Confession time! Tell us your literary sins to win an entire set of 20 Puffin Classics

[EmilyMumsnet]

Literary shame is a powerful thing - if you've ever nodded sagely while your friends discussed Bleak House or chuckled knowingly about the The Wizard of Oz - the film is the same thing isn’t it? – you'll know what we're talking about. But now we're giving you the chance to 'fess up! Tell us which Puffin Classic you have never actually read, and you'll be in the running to win the entire set.

The Puffin Classics are back, and with a bold new look – twenty brand new covers for the classic tales, from Huck to Dorothy to Alice to Peter. One lucky poster will receive all twenty, while 5 randomly-selected runners-up will win a copy of their never-read tale.

Here's the full set list:
The Call of the Wild, Tom Sawyer, The Wizard of Oz, King Arthur, The Jungle Book, Black Beauty, Huckleberry Finn, Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, The Odyssey, A Little Princess, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The Wind in the Willows, Treasure Island, Heidi, Peter Pan, Little Women, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

This competition is now closed. And the winners are:

Belo - full set of Puffin Classics
happysouls - The Call Of The Wild
Punkatheart -Heidi
Miisty - Tom Sawyer
Pigeonpea - Huckleberry Finn
kohl - Wind In The Willows

Thanks for all your contributions, we'll be in touch with the winners shortly

Never read any of them, that I can remember anyway

I've never read Treasure Island - I keep meaning too but just haven't got around to it!

Read a grand total of none of them. I didn't get into reading in a big way until I was in my teens. I am now making up for it but there are still massive gaps in my literary knowledge.

I've never read Tom Sawyer

Haven't read any of them ! :-O :-D

Huckleberry Finn

I've only read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Does watching the films to some of the others count?!

I haven't read little women or black beauty

I have never read the Odyssey or The call of the wild.

I have never read The Call of the Wild due to lack of appreciation for reading when I was growing up but I love books now

Treasure island....we did it at school but i wrote my essay on it after watching the film.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!

I've read most of them but not King Arthur or Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and I have to confess that I may have seen the film 100 times but haven't actually read The Wizard of Oz.

I've never read Little Women.

This is particularly shameful, as I'm an English teacher!

Heidi, never appealed to me

I've never read Little Women. But I read Anne of Green Gables over and over when I was was younger!

I have to confess that I have never heard of The Odyssey, so definitely haven't read it. This surprises me as I love to read now and as a child and I am always reading to my class.

I've never read Peter Pan.

I haven't read Heidi, Little Women or Journey to the Centre of the Earth but I loved The Secret Garden when I was young.

The Jungle Book - I think after seeing the Disney film I just never got round to it...will definately change that now I have had to think about it :)

I haven't read The Secret Garden

Not only have I not read The Odyssey, I haven't even heard of it! Blushing!! :( I am a keen reader & always have been. I've read a fair few of these, but struggle to get to grips with the older writing style of some of them - this makes me want to pull my finger out though & get reading the classics!

I have only read The Secret Garden from that list. The 1970s TV adaptation was more interesting.

For my 1984 O Level Engish Lit exam I had to read Hardy's The Trumpet Major, Steinbeck's The Pearl and Shaw's The Devil's Disciple. All so utterly dull and depressing that I bought the exam notes instead rather than having to read the texts again. I got a B. And now 30 years on I'd do the same. I love literature and theatre but none of these texts inspire me at all, they still leave me cold.

Ah, what a brilliant list! Not only have I read them all but, as a Head of English, i have a very dark confession.......

(Truly, i could never say this in public)

.....I was (oh the shame!) delighted when Michael Gove said that we should only teach classics to kids. Whilst sighing loudly, I used this pronouncement to change the books we teach in my school, so that we are now currently teaching three on your list.

AND i managed to get oodles of money added to our budget in order to buy the books despite knowing, that as they were out of copyright, they would all be much cheaper than ordinary books. I treated the English dept to a new kettle and some nice felt tips with the leftovers.

Other confessions:

1. I have read War and Peace a couple of times (it's great!).....but never the war bits. Only the peace bits. It's entirely possible to read it as two separate books.
2. I secretly love Fantasy books. You know, the sort with a dragon/ talking wolf/ bare-chested man with his long hair blowing in the breeze on the front cover. I read them addictively during the holidays. I like to think my masters degrees gjve me a deeper, more detailed understanding of everything that's wrong with them.
3. I've never read Great Expectations. I also plan to get through my entire teaching career without doing so. it will, of course, mean perhaps having to teach some more complicated books insteaf, but I've managed ten years so far.

I've read all of them except for those versions of King Arthur and The Odyssey (but did read other versions) and Huckleberry Finn.

A Little Princess is one of my all time favourite children's books. I read it over and over again. The 70s bbc children's tv version was also brilliant.

I loved The Call of the Wild (and also White Fang). Little Women was brilliant apart from Laurie marrying Amy. Although I did manage to get over that when I read the sequels.

I enjoyed Peter Pan except for the ending, when Peter flies through the window and Wendy, who waited and waited for him, is all grown up. I hated how heartless he was.

I gave up on Huckleberry Finn as a child, because I couldn't cope with the accents. But a couple of years ago I downloaded a free unabridged audio version from Loudlit.org and now I'm a convert. The reader, Marc Devine, was so good that I got past the accents and enjoyed the story. On one of the episodes of "I've Never Seen Star Wars", Alan Davies was asked to read Huckleberry Finn and he was a convert too. Don't read it because you feel you ought to - read it because it's a good read.

I was first introduced to Anne of Green Gables children's tv, but that made me want to read it myself. Anne Shirley was fabulous. The bbc had some really good teatime versions of children's books when I was a kid (70s) - Thursday's Child, Little Lord Fauntleroy, various Leon Garfield stories and Kizzy (the name given to the adaptation of The Didakoi). Some were books that I already knew and loved. Others made me want to read the book for myself - or others by the same author.

The only book on the list that I read and really didn't enjoy was The Jungle Book. I'd expected it to be like the Disney Film and it was just too different for me.