True confessions, part 2
Today, we'll take our literary confessional a step further, to discuss classics that we never quite got around to reading. I think everyone short of an elderly English professor is included here; I sure am. Somehow, all my teachers in junior high forgot to assign To Kill a Mockingbird, and when I got older, I never picked it up. Until yesterday, that is, when my guilt overwhelmed me.
Nancy says: Don Quixote has been on my shelf for nearly a year and I haven't picked it up yet. I don't know what's wrong with me. And Harlot's Ghost -- I read somewhere that it has a pretty unsatisfying ending, so I'm not sure if I want to start it just to be disappointed.
I suppose we shouldn't feel too guilty. There are just too many great books, and it seems another is released every month. Authors have the problem too; here's what some confessed to the Guardian. Still, it feels good to acknowledge my debt to Harper Lee, and to act to resolve it. After 40 pages, I already sense the greatness of her novel.
How about you? What great book have you been putting off?
Comments
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, has been taunting me from the shelf for awhile. So has To Kill a Mockingbird, for that matter.
I also had Les Miserables hanging over my head but I cheated and borrowed the audiobook (unabridged) from the public library.
Posted by: Claude | August 4, 2008 11:16 AM
I haven't read "Personal History" by Katharine Graham, which has been on my shelf -- borrowed, no less, from a friend who's left the profession -- for upwards of five years. I am shamed.
Posted by: Mary | August 5, 2008 1:51 PM
Yes, I only got 20 pages into Katherine Graham's Personal History, but I am not at all ashamed.
I read the first three volumes of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, but couldn't pick up any of the subsequent volumes. Too precious for me.
To Kill a Mockingbird is sheer pleasure and should be re-read every decade or so. Watching the movie version--fine as it is--does not count!
Posted by: Dahlink | August 5, 2008 5:12 PM
I'm reading "Lord Jim." My pace is roughly 15 pages a good day. I like the book but will rejoice when I finish it. The writing is thick; the pace, slow. Will probably never read the whale story.
Wordjones
Posted by: patrick k lackey | August 5, 2008 8:50 PM
This week, I'm feeling guilty that I haven't read anything by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Posted by: Lisa | August 5, 2008 9:34 PM
+1. Who more? :)
Posted by: jiimionad | August 14, 2008 11:47 AM