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?

Middlemarch.

Ulysses. Anything by Dostoevsky. Ditto Orhan Pamuk (reading him sounds like a good idea- he sounds all contemporary yet sufficiently edgy and exotic in the reviews, but.....God).

Proust I haven't given up on completely. I've read vols 1 and 5 (long story) of A la recherche du temps perdu, but the rest is on hold until DS and any subsequent children have grown up, and I have retired. Then I will go to France- on my own- and sit outside at a cafe table drinking wine and reading for a whole month, until I have finished the remaining 4 volumes. (Vol 1 was devoured in similar style, pre DS- under a flowering lime tree, natch ). You need to slow yourself riiiiggghhht dooowwwn to be able to read Proust, and that's not happening any time soon....

The Bostonians (or any other Henry James except The Turn of the Screw). Such hard grammar (and not really worth the effort, or so it seemed). I quite fancy Vanity Fair and love a bit of Trollope but HJ just seems harder work than most of the Victorians. That might be because most of 'ours' are writing to be liked (and it works) whereas James is up to Something Else (not sure what, but less fun).

Various American writers like Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, John Updike. I feel I should have read some of this but I think it's not going to happen.

The bible. And any misery autobiography books.

Perhaps I should make a personal list. I won't live forever I suppose. And I actually regret not going to Uni and doing English lit. The bliss of spending years reading and never being moaned at to go and do something.

I think I've spent most of my life sneaking off to read:( I even loved having a bf who travelled as I could go to the library and get out loads of books and read. Then be all bouncy and extrovert safe in the knowledge he would push off again for a few months and I could read in peace:)

But I love poetry too. There is so much I want to read. I might start a poetry group. That's how clever Elizabeth barret got away isn't it? With the lovey Robert browning:) ds bellowed at me through the window today and i instantly thought of mr barret of wimpole st:) then I had to explain it:)

I've recently given my (unread) copies of Bleak House and Oliver Twist to charity as I don't think I will ever get round to reading them, shame really. Have read Great Expectations though which I liked.

I've actually got quite a few half finished books that I just didn't get on with or got bored of :

Wuthering heights (still managed to write an essay on this though at uni!)
The Hobbit
The Two Towers (by God though, it's dry and hard work!)
To the Lighthouse
The Hours
The Time Traveller' s Wife
The Secret History (although really I barely started it so will try again at some point)

And probably more I can't remember!

I have managed to get through the entire Paradise Lost by Milton though, and enough Jane Austen to last me a lifetime I think!

I can't even face that question well. I get too upset. But maybe Proust...and Pynchon.

Don't give up on Dickens, though. They can be a lot of fun and read very quickly. When I was reading, I couldn't wait to get home at in the evening to get at it.

Anna K for me too

Any Hanry James, I have tried and tried but can't get past page 5 in any of his books.

The only book I have given up on is Moby Dick, seem to take so long before they evengot to sea!

'A Prayer for Owen Meany'. So many MNers love, love, love it. I've tried at least 6 times to read it, but kept giving up. Now the book just stares at me from the shelf!

Also never managed to finish 'Little Women', despite having tried many times since I was about 12.

I just don't understand the Orhan Pamuk dislike. I love everything I have read by him, apart from The Silent House & I think that is because it is badly translated, not by Maureen Freely who is the translator of all his other work.

Try The Museum of Innocence if you haven't.

I read Anna Karenina when on holiday & had run out of books (major emergency) and I loved it.

Have tried endless times to read Catch 22 and just can't get on with it.

It is years since I read any Dickens & I wasn't keen but have just finished The Goldfinch & might try Great Expectations now.

Dostoevsky, Dickens, Henry James

In my late teens I had a friend who read a lot of Dostoevsky - I was reading a Barbara Vine at the time and she was very snooty about it, putting anything that wasn't a 'classic' in the same bracket as Jackie Collins. But actually a book doesn't have to be by a dead male to be good!

Da Vinci Code, Lord of the Rings.

Cloud Atlas. I have tried so hard several times but I'm going to have to give it up as a bad job. Any Hardy. Tried Tess, Jude - got nowhere. I shall have to continue to live as an uncultured heathen.

Night Train to Lisbon, too philosophical perhaps...?

I have tried a couple of times to get into it but will give it one last go as I see the film was recently released.

Cloud Atlas
Dikens
Lord of the Rings

And I keep trying P&P too, expecting this time to be the time I click. It never is.

Yes, I did mean to write Dikens.
Never heard of him? You big philistine