Unread books meme

[sqbr]

Stolen from elaran becuase it amuses me: a list of books most often marked as "unread" in LibraryThing and whether or not I've read them :)



Italics: tried to read and failed
strikethrough: unreadable
bold: have read
*asterixes*: bought, didn't read, gave away (I added this :))

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell But I mean to try again one day
Anna Karenina
*Crime and Punishment*
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights For school, and then never again :)
The Silmarillion I did fail trying to reread it recently
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary I wish I hadn't finished it :)
The Odyssey
Pride and PrejudiceLike a bazillion times!
Jane Eyre ditto
A Tale of Two Cities
The brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies It was a bit of a slog, but totally worth reading
War and Peace
Vanity Fair I don't think I could reread it but quite enjoyed it
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma ...but it's so awesome!
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway Was very underwhelmed, I think I missed the point
Great Expectations A couple of times, so I skipped to the end :)
American Gods Huh, I should have read this list before setting it as a bookclub text (it didn't go down that well)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Seemed ok but lost motivation
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World I didn't try very hard though, was just skimming it at school
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum SO DULL
Middlemarch Another "Very good, hard slog, would never reread"
Frankenstein
*The Count of Monte Cristo*
Dracula I was reading it as a blog for a while, got got behind and never caught up
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys This really wasn't hard to read. Buck up people!
The Once and Future King Read all but the "Book of Merlin", which totally stumped me on every attempt
The Grapes of Wrath But only for school, blah.
The Poisonwood Bible : a Novel
1984 Didn't try very hard though
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility Jane austen is not hard to read!
The Picture of Dorian Gray ..and then I skipped to the end :)
Mansfield Park *mutters*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse For school. Was completely unable to remember the plot from moment to moment though.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles I was given it as a child, I do not know why
Oliver Twist Did take a couple of tries though
Gulliver’s Travels Very dry, bitter satire, not what I was expecting
*Les Misérables*
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune The first book I laid my hands on after a book-free school camp, not sure I would have made it through otherwise :)
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things I LOVED this book
A People’s History of the United States : 1492 - present
Cryptonomicon But god was it a slog. Bah.
Neverwhere I thought this was ok
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything Several times, till it got too simplistic :D
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of Avalon Guh. Dense dull propoganda.
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita ...odd.
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values But I wish I hadn't
The Aeneid
Watership Down It did take some effort but I'm glad I read it
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit Because anpther girl at my school had read it to accalodes from the teacher, and I refused to be outdone :)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island Can't remember if I eventually finished it, tried quite a few times
David Copperfield I really liked this
The Three Musketeers

Comments

[elaran.livejournal.com]

Apart from S&S and P&P I find Austen's other stuff really really hard to get into for me. =/

The God of Small Things was really really really x a lot depressing. I think I talked about this book with you... or someone else but I think it was you.

[alias_sqbr]

Ah, I'm a huuuge Austen fangirl. I must admit it took me a while to get into P&P when I started (at about 14), but once converted devoured the rest.

I don't remember such a discussion, but I am pretty absent minded. I don't normally like Ueber Angsty Great Works of Literature About Death and Incest and Child Abuse and Tragic Love in an Unconventional Nonlinear Style, but for some reason liked this one :)

[elaran.livejournal.com]

Cool. I loved P&P and I made myself read S&S for the Co. Brandon awesome. :P I tried to read Emma but couldn't get into it. I watched the movie afterwards and fell in love with Mr Knightley so I might give it a go again.

Well, I'm pretty sure it was in UniSFA and I don't know who else has read it so I'm kinda assuming it was you. :D

[alias_sqbr]

Maybe auntpol? *points down*

Emma=love, I even like "Clueless" :)

[elaran.livejournal.com]

hee! I watched Clueless on a laptop in Biol Sci library while procrastinating for exams in first year. It was HILARIOUS. I loved it. XD

[auntpol.livejournal.com]

I cried SO MUCH. I'm sure everyone on the train thought I was crazy. But it comes over as waaaaay too cute, too. I guess it's a sad happy book?

[alias_sqbr]

The sad has overwhelmed the happy in my memory!

