Five Books I Am Embarrassed Not To Have Read
What books are you embarrassed to not have read? That meme has been circulating the blogosphere in recent weeks, and I've finally succumbed. I'm happy to say that I have, by dint of a intergalatically awesome high school English teacher and dogged personal application, managed to read a whole bunch of books that I can be proud of. But not all of them. That's going to take a lifetime. By the same token, I have spent long stretches of my life obsessively reading science fiction, fantasy, or history (which it amuses me to mention next to each other here, as though they were equivalent genres (which perhaps they are...)) and have accordingly had some potentially very bragworthy reading time crowded out by Piers Anthony.
Please note that I am counting as "read" books that I started, got plenty of the gist of, and read the importants sections and skimmed the rest. In this way I can say I have "read" The Federalist Papers, Democracy in America and The Bible. Sure, I haven't abosorbed every word, but I know that Joshua Judges Ruth and that industry is important to Amurricans. And stuff like that.
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. To be honest, this is one I'm not sure I'm ever going to get to. I didn't read The Catcher in the Rye until last year, either. Since both that and Gatsby are reputedly best consumed as a teen, my enthusiasm for them has ebbed. Nobody can seem to tell me what I would be getting out of this one anyway. Nevertheless, the uniform reaction elicited in people by my admission that I have not read this Great Classic is one of disbelieving wonder and pity, as if I told them I was a 30 year old virgin.
John Locke: Second Treatise. Apart from excerpts and explications, I have not read any Locke. Considering that my last act as an historian was to write an intellectual history of the debate over women, suffrage, and citizenship before 1850 which relied heavily on Locke (since my sources themselves did), this omission can be viewed as an act of breathtaking academic dishonesty. Someone call David Horowitz!! See remarks above in re: history, fantasy, and science fiction. I have also not read my Hume or Hobbes, but I have read Mill as well as Paine and various Revolutionary-era works on the social compact, so I guess I feel okay about this. No; thats' wrong. Guilt all over.
Dante: Inferno. I actually have read excerpts of this one, but I have to put it in this list because nothing stuck. Worse than that, Inferno is practically required reading if you wish to understand half the literary references in the great classics of the 17th and 18th centuries. In fact, I'll make this entry a trifecta and toss in Plato and Socrates as well. Read a little; learned less. Just as I am reduced to cat-and-tennis-ball staring when Buckethead and GeekLethal trade barbs about whether Operation Barbarossa would have worked better had Company Ziggledezee employed a Gabba Gabba strategy and feinted toward St. Yabbahey (since my knowledge of military history is shallow in all respects), thus it goes when trying to keep up with Adams or Madison- or even Paine- in full smackdown mode. Ditto Pilgrim's Progress, which was seemingly handed out free in cereal boxes to early American thinkers. The difference being, of course, that I have not guilt whatsoever over not reading Bunyan.
James Joyce: Ulysses. I know, I know. Nobody reads this. But people do. And if I can get through Gravity's Rainbow and The Name of the Rose, why in hell does the first page of Ulysses fill me with dark foreboding of tedium to come?
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick. You have to understand where I live and the people I know. I live north of Boston and socialize with historians, librarians, and archivists most of whose work revolves in some way around New England's past. They tend to talk about Nathanael Hawthorne as though he was still alive (or recently deceased) and can tell you more about Herman Melville's tortured love life than about Desperate Housewives. So, though I have read enough Hawthorne to stay afloat in pleasant conversation, I have only read Melville in a terribly abridged children's edition that does't quite cut it. Sure, I can yammer on and on about the loving detail brought to the interclary chapters on whaling (and even spin theories on structural homages to Moby-Dick contained in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath), but at the end of the day I know that such pleasant party exaggeration is really empty posturing. I really should just bite the bullet and waste six weeks wading in ambergris and purple prose.
(Thanks to Hei Lun of Begging to Differ for finally putting me over the edge.)
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GL, you could kill two birds
GL, you could kill two birds with one stone and read Twain's "Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper."
For me, I've read Pilgrim's Progress, Moby Dick, the Inferno, and a huge chunk of Locke including most (I think) of the second treatise (though I was mostly drunk at the time and don't remember all of it.)
Lest you think I'm all cool and everything, I've never read Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22 (my mom is still horrified that someone who reads as much as I do has not read the last three), anything by Joyce (nor will I), Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, or any popular or serious modern fiction except for Kavalier and Clay.
Strangely enough, I kind of sort of enjoyed Pilgrim's Progress. There was a kind of majesty to the cumbersome metaphorical names, dignity in the stilted prose, and the earnestness of the painfully obvious moral was somehow touching.
