Which book do you think you should have read, but never have? (Do tell, and you could win a bundle of books worth £100)

[JaneMumsnet]

Hello,

In the run up to our first Bookfest event on 25 June (do take a look - we've got a fabulous line-up including Maggie O'Farrell, Meera Syal, Howard Jacobson, Andy Stanton and Liz Pichon, with a programme for all the family), we'll be running a survey on books and reading, and would love your help drawing up one or two of the questions.

1. Is there a book that you feel that you should have read but somehow missed out on? A classic that you've watched on TV but never perused in print? Which are the big tomes you are certain everyone around you has read, but you somehow missed out on or school or have never got round to tackling?

1. Is there a classic you are ashamed to admit you haven't read, to the extent that you might pretend that you have?

1. And - more broadly - is there an author whose greatest book or body of work has completely passed you by?

Do let us know - and all posters who tell us about the book or author who got away on this thread will be entered into a prize draw: one MNer will win a bundle of books worth £100.

Thanks as ever,

MNHQ

I gave up on Vanity Fair part way through. Equally, I haven't read anything by the Brontes or any Dickens. Dreadful when I write it like that! Lots of stuff I love, but somehow they just don't appeal.

Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum.

I absolutely love the different interpretations of it like: Easter pantomimes (Bobby Davro makes an amazing Scarecrow btw), books (the Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige) and films (Return to Oz - scary but brilliant.)

However, I've never read the book or seen the film!

Lord of the rings. I'm a huge fan of fantasy books and I know this is a key book in the genre but having attempted The Hobbit when I was much younger and struggling with it I've never persuaded myself to give it a go.

Finnegan's Wake - I've started it several times but can't get past the first few pages.

My friend raves about Middlemarch, and goes so far as to call it the greatest book ever written.

She has good taste in books, I've enjoyed her other recommendations, we have similar tastes in many books and authors.

But this one, I just can't seem to work up the enthusiasm to try it. I daren't tell her I haven't read it. I feel like I should but there are always other books calling for attention that little bit more loudly.

Emma. It's one of those books that I need to read and must read just some how never have.

To scared of reading The boy in the stripped pyjamas. Don't want to sit and cry through the book.

I have tried to read "A Catcher in the Rye" several times but just find it boring. The same goes for Kerouac, I would like to like that kind of stuff because it would mean I was free-spirited, but clearly I am not.

1. Sophie's World. I tried reading it a couple of times and found it so agonisingly tedious I gave up. But I am a cynical philistine with very little time for wiffly waffly philosophy - life's too short.

1. Middlemarch. I feel like I should have read it, and with a kindle and the modern wonder of the digital world that is Project Gutenberg there really is no excuse.

1. Dickens. Just. Cannot. Be. Arsed.

But I do read a lot of classic fiction, honest.

Ulysses. I tried to read it a few years ago, but gave up on it quite quickly.

War and Peace, ditto. I found the names of the characters hard to remember, so I never knew who was who.

I have never read any Virginia Woolf, or any of the Bloomsbury group.

On the other hand, I love Jane Austen and have read (and re-read) all her books. No film can ever convey her sheer brilliance.

1. I don't watch a lot of TV at all, and rarely watch films so I can't really say I've watched something and thought I should read the book.
   Though I do want to read the book Mrs Doubtfire was based on.

2. A lot of classics have passed me by, I'm an avid reader but I struggle with some of the classics.
   I pretend I've read Pride and Prejudice, and no one has realised so far that I have not!
   All my classmates read it for GCSE, I didn't I just couldn't get to grips with it. I did however still pass my GCSE English with high marks despite not reading it. I made it up as I went along, flicking through the book as I went

3. An authors works that have passed me by? Several. I'm a big horror fan but I've never read anything by James Herbert.
   I always wanted to read 'The Lord of the Rings' too but never got around to it.

Middlemarch. I know I should read it. I know I would love it. But somehow other books keep getting in the way.

I've read about a quarter of Wuthering heights but other than that no Brontes at all. We did Jane Eyre at school but I still managed not to read it. My mum and sister are big Bronte fans which probably contributed to putting me off.

I've never managed to read any Charles Dickens. I get about one chapter in and am so bored, I give up. I really think I should persevere with one, but there's far too many other books to read.

I have never read any Dorothy L Sayers despite being told for years I would love it.
I have a list now of books I ought to read.
I have also only read the first three Harry Potter books and now my ds1 keeps asking me questions I can't answer like 'is Snape a baddie?'

Ulysses. I tried to read it a few years ago, but gave up on it quite quickly

I've made five attempts at Ulysses. Never got further than 100 pages in.

The one that got away is The Name of the Rose.
Just couldn't go past the first few pages.

Most of the many I haven't read I'm not really compelled to, possibly because I already know what happens or they sound pretty boring.

I did manage War and Peace, though.

1. Finnegan's Wake. I loved Ulysses so I am just being lazy.

1. Pride and Prejudice. I have read the other Austen oeuvres but I just can't stand P and P.

1. The entire Bronte clan.

Oh and I love War and Peace and have read it in three languages - but not in Russian!

I know it's a cliché, but War and Peace. Also The Brothers Karamazov. I did knock off Crime and Punishment a couple of years ago, though, as I'd heard it was fairly accessible as far as Russian classics go. It was fine.

Despite going to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter experience in Watford, I have never read the Harry Potter books! My kids have, my siblings have, it's just me. I was wandering around the place not knowing what anything was .

I'm generally quite widely read but I'm terrible on the Russians. I saw Three Sisters when we did it as a a school play, and I've read the first hundred pages of The Master and Margarita . But apart from that, zippo. Not Dostoyevsky, not Tolstoy, not Gogol or Turganyev and certainly not Solzhenitsyn, whose spelling I had to Google. Only War and Peace is remotely tempting. Maybe if I got the DVD of the recent BBC adaptation I could get the plot sorted out in my head before reading it - it worked for Middlemarch.

1.Never read Donna Tart's The Secret History,thou everyone else seems to have,the dull cover puts me off.
2.Never read the ragged trousered philanthropist,but often pretend i have ,as i have read the communist manifesto and if asked what i thought of the ending - i say
" that will be an ecumenical matter " -it does the trick .
3.Never read any Ernest Heimingway - always been put off by his macho bollocks and the hipster crowd liking him.

All Jane Austen books! I just don't have the time and have never got round to them but obviously everyone else has read them and loves them

1. Lord of the rings - everyone seems to love it but I've never been fussed. Some people do tend to react with shock when they find out though

2. Pride and prejudice - have seen the Bollywood film version and this generally allows me to blag my way through conversations!

3. Terry Pratchett - completely passed me by.

1. A suitable boy. Every time I go to my parents' house I mean to borrow it, but there's never room in my case!

1. White teeth. Thought it was crap. Also catcher in the eye.

1. Dickens. Never read any, never watched any. Ought to be my sort of thing, loved Balzac when I did my French degree, maybe it'll happen one day...

1. Mansfield Park, or any other Jane Austen apart from pride and prejudice

2 and 3 - anything by Dickens, tried a few times, can't read it.

Bookfest looks great, unfortunately I don't think I'm allowed to pick it over daughter's end of year ballet show