees once - wtf!?!

Not impressed by the lack of Joyce love on here.

i wrote my dissertation on homer.

just thought i'd mention it, like.

I fought my way through Ulysses, largely because my wife's birthday happens to be the 16th June. Bits of it are at least readable but the whole thing was an ordeal.

As for "On The Road" I agree with the critic who said "it isn't writing, it's typing and it isn't even good typing". And don't get me started on William S Burroughs (I have tried but they aren't readable at all).

And I keep thinking I should read more George Orwell, having read the big two - Animal Farm and 1984, but no more.

Orwell is ace- Burmese days is a good one

Can't do Hardy - at all, or Dickens

I can't do Joyce or Kerouac (?sp) either. Tried and failed. Miserably.

Love most of Greene (particularly Our Man in Havana which I thought was hilarious ) Orwell is brilliant, love a lot of his non-fiction too as is Huxley.

Austen is amazing and I read P&P at least every 2 years but I do alwayswant to know whether Jane and Bingley are really compatible and still happy after a couple of kids?

The fact that a book is a classic doesn't necessarily mean it's a better or more worthwhile read - it just means that it has had a big influence on the history of literature, for whatever reason. And some of the books that are being published now will presumably turn out to be the classics of tomorrow.

After all When Dickens was alive, people read his books purely because they enjoyed them, not because they felt they ought to.

So I don't think anyone needs to feel guilty about their failure to read certain 19th century novels, just because somebody in authority says they are classics.

Meditrina, my husband read all of Proust when he was 21....

I love all nineteenth century and most high modernist classics, but I absolutely hate the gritty realist people like the Amises, pere et fils, and I usually try NOT to read the Booker shortlist. Ugh. I also dislike Atwood, I'm afraid - smug and prim - and the current laureate.

Beertricks, try We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea first.

Thomas Hardy .... yawn.

Wuthering Heights .... I didn't get it.

I enjoyed Dorian Gray, Frankenstein.

I don't think I've read any Dickens at all.

Ernest Hemingway - had to read 'The Old Man and the Sea' when i was at school - now I shudder at the mention of his name. I have never read anything so boring in my entire life!

For me it is Dickens ,really haven't read anything other than David cpperfield anmd that was a chore.Have to say couldn't get through War and Peace or Anna Karennina .

Love Henry James though and Jane Austen,also keen on Iris Murdoch .i won Villette as a prize in U Sixth but have never read it

Ah, Hemingway! So, so tedious, he's DH's favourite author but I ust can't get past the first few pages. (I'm even less inclined to read him after hearing his wife's memoirs on R4's book of the week - miserable misogynist)

I adore Hemingway. Don't care how misogynist he's supposed to be. but The Old Man and the Sea is one of his worst. Try The Garden of Eden or A Moveable Feast. I can't stand Henry James, though, and Iris Murdoch - blech. ON and on and on and on and on...

mrswt - I must've attempted to read Villette every year for about 6 years a while back (ongoing New Years resolution to read a classic every month - oops!). Never managed to do it, even though it's not that difficult to read - another one to add to the list then!

'I read one of the Marquez on a train travelling around India but I'll be darned if I can remember which one it was??'

That'll be because they're interchangeable!

sieglinde, GOD, Iris Murdoch! I've given her a good go, really I have, but shit it's turgid.

I've loved reading this post, and am sightly awed by the literary credentials of you all, especially the Eng Lit cheats !!(only joking)
thanks from OP

BringBack, and it's so effing self-important, too. No, I didn't like the movie, either. What a load of precious twaddle.

Christ yes. At least the film only takes two hours of your life though