Geek, Is it so bad that you
Geek, Is it so bad that you were required to read The Inferno? Some books demand more than just a comfortable chair and a cup of coffee to make the experience of reading meaningful. I too read it because I was forced to, and I still enjoyed the book.
Perhaps this will put it all in perspective. A common joke among faculties concerns two professors who are talking about books. One asks the other if they have read such and such book (you supply the appropriate title for the discipline). The other responds, "Read it? I haven't even assigned it!" The truth behind the joke (other than academics can be lazy) is that some readings are better in groups.
Actually, I have remembered my reading of the Inferno quite fondly in recent days: I am in the middle of Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, a classic in its own right, which explores how the political competition of Italy led the the rediscovery of man as individual and the combination of disciplines in new and exciting ways. Dante creeps up often.
For what it's worth, I gave a short list of books that I am ashamed to admit I will never read: * Joseph Roth's Radetzky March,
* Stendhal's The Red and the Black,
* Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton.
...Gatsby: Never attempted,
...Gatsby: Never attempted, not really guilty about it.
Inferno: Only read it because I TA'd Western Civ 110 and the class had to read it. I guess it counts as read, but I didn't seek it out.
Ulysses: Made one attempt. Cut through about 10 pages, then opted instead to bash my own brains in with a small tack hammer.
Moby Dick: I just read this about 3-4 years ago. I got alot out of it and recommend it. It's a quicker read than it might look, but I will add that it would definitely be pared down were it written today. Alot of superfluous language, so the abridged edition you read is possibly the superior one.
I'll have to think about my own list. I will say I'm weak on my Yankee wordsmiths, and feel bad about that. I ought to know Hawthorne, Clemens, Melville much better than I do.
Matter of fact, here's one:
JF Cooper, Last of the Mohicans: Considering the tale occurs in my general area, I should make a greater effort to read it carefully. And access is no problem, as 1), copies exist in every library in the country; and 2), Lady Lethal's Palm inexplicably came with an e-version of the whole book, with footnotes and spiffy graphics. I could have read this thing 100 times in several forms, just never...quite...did. And I'm sorry.
I should throw in two more
I should throw in two more that occur to me:
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain
N,
N,
No I don't think it was bad. I just wanted to make clear that it wasn't my own choice to have read it, in the interest of full disclosure.
B,
I'll also add Catch-22 to my list. I tried once, like 15 years ago, and thought it was stupid.
My wife also thought Catch-22
My wife also thought Catch-22 was stupid. Which is funny, since I think it's one of the most brilliant books of the 20th century. In feel, it reminds me strongly of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, a book I am very proud to have read. My wife thought that was an excellent book as well though, so perhaps my linking the two is only the result of random chemical reactions in my brain and not any actual tangible similarities between the two.
GL- I'm sending you a book in the mail this week. We were going through our old books that we just don't have room for and I found a paperback copy of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, which I think there is a very good chance you will enjoy immensely.
I had to struggle to get into
I had to struggle to get into the Confederacy of Dunces, but loved, loved, loved it. I couldn't get past page 20 of Catch-22. And I can't believe that the crap at the beginning somehow morphs like the terminator into a great novel.
NDR scores smart points off me, because I haven't even heard of Joseph Roth’s Radetzky March.
J,
J,
That's very thoughtful.
Now if I think it sucks like an oranguatan on a handful of grape jelly, I'm going to feel real bad about it.
Hey maybe we can consider it an exchange for All Quiet on the Western Front? I recall you not having read it; I'll lay hands on a copy forthwith.
GL: It's a deal.
GL: It's a deal.
And FWIW, I haven't heard of any of NDR's non-readings with the possible exception of Stendhal.
I like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.
J,
J,
Let's see...does the title, The Cave of Time mean anything to you? In that one, there was one thread I just couldn't get, so I started at the end point and worked my back through, page by page, tabbed the decision points, then read it forward again so I could get it.
But I'm sure that surprises no one.
I used to have a whole bucketload of those but can't remember any others. Do you remember the competitors, who published the same books but couldn't call them "Choose Your Own Adventure"? There were some D&D-type titles as I recall.
Hm... never read The Cave of
Hm... never read The Cave of Time but I really liked a couple of others. In fact, my introduction getting duped was thanks to that series. No... really. There was one decision point in some space adventure where you have to blag your way into some space station and you have the choice of fessing up as to who you are or pretending to be someone else you met earlier, who for some reason is transporting a virus in a fake tooth. If you chose to blag and be the other guy, the guard said, "Oh... in your tooth!" as he nodded really big to someone behind you, and then you got knocked out and died.
Formative, actually.
James Joyce to Choose-Your
James Joyce to Choose-Your-Own-Adventure in eleven easy steps.