What books are you slowly resigning yourself to never reading?

[ProneUponHerUnmadeBed]

OK, maybe I'm a being a tad dramatic, but in my mid 40s I'm beginning to think that perhaps I may never get round to any Dickens. Particularly not if I have to read Proust too. (And, OK, if I spend reading time on the likes of Gone Girl.) What books do you feel you must read before it's too late, and what are you prepared to let go?

Have tried and failed with Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye and most recently What Maisie knew. I really wanted to enjoy this book, but the language style defeated me. I get it was written in the Victorian/Edwardian times, but...

I am now looking at reading 'A portrait of a Lady' and thinking 'Shall I, sharn't I?'

Is it sharn't or shan't or even shant?

No wonder I struggled with Henry James

It's shan't - or, in some 19th-century novels, sha'n't

I loved Portrait of a Lady but The Golden Bowl nearly killed me.

No can do, Cote. There is too much history between us now. I am going to graciously move on, like Gwynnie.

Games - 2nd half of Cloud Atlas was the conclusion of all the stories. Would you rather the book ended with only the first half of all 6 stories?

Actually yes, Italo Calvino did that in 'If on a winter's night a traveller' and it was a hell of a lot more satisfying.

Ha, just checked and 'Cloud Atlas' was inspired by 'If on a winter's night a traveller'. Nuff said.

Middlemarch. I have started it many times.

It's nothing like the wishy washiness of "If on a winter's night...", though. The inspiration was purely about the format, I think.

Austen. So far removed from the kind of literature I like.

No to Joyce either. But I do want to continue reading Henry James and DH Lawrence I have some of his 'travel writing' left to go.

More Faulkner, Cather and Steinbeck too. I need to read 'The Pearl' again.

Ok, spent hours pushing myself with Ken follets Winter of the world, the second in the trilogy, but his endless amount of characters in this book and the last are too much, I find myself googling characters to keep up at times! I love Ken follet but too many countries, characters, battles etc not to get muddled! Don't get me wrong others will love it but for me, way too much, maybe if it was set in an era I had huge historical knowledge of ( for me the tudor period) I would follow it easily, loved all his other stuff

I cant ever imagine finishing The Secret History can't believe out gets mentioned on here so much.

Yes Dickens for me as well. Also Lord of the Rings/Hobbit. I've always been glad so much Dickens and the Tolkien books have been done as film and on tv. Tbh I don't like them much really. I should probably whisper that but it's true. And when I see the tv/film stuff I always thing thank goodness I didn't have to plough through the book.

I'm also wodering if Wolf Hall is ever going to be more than a doorstop too. I can't get on with it. It's in the present tense and is weird to me.

Henry James .. (god.. they are hard work and totally tedious)

Ditto Viginia Woolf (though i did manage Orlando at school, but gave up on To the Lighthouse )

And as for Proust.. no one ever does (thats the big secret about Proust ) , you know the famouse 'madeleine moment' everyone quites as being so evocative and summingup whats so great about Prouse .. well.. Its at the end of ( a very longand tedious ) first chapter of recherche du temps perdu (it gets quoted a lot because no one ever gets past it before they want to top themselves!.. ... )

I loved Vanity Fair .. and George Elliot .. Middlemarch is one of my favourite books .. I like thomas Hardy also ..

BTW i also like and read, lots of modern books ,,

.

Wolf Hall I did find quite hard going, but did finish it .. Bring up the Bodies was brilliant though ..

Franz Kafka - awful memories of reading about the dreary journey to The Castle at uni have remained with me for 20 years!

Dickens - love any tv or film even theatre version, but I cannot get to grips with Dickens and never have completed a full novel. So long drawn out.

Middlemarch. Again, this is so long drawn out and I couldn't like the main character.

Wolf Hall. I ended up feeling quite thick after about 100 pages and couldn't work out who was who even though I think I know the period well. I do want to get through it though. I may try Bring Up the Bodies so I can read about Anne Boleyn.

galaxymum. Don't know what the castles like but "The Trial" was great.

Aaaaanyhow!, Norman Davies "Vanished kingdoms" I just don't think I;m going to get round to the last two chapters.

I have only read Swann's Way, the first of the Proust sequence, and was actually pleasantly surprised by how easy to read it was. I took it with me when I was having to do a weekly long train journey, to make myself get into it after years of putting it off.

I'm so glad I did as I absolutely loved it, and many passages of it were very beautiful and have stayed with me since, and even the famous madeleines description I found lovely in context, despite having heard it boringly often previously.

I have the others put by for when I have more time to read.

Also would urge people to give Anna Karenina a good go, it was a real page turner by midway through, and I have never read anything awful written by a Russian.

Cloud Atlas, several attempts, could not get to grips with it, likewise Catch-22, also Birdsong though I know some people love it.

Thomas Hardy, nope, read Jude but otherwise too many words and so little reward.

Dickens/Proust/Shakespeare (can I admit that I really don't like Shakespeare - my DH's idea of a birthday treat was tickets to an outdoor Shakespeare production - it was cold and I was soooo bored .

I will never read (or understand why adults read) any of the Harry Potter books or 50 Shades type.

But I did love Vanity Fair when I did it for A level over 35 years ago .

Any James Joyce - the very thought of Finnegans Wake makes me shudder

Or Hemmingway

Or Faulkner!!

Re Cloud Atlas - I much preferred GhostWritten for some reason - along the same lines in terms of the structure but liked the individual stories more

Dubliners - I enjoy odd bits when I hear them read on the radio, but I suspect it's more to do with the gorgeous accent of the reader! Wouldn't sound the same if I read it, unfortunately.

I also really enjoyed the reading of the Bill Shankly biography by the guy who kept repeating phrases over and over again - David Peace, I think it was. Couldn't bear to read it myself though!

Perhaps I should listen to Proust and Tolstoy as well as I can't face reading them...

Vanity Fair is easy reading though so don't give up on that one.

I will never read Crime and Punishment. I started it 3 times, and gave up.

Midnight's Children. Have tried the first page several times and can't get further than that...

I'll never read Finnegans's Wake and most likely will never read any Anthony Trollope.

I will never read Cloud Atlas - tried and it's just not worth it.
I will never, ever finish Laguna by Barbara Kingsolver wish to God I'd never wasted those hours of my life reading 3/4 of it

However those last two I'm not feeling remotely 'resigned' about.

I'll may well never put myself through any D.H. Lawrence again shudders at the memory of having to read Women In Love twice at uni

I am trying to read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Groot.

Maybe I should quit trying?