I've never read, but would like to

[JaneyGee]

Are there any books or authors you've always wanted to read but never got round to? Thought it would be interesting to put up a thread in which we could discuss them. I'm always keen to hear what others think of books or writers I plan to read.

So, I have never read a word by the following authors, but have always meant to:

Dorothy L Sayers
Ford Madox Ford
G. K. Chesterton
William Empson
Anthony Trollope
Max Beerbohm
Henry James
H. G. Wells
Agatha Christie
John Updike
Isaac Asimov

And I have never read the following books, but always meant to:

Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders
Jane Austen: Emma
Kurt Vonnegut: Cats Cradle
D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love
Martin Amis: Money
Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure
Robert Graves: I Claudius
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
P. G. Wodehouse: Blandings novels (love the Jeeves books)
Siegfried Sassoon: Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man
Cormac McCarthy: The Border Trilogy
Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island
Stephen Fry: Novels (never read any of his fiction)
Evelyn Waugh: Vile Bodies
Martin Amis: Experience

Would be interested to hear from people who love any of the above. I know how passionate book-lovers get about their favourites.

Why these particular books? They seem like quite a random choice. What are your interests? Which books have you read and enjoyed in the past? Start with books which wiki engage you and then become a bit more exploratory.

In what way do you 'never read'? Are you a lapsed childhood bookworm or has reading never been part of your life?

Personally, when I've had a bit of a hiatus with reading, I like something pretty easy going to ease me back in. Once I'm in the habit of reading most days, I can cope with more challenging books, but if I were to pick up one of Dickens' lengthier tomes when i'm not in the groove i'd never make it past page 10.

I really just read the books I want to and appeal to me, why have you never read any of them?

Jane Austen: Emma - recommend
Isaac Asimov - recommend
Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island - recommend

Of the authors you've never read I've read the following:
Trollope I've just The Way we Live Now which is fabulous and feels very modern with regard to the financial scandal, I have The Warden on my TBR shelf
Updike I'd say don't bother, his writing is very masculine and dated
Agatha Christie I don't really read crime but she is obviously the queen

Of your books:
Jane Austen: Emma Love Jane Austen, have you read any of the others?
D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love Read this years ago, his writing can be quite turgid but I should probably reread
Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure This is very sad, again I read this when I was very young, not sure I could cope with it now
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall Love this, Bring up the Bodies is the best in the trilogy but all are incredible
P. G. Wodehouse: Blandings novels I've only read one and prefer J&W
Cormac McCarthy: The Border Trilogy Only read All the Pretty Horses, brilliant writing, depressing storyline
Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island I don't read a lot of travel books and found this superficial.
Evelyn Waugh: Vile Bodies Not his best

I have a long virtual TBR list as well as a shelf of actual physical books TBR. Mine include:
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
For those who say 'why don't you just read the books' it's mainly 'so many books, so little time' but also what you are in the mood for and finally the big pile of books still to be read in this house which take priority over the ones on my virtual list.

Hi OP, at first I thought your title meant that you hadn't read many books but now I understand you mean that there are books you've always meant to get around to reading (and I think I recognise your name from the 50 Bookers thread too).

Me too, and it usually happens because I have books given to me as a present, or one I need to read for book group, or one I've stumbled across in a charity shop, or one recommended on here etc and it means that the ones I've always had in the back of my mind I'd like to read one day get pushed further down the TBR pile.

They're often worth getting around to though. My sister had been telling me for years to read The Shipping News and gave me a lovely copy but for some reason it never appealed until one day I picked it up at random, and totally loved it. It's one of my favourite books. I'm sure there are more like that on my shelves.

So, getting to your list ..

I love Trollope and worked my way through The Barsetshire Chronicles in lockdown. I'd already read The Eustace Diamonds and The Way We Live Now and agree with a PP that the latter is excellent. I now want to go back and read the Palliser series in order. His books have interesting themes and great characters and are also very readable.

Henry James - I have read a couple. I find his writing quite dense; very different from Trollope and you need stamina for it. Beautiful in parts but also heavy going. He takes a long time to say not a great deal so you need to be feeling patient.