[fred-mouse.livejournal.com]

I've managed to read between 15 and 20 of them (vague because I found it hard to keep track of the numbers while looking at which ones you had read, and because I can't remember if I've actually finished a couple of them, or if I've only read kids versions of them - in particular 'Gulliver's Travels'). Was intrigued to see rather a number of my 'to read' books on the list, but many more that I've never even considered reading!

[alias_sqbr]

There's several I haven't even heard of. "The Corrections" makes me think of my Phd :)

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

I think I do better on this list than any other book list, including "Books you must read or you'll die!" and similar. It's also got a better hit rate for books I enjoyed.

[alias_sqbr]

I guess you like reading difficult but worthy books then, since that describes most of the ones I recognised (except "Angels and Demons") :)

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

...you think?

I don't know. There's also a bunch of "I would *like* to read..." things, including several already on my to-read shelf.

Shelves.

Um.

I need to read more.

[alias_sqbr]

Or learn to give up on books :)

What a lot of Dickens. I don't like Dickens much ...

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment <-- great book
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion <-- like it more than most
Life of Pi : a novel <-- I refuse to read a book with this title
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre <-- have been challenged to read this numerous times, but have never got past the first few chapters
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods <-- an easy read: surprised this is here
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius <-- just finished
Atlas Shrugged <-- doesn't suit my ... "idiom"
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver <-- will probably never read Stephenson again, waffle-tastic
Wicked : the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo <-- seen too many cinematic versions
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a Novel
1984
Angels & Demons <-- isn't this Dan Brown?
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay <-- also just finished: top read!
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time <-- will never ever read a book with such a fatuous title
Dune <-- come on, this book is gripping even if it's not that good
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things <-- I HATED this book. Rubbish!
A People’s History of the United States : 1492 - present
Cryptonomicon <-- massive letdown
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being <-- very wanky
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of Avalon <-- not after what my dad had to say about it ...
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas <-- my favourite book this year
The Confusion <-- did I mention I didn't like Quicksilver?
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey <-- read this while stuck for a book on holiday
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down <-- childhood favourite
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth <-- VERY EASY, COMPELLING READ
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers <-- both the expurgated and unexpurgated editions!

Re: What a lot of Dickens. I don't like Dickens much ...

[alias_sqbr]

My mum LOVES Dickens, so I ended up getting into him partly out of inertia when I had nothing else to read. I did enjoy them apart from Little Dorrit, which has Dodgy Gender Issues.

Crime and punishment was pretty good, what I read of it, but WAY too depressing for me, because I am a sook.

Yeah, I gave up on Neal Stephenson after "Cryptonomicon". If a standalone book that long was interminable, I don't want to imagine a whole series of them.

"Angels and Demons" is the sequel to the Da Vinci Code (thanks for reminding me), clearly the lack of hype and a cribbed conspiracy theory let the full force of his talent shine through :D

Re: What a lot of Dickens. I don't like Dickens much ...

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

I really like Snow Crash. I've re-read it two or three times, which is a hell of a lot for me. I also liked The Diamond Age.

So you can imagine my disappointment when Stephenson decided he was only going to try to rewrite the Great American Novel while targetting trainspotting history nerds for the rest of his career.

Also, Neal's more than slightly irritating politics come through a lot more when he's not writing SF (I like to think escaping from reality also allows him to escape the rut of his political views ... or maybe it's me that's able to escape them in those instances). Quicksilver is basically a thousand-page endorsement of unregulated small-state late capitalism seen through the prism of eighteenth century political events. You can literally walk through it going "oh, so that's a massive compliment to the stock market ... and there's a hagiography of low-taxing government ... and here's a ringing endorsement of the 'ethnic dynamism' of the early US settlers ... and here's a poorly considered anti-religious rant ... " etc.

Dickens ... oh Dickens. I'd rather watch teledramas of his works than actually read them. There's something too ... garrulous ... about his writing.

Crime and Punishment is like the book. I love that book. One of the few classics that has really, truly blown me away.

Re: What a lot of Dickens. I don't like Dickens much ...

[alias_sqbr]

My experience with Neal Stephenson was exactly the same, but with Cryptonomicon, although I get the feeling he was only starting to get into his polemic-making stride at that point.

*looks up garrulous* Can't argue with you there, though I think Neal Stephenson's recent work is worse :)

[pedanther]

The Count of Monte Cristo <-- seen too many cinematic versions

Could you unpack that a bit? Do you mean that you find it unreadable because you expect it to be too much like the cinematic versions, or because it's not enough like the cinematic versions?

