Classics you have never read

[millefeuille1]

I have a sort of bucket list of books to read - it started with Middlemarch which I have been trying to enjoy for years but just can't. I am giving up on that now. I saw today Harper Lee has died and I have never read To Kill a Mockingbird, so will buy it this week. Are there any classics you have always intended to read but never got around to?

I actually don't like To Kill at all but did read it eventually in full years ago.
Only Dickens I've finished is Christmas Carol. Also not finished Middlemarch.

Never read a single Jane Austen. Have managed to reach 60 without doing so.

Should I? Which one?

The Kreutzer Sonata. I've tried but can't get into it at all. I've read very little Trollope, despite doing a thesis on Victorian literature decades ago.

I've read Middlemarch a couple of times, but not Daniel Deronda.

There will always be thousands of books we never read

Pride & Prejudice, definiely. It's timeless and witty. Love JA, no time for Bronte, Dickens.

War and peace. I just can't face it but feel I should read it for some reason.

I haven't read To kill a mocking bird either, I'm not sure I want to.
I've never ready any of the Bronte sisters either, or much Dickens.

Now I feel rubbish, I would have said I'd read quite a lot of classics too-ah well.

I have read several Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, (TS) Eliot, Lawrence, Sartre, Moliere ..,all of which I geuninely appreciated if not enjoyed. Though genuinely loved Merchant's Tale, Tartuffe, Othello. No love for Lawrence though.

I have wanted to read The Count of Monte Cristo for years, must start it at some point as it is just waiting on my kindle. It's so long though, and my attention span is so very short!

I have attired to read Middlemarch 4 times, always stopping at the same point. I will have to finish it one day! I seem to have watched many adaptations of he same book without having read it. One of them being Great Expectations which I've recently bought second hand from Oxfam.
I'm determined to finish War and Peace.

Moby Dick. It's lurking on my Kindle somewhere.

I am going to try with Anna Karenina again, got part way through and distracted. I did Shakespear at school but want to read again with more appreciation than my 15 year old self had!

I will be also trying Eca de Queiros, who is kind of Portuguese Dickens and very good social comment apparently according to DH.

I'm told I'm spectacularly well-read, and I have four literature degrees, but not only have I never read To Kill a Mockingbird, but I have no plans to, unless I'm somehow stuck in a lift with nothing else to read other than a copy of TKaM which magically appears. I'm potentially being terribly unfair, but the way in which it seems to be read now involves, as far as I can judge, a slightly self-congratulatory 'post-racial' identification with Atticus Finch as heroic white saviour of the downtrodden and grateful blacks...?

In fairness, I think I just happened not to read it at the 'natural' time in my teens, when I was hoovering up Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, JD Salinger etc, and now it's too late, and I'm well past that stage.

I'm also a Trollope hater.

Maybe the people struggling with Tolstoy might try Chekov's stories?

Oh, Blue, do you seriously hate Trollope? I think I would count The Last Chronicle of Barset as one of my favourite 19thC novels.

I must try Chekhov's stories. I love the plays, especially The Seagull and Three Sisters.

And, I know it's heresy to some, but I agree with you about TKAMB. Though I think that I am probably being unreasonable about it, too...

I should probably give Trollope another go, as Trollope fanatic friends have been telling me for years. I suspect it's partly a commitment-phobe thing, because there are simply so many of them.

With which would you recommend beginning?

Quite prolific, wasn't he? There is definitely a task to separate the wheat from the chaff. And often it comes down to personal taste: I, for example, quite enjoyed the 'Irish' novels but I know many people don't really rate them.

I like The Warden, although I know some dismiss it as slight. I started with that and Barchester Towers. Neither of those is typically 'Trollopian', IYSWIM. I go back to them fairly often. Dr Thorne is another Barchester novel that I enjoyed and apparently Julian Fellowes has adapted it for ITV and it's going to be on soon.

Most people consider The Way We Live Now as one of his best, if not the best so that might be a good place to start.

I still have quite a lot that I have yet to read. Two of the Palliser novels and He Knew He Was Right are on my list to read this year. I'm by no means an expert on Trollope but I have really enjoyed the ones I've read.

Also hate To Kill...! It was of its time, sure but there are far better books on similar issues for contemporary audiences. I just don't get what the fuss is all about- is it kneejerk? Angsty guilt? If the latter, then far better books as I say.

From Jane Austen I like Persuasion best, Pride and Prejudice next.