HG Wells is a good read taken in the context of the era he was writing in. Obviously sci-fi has moved on a lot since his day. I've read The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine and have always meant to read The History of Mr Polly which I thought was an enjoyable film. It would be very different.

From your second list, I've always wanted to read Moll Flanders too. Emma is great; I love all Jane Austen's books and Emma would be in my top three. I read Jude the Obscure and Women in Love at university when I probably had more romantic notions about love and life in general. Lawrence can be quite overblown, and Hardy can be extremely tragic but they are both original and memorable books; certainly worth a read.

Wolf Hall I've read twice. It's excellent, and once you work out that her irritating habit of writing "he" instead of naming the character always refers to Cromwell., it's a lot easier to decipher.

I've been thinking of reading PG Wodehouse too. I've never read a J&W novel but I've really enjoyed Three Men in Boat, Diary of a Nobody and James Thurber's writing, so I suspect I would really enjoy them.

And the author I'm constantly intending to read and never get around to is Graham Greene. Does anyone have a recommendation of where to start?

Women in Love is the sequel to The Rainbow, so you would be better starting there for DH Lawrence

Interesting. Thankyou for your reply.

Yes, I read Pride and Prejudice and was very impressed. People talk about "dusty old books," as if age somehow fades the story. It's what C S Lewis used to call "chronological snobbery," meaning the assumption that everything gets better – that novels, paintings, ideas, etc improve. They don't. Lizzie Bennett is more vivid and fresh and alive than almost any literary character I know.

How would you compare P&P and Emma? Which is better? I know it divides the 'Janeites'.

I dipped into the final part of Hilary Mantel's trilogy in Waterstones, and was struck by the prose. Very impressive. But I've also heard criticisms. People often say they found Wolf Hall hard going and gave it up – that there is something about the style that makes her hard to read.

Ah, I'm sorry to hear that about McCarthy. I'd heard that the border trilogy was less bleak. Blood Meridian was/is the most upsetting novel I have ever read. I was determined the finish it because Harold Bloom (the only modern critic whose opinion I trust) thought it was the best American novel of the late 20th-century. I don't exaggerate when I say it took me a week to recover, however. Utter horror. Yet McCarthy's prose is superb. Similar to (and yet better than) Hemingway.

Thankyou for your post. It's so interesting to read these replies.

You have sold me on Trollope. I think I will try him next. I like Dickens, but do find the mawkishness, and too good to be true characters, a bit much. It will be interesting to compare them.

Yes, I know what you mean about Lawrence. I also find him overblown. Possibly it's because we lump him in with other Victorian/Edwardian novelists, especially Hardy, the Brontes and Dickens. In fact, (it is argued) he's a daring Modernist and experimentalist, and we need to learn how to read him (as with Joyce or Woolf). Maybe that's true. I love Aldous Huxley, and bow to his opinions on most things, and he revered Lawrence. Women in Love is supposed to be his masterpiece. I have heard it said (by Harold Bloom, Howard Jacobson, and others) that Women in Love and Ulysses are the two great English-language novels of the 20th-century.

I simply cannot overpraise the Jeeves and Wooster novels. Right Ho Jeeves (the best imo) is a supreme work of art. Douglas Adams said it stands beside Mozart and Vermeer. Wodehouse does things with language that make me shiver. And Bertie's sweet, idiotic, kind-hearted voice is mesmerizing. He narrates the novels, and once you have his voice in your head, there is nothing like it. I'd urge you to read the novels (the short stories aren't quite as good). Above all, read them out loud. I do a pretty good Bertie, and an excellent Jeeves, and reading those novels out loud is better than Prozac.

I read Greene's Heart of the Matter in the Spring. Not bad. Slightly implausible ending, but some wonderful individual scenes. He brings Africa alive for sure. For what it's worth, Martin Amis thought Greene a wretched stylist, but Amis' standards were exceptionally high (a student of Nabokov and all that).

I haven't read Heart of the Matter but would be wary of any book by a white man about Africa of that vintage being truly representative of Africa (however great a novel it is). Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe or Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga would give a very different view of colonialism.