What classic/popular book have you somehow never read?

[bif]

Mine would be Moby Dick. I know it supposed to be the Great American Novel, but the sheer page count alone has acared me off. Yours?

[NoPasaran]

1. Moby Dick for one

I seem to have missed pretty much all of Mark Twain also

[Loonman]

2. Any Charles Dickens

After reading that self-indulgent crapfest "Great Expectations", I've been Dickens-free

[Bridget Burke]

28. I'm one up on you.....

"Great Expectations" was part of the high school curriculum. Somehow, I couldn't make myself read it. Don't know why--I've always been an avid reader, "above my grade level". So I invested in Cliff Notes & got an A that semester.

"Great Expectations" popped up in the British Novels course in college. More Cliff Notes, another "A". I read all the others in the course. Loved "Vanity Fair". Was mystified by "The Magus" but enjoyed it; a few years later, John Fowles released a new edition & said he'd assembled the first one haphazardly.

Hey, I "Gravity's Rainbow" for fun--more fun than Dickens!

[bif]

39. Dickens Rocks!

n/t

[RebelOne]

3. Gone With The Wind

I think I started to read it many times, but could never get past the first chapter.

[11 Bravo]

10. Same here.

But I never even started reading it.

[terrya]

4. "Ulysses"

I've never read this.

Should I??

Terry

[JanMichael]

7. I loved it.

Then again I like stream of conciousness writing.

[bif]

8. Yes and no

I've tried several time but never made it more than 100 pages into it. A friend took a class on it in college and said a guide of some sort is essential Each chapter has central themes such as colors, etc. that run through them, and knowing this helps you understand the book. I for one, don't like books that were written for scholars. But I'm goiing to tackle this one someday.

16. not only for scholars

the scholar Richard Ellman, who wrote the definitive biography of Joyce thinks that there is no way Joyce expected every reader to know all the allusions in the book or even half of them & that therefore there must be something else in the book that Joyce intended for the "average" reader. Ellman suggested just reading it straight through without trying to figure it out for the beauty of the language; reading parts of it aloud (this brings it to life); imagining that some talkative drunk was telling you a story; etc.

[noonwitch]

18. I've tried to read it and just couldn't follow it

I've never read Moby Dick, either, it just wasn't part of any of the classes I took and the topic didn't interest me enough to read it on my own.

[non sociopath skin]

34. If you do read Ulysses ..

.. I recommend reading Stuart Gilbert's "James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study" alongside it. It certainly enhanced my enjoyment.

The Skin

[nuxvomica]

5. Catcher in the Rye

I have it but never read it.

[bif]

23. I read that book about once a year

Great book. Easy read.

[Mistress Quickly]

6. 2 of them

Clockwork Orange and the Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn books.

But my 7 y.o. is reading Tom Sawyer right now, so we are both learning about it. I will read it when he is done.

Is that sad or what? My 7 y.o. is reading a classic before his mom?

:spank:

[Beaker]

9. any work by Shakespeare.

I've never read a single one. all the way through high school, NEVER had to read any.
(i've seen some of the plays, and movie versions of others, but never had to read or critique one for school, ever...)

[Richardo]

21. I recommend "Macbeth"

Great plot, easy-to-follow intrigue, and it's the shortest of the plays.

In HS, I thought I would NEVER "get" Shakespeare until I read Macbeth.

[afraid_of_the_dark]

24. Much Ado about Nothing is an easy read, and very funny. n/t

[CrownPrinceBandar]

35. I had to read a bunch of his plays...

for a class in college. I find I prefer to hear them read or see them performed. I figure thats the way Shakespeare wanted them to be digested. I get more from it that way.

[Emboldened Chimp]

38. No, start with Hamlet

Always start with the best...

[arwalden]

11. "1984" and "Cat In The Hat" and "The Missing Chums"

[terrya]

12. Do read "1984" when you get the chance, Allen.

Though it's depressingly, scarily FAMILIAR.

Terry

[Richardo]

14. Pffffft!! You crack me up, Allen...I'm wiping coffee-spew off the screen

The Hardy Boys title reminds me of one of my favorite business signs from The Simpsons:

Pool Shark
"Where the Customer is Our Chum"

Hee! :D

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. The Missing Chums? LOL

Well, when I was in that readership demographic, I was mighty upset that I could never find a copy of Nancy Drew's The Witch Tree Symbol.

[afraid_of_the_dark]

25. 1984 is a definite must-read!

It's a very quick read, and scary as hell - especially considering the current political climate.

[BurtWorm]

13. I was just thinking about this on the way to work: Crime and Punishment

I was supposed to read it for AP English, but I was a bad boy.

There are too many other ones to list, though amazingly, I've read almost all the books listed as unread here, except for Dixon's masterpiece, "The Missing Chums" (cited by Allen) and Gone with the Wind. I didn't quite make it all the way through Ulysses. I got stopped in the Nighttown section, for some reason. I loved what I'd read up until then.

[Mobius]

15. Fellowship of the ring

ive read the Hobbit, but seeing the films made me lazy:D

[non sociopath skin]

33. As I said in a previous strand ...

.. I haven't read Lord of the Rings. I have no problem with long books, I just need to be convinced that I'll get something out of them.

The Skin

[Edge]

17. Catcher in the Rye....

Catch 22
Moby Dick
Any Charles Dickens (except A Christmas Carol...I read that)
All the hobbit books
Crime and Punishment
War and Peace
Death of a Salesman
The Jungle
Any novels by Chaucer
The Iliad (seen movies, read sections...never the whole book)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Anything by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Wizard of Oz
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Call of Cthulhu
Anything by Stephen King
The Last of the Mohicans (saw the movie)
Anything by Faulkner
Flowers for Algenon

There's many others...but too many to list. I'll get to reading these someday when I get the time to do so. :) :D

[devilgrrl]

19. Haven't read any Jane Austin or Melville yet...

And if any of you haven't read '1984' yet... :spank:

[Richardo]

20. Mark Twain: BIG Jane Austen fan

...not.

"To me <author>'s prose is unreadable--like Jane Austin's <sic>. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death."
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 1/18/1909

"Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."
- Following the Equator

"I haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898

Tell us how you REALLY felt, Mark! :D

[Zomby Woof]

26. War and Peace

[bubblesby2002]

30. me neither

it's waaaay too big

[CrownPrinceBandar]

36. me neither...

nor "The Brothers Karamazov."

Its not the size of the book that is daunting (I've read the whole Dune series twice), there are just too many names to keep straight.

[Bertha Venation]

27. To Kill A Mockingbird

I have tried to read Crime and Punishment, Moby Dick, and other epics of literature, but can't slog through them. It makes me feel like a flake.

As for TKAM, I just haven't had it in my hands yet. I plan to go to the library this weekend, though.

[Richardo]

31. You will love it...

I've never read a book where the characterizations so closely matched the film. (I saw the movie before reading the book) It does not in the least detract from the film, and vice-versa.

Atticus Finch is Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch. :wow:

[Lostmessage]

29. Moby Dick

I didn't want to read any dirty books.

[populistmom]

32. Moby Dick as well

In high school, sophomore year to be precise, I was in honors English and ended up with a B- for the precise reason that I never could force myself to get through this book. I found it immensely dull and I have the damnedest time getting through dull books. I probably shouldn't say that, as it's a "classic", but it's the truth.

[Emboldened Chimp]

37. Moby Dick for me, too

But Ray Bradbury advised not to read that book until one is 35, for better understanding...so, that one's on the back burner. One classic I want to read is War & Peace, but at the rate that I've been reading lately, it'll take me at least two years...