Books you feel you should have read ....

[MadBadandDangeroustoKnow]

but have somehow never got round to?

For me, there are very many, but another thread has reminded that I've been intending to read Middlemarch ever since the BBC adaptation, more than a decade ago.

Anyone else want to confess?

No erm I owe money lol. Amazon or charity shops ahoy.

I quite fancy dante, is it pointless if you haven't had a classical education?

Haven't read that one, so can't say. it should probably be on my "ought to read" list as well

My very nice and very unopened copy of Ulysses is laughing gently to itself on one of my shelves. Did just read Machiavelli's The Prince at last, which was really good. Like a politicians guidebook even after 400 years.

Brave New World is a must read. As is Ishiguro's Remains Of The Day. By far the most frustratingly good read.

Have Dante on my want to read list. And have a copy of the Iliad that also benefits from never-been-touched pages.

Lord of the Rings gets my 'most disappointing' award after many years of putting it off

I just tried Dickens again and couldn't do it.

Have been thinking about Dante's Inferno but got no further than picking it up in the bookshop and putting it back down again.

War and Peace
100 years of solitude
Love in the Time of Cholera
Something by Salman Rushdie
Anna Karenina

Oh yes, I cannot read the Hobbit

Remains of the Day is a great book.

I did my thesis on Ulysses but have never managed Finnegans Wake, to my shame. It's just impenetrable.

Anna Karenina and Mme Bovary are both GREAT!

I'm having trouble thinking up new stuff, MadBad, that's not been on the other thread! Funny how "which books you never got through properly or were disappointed by" and "which books do you think you ought to have read" are often one and the same thing! Were we all turned into reading masochists at university...?

Crime and Punishment. A friend lent me it about a year ago and I've struggled half way through but now have to start all over again as it's been that long since I lifted it.
Dante
War and Peace

Brave New World is a great book - one of my favourites.

agree that Remains of the Day is incredible. up there is my top 5 probably.

also agree that the Gordon Brown and Heathcliffe thing is ridiculous. One crucial error: whatever else you might say about him Heathcliffe is good-looking.

LOL hatwoman, that was my thought entirely! Heathcliffe has a kind of rugged uurrrghhh about him even if he wouldn't win Britain's Next Top Model. Gordon rugged and uurrgghhh? Er no. WHICH spindoctor (mal)advised him on this plonker of a soundbite?!

I laughed when I heard G Brown comparing himself to Heathcliffe. Comparing yourself to an abusive, sadistic man that sees ghosts is not good. I wonder who advised him to say that or is he going all George Bush on us and saying the most ridiculous thoughts that pop into his head?

xpost janehh

in his defence I think a journalist put it to him, and he had to say something. But I suspect he hasn't read it...

That journalist must of had a giggle then.

magic mountain thomas mann

the tin drum gunte grass

ulysses james joyce

anna karenina which i have had for years and as i loved war and peace not sure why i never managed to get far

it was just one of those i got a certain way and then it got abandoned for some reason

wild swans which i have also had for years

War and Peace. Haven't read it so far because of the sheer length. Too heavy to cart around with me, and I'd get bored of looking at the front cover. But I really will read it one day.

I've struggled through Ulysses too. Wouldn't want to repeat the experience.

Ulysses all the way through (only read the odd chapter)

and more Dickens

I too have degrees in Eng Lit (2 degrees, BA and MA)

so feel that I should have read these to qualify that, at least!

crime asnd punishment is a brilliant book

i thought it was ver readable too

but that lsoing it part way through is my usual reason for never completing i have to read a book within a week of starting usually or it wont happen

Crime and punishment is actually quite readable - just there was a lot going on for me last year with a difficult preg that my mind couldn't concentrate on anything other than easy reading chick lit. Picked it up again last night though and determined to finish it.

I echo the many cries of Crime and Punishment. Also, any Anthony Trollope. Any good? Am I missing a treat in The Barchester Chronicles?

Whoever it was who hasn't read Wodehouse is in for a cosy, comforting, life-enhancing treat. Start with the Jeeves ones.

I have a problem with the big Russian novels as I HATE reading anything in translation (though I have read a few translations, like Mme Bovary). Cos I like to read the EXACT WORDS that the author intended.

I too am an English Literature graduate and

never enjoyed Joyce

and really disliked The Remembrance of Things Past. Proust was a poncy nit who lived in a cork lined room. I rest my case.

anthony trollope most unappealing and the forsyte saga

i am an english graduate too lol

that is i have no regre3tsd about trollope or galsworthy

im no jane austen fan either tho i have read emma

i doint think i ever read pride and prejudice

i have read another one tho the gothic one or am i making that up? or was that emma?

Zippi, Northanger Abbey is a parody of Gothic fiction but none of JA's can be said to be gothic.

CB's Jane Eyre makes me want to throw up, though.