Unreadable, unpacked

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

When I've referred to something as "unreadable" on this list, it's not because I've investigated it and decided that. It's because I would never read it for some reason, typically a trivial one.

In the case of The Count of Monte Cristo, my reasons are

(a) passing familiarity with, and limited enthusiasm for, the works of Dumas père
(b) knowing the story too well from the two film versions I've seen (Caviezel, Depardieu)

I'm quite sure the book could be a lot better than any film (cf. The Three Musketeers, which despite being a somewhat self-serious book, seems impossible to film as anything other than slapstick comedy!). So what, eh.

[(Anonymous)]

A Confederacy of Dunces is my favourite single book in the world, I can't recommend it enough. I'm currently reading it again for the umpteenth time and wishing that Toole had written another book instead of committing suicide after Confederacy's initial failure.

[alias_sqbr]

I may have to go check it out. Thanks for your advice, anonymous commenter!

*has random amusing mental image of "Anonymous Troll" as an internet supervillain who it turns out is responsible for all anonymous trolling everywhere*

[pedanther]

have read: 19
tried and failed: 9
haven't tried: 79

Was it Mark Twain who said that a literary classic was a book that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read?

[alias_sqbr]

Possibly, it's certainly a good definition :)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

That damn scoundrel Twain and his graceless aphorisms ...

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell No
Anna Karenina No but want to try it
*Crime and Punishment* ditto
Catch-22 No
One Hundred Years of Solitude No
Wuthering Heights Yes
The Silmarillion &es
Life of Pi : a novel No
The Name of the Rose Very good! Yes!
Don Quixote No
Moby Dick No
Ulysses No
Madame Bovary No
The Odyssey Yes
Pride and Prejudice Naturally
Jane Eyre ditto
A Tale of Two Cities No
The brothers Karamazov No
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies Bits of it
War and Peace Tried as a teenager, gave up
Vanity Fair Yes
The Time Traveler's Wife No
The Iliad Yes
Emma Of couse!
The Blind Assassin No
The Kite Runner Tutored it
Mrs. Dalloway Unreadable
Great Expectations Excellent
American Gods No
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Seemed No
Atlas Shrugged Yes but very dull
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books No
Memoirs of a Geisha No
Middlesex Yes
Quicksilver No
Wicked : the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Yes
The Canterbury Tales Yes
The Historian : a Novel No
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man No
Love in the Time of Cholera No
Brave New World No
The Fountainhead No
Foucault's Pendulum Gavbe up
Middlemarch ALoved it
Frankenstein Yes
*The Count of Monte Cristo* No
Dracula Yes
A Clockwork Orange Yes
Anansi Boys No
The Once and Future King Yes
The Grapes of Wrath Yes but it sucks
The Poisonwood Bible : a Novel No
1984 Yes
Angels & Demons No
The Inferno No
The Satanic Verses NO
Sense and Sensibility Howcan people not read these?
The Picture of Dorian Gray .Yes
Mansfield Park Love it
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Yes
To the Lighthouse For school. Tried, gave up
Tess of the D’Urbervilles At school
Oliver Twist Many times
Gulliver’s Travels Yes
*Les Misérables* Yes
The Corrections No
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay No
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time No
Dune Yes
The Prince Yes
The Sound and the Fury No
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir No
The God of Small Things No
A People’s History of the United States : 1492 - present No
Cryptonomicon Gave up, so dull
Neverwhere No
A Confederacy of Dunces No
A Short History of Nearly Everything No
Dubliners No
The Unbearable Lightness of Being No
Beloved Gave up
Slaughterhouse-Five Yes
The Scarlet Letter No
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Yes
The Mists of Avalon Hate it
Oryx and Crake : a novel No
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed Yes
Cloud Atlas No
The Confusion NO
Lolita Unreadable
Persuasion Yes
Northanger Abbey Yes
The Catcher in the Rye Loathsome
On the Road NO
The Hunchback of Notre Dame No
Freakonomics No
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values Mp
The Aeneid No
Watership Down Yes
Gravity’s Rainbow No
The Hobbit Yes
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences Yes
White Teeth Yes
Treasure Island Yes
David Copperfield No
The Three Musketeers NO

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, people ned to stop being such wimps about Austen :)