Sunday, October 22, 2006

This Makes Me Feel Better

Literary critics list the great books they haven't read. It's a hilarious (and incredibly illuminating) piece.

Maybe we could make this a little interactive, or as interactive as a blog with 7 readers can get. What are the great books you're ashamed of never having read? I have many, but I'll restrict myself to only a few here.
1. Anything by Joyce
2. Anything by Hemingway
3. War and Peace
4. The Brothers Karamazov (though I did buy this...does that count?)
5. Lolita (I started this but was bored...what can I say?)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My first post and my list of shame:

1) Anything by Tolstoy
2) Anything by Kafka
3) Anything by Faulkner
4) Anything by Hemmingway
5) Anything by Chaucer

What can I say? It’s a pretty embarrassing list. I suppose my defense would be that I favour Irish, German and French writers, e.g. Joyce, Beckett, Yeats, Husserl, Heidegger, Marx, Derrida, Lacan, Huysmans, Kristeva, Sartre, and Camus. One notable favourite would be the Dane, Soren Kierkegaard whose story titled 'The Seducers Diary' found in his book 'Either/Or' was a major source of inspiration to me! And btw Ahsan, you found Lolita boring? Lo-leeeeeeeeee-ta? Are you kidding me? She's the hottest 12 yr old in literary history and the second hottest underaged girl of all time, missing out of course to C.S Lewis's 7 year old Alice Liddell, who was kind of cute I guess.

Ahsan said...

dude thats the most disturbing thing ive ever read in my life. please seek help.

Anonymous said...

I can hardly say that I am "ashamed" of not having read any book yet, though I suppose that unlike you losers I know that's only because I haven't had the time and not because I have been too busy eating slims and smoking all day.

Joke, people!! Please maintain a sense of humor and restrain from involving me in one of your online cat-fights.

ANYWAY, so list of 5, huh? This is what I can think of right now:

1) Lolita, actually (though I have skimmed through the first chapter and that is probably next on my must-read list. And btw, I have heard many people say that Lolita actually DOES get boring in the middle and towards the end (too much travel description of something like that)), so Ahsan, you're not alone)
2) War and Peace
3) Great Expectations
4) Oliver Twist
5) Paradise Lost (yes, a very long poem, not a book per se, but still one that I can't believe I haven't gotten around to it. Should I dare say I'll Sparknotes it?)

P.S. Is there a reason everyone has the same 3-4 books or authors on their list? I see that even I, unfortunately, could not get around failing to be more original...