Hey, I tried to do that a lot on my English degree too! And I never read Paradise Lost either and I'm not embarrassed of that one.

Cath

Someone mentioned Underworld.

Having really enjoyed Libra by the same author I dived into Underworld and was gobsmacked by the opening baseball chapter. Bravura episode.

But thereafter I died of boredom and had to give up, probably the only time I have blown so hot and cold over the same writer (in this case, obviously, Don DeLillo).

I read Cosmopolis a month or so ago - with very mixed reactions. He can really write, and yes, it really was interesting and I can see why it's garnered such high praise, but going through a day blow-by-blow, almost minute-by-minute was, well, exhausting!

I think I'm in good company, having failed to get past the first chapter of Captain Corelli. There's no shame in not following mere fashion. But more seriously, I'm ashamed that I've never read any Coleridge, or - real shame! - Milton

Emma

<Added>

My sister who gave me CCM said, stick it out, the rest of the book's not like Ch1, but I just couldn't

Oh hooray, I thought I was the only person not to get past the first chapter of Captain Corelli.

It's weird. I avoided Captain Corelli's Mandolin for a long time because everyone I talked to who had tried reading found they just couldn't get into it, so I didn't expect to get into it, either. Surprise, surprise - I was hooked from the very beginning. Then I read Birds Without Wings shortly after it came out - it was good, but not nearly as good as CCM.

My shame includes being totally unable to get into Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. I've tried to read War and Peace and Ulysses but have found them both boring. I wish that I loved Virginia Woolf more, I know you're 'supposed' to and perhaps that makes me insensitive to great writers, I've read all of her stuff and do it with a sense of duty!

Never managed to get through 'Under Milkwood' - I have it on CD and can highly recommend it for insomniacs, after the first two verses, I'm fast asleep.

My list of shame includes:

Don Quixote - gave up half way
The Iliad - ditto
Underworld - gave up long before half way
All of Jane Austen
All of George Elliot
All of Dickens apart from Hard Times
Moby Dick - was only 12 when I tried. That was, ahem, a few years ago, maybe I should have another go?
The Satanic Verses - in my defence I've read Shame and Midnight's Children

In further mitigation, I can plead:
War and Peace - one false start and then finished whilst bed-ridden by flu
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
The Odyssey

Does that reduce the severity of my sentence?

No? OK, I've never read any chick-lit. Now am I off the hook?

smudger

On the Jane Austen front, I've only ever read every second page of all of Jane Austen's novels... I had an essay crisis, and I got the general idea well enough to blag it. No one noticed that all my quotations were from even numbered pages.

The thing is, at the time, I swore to myself I'd go back and read them properly... haven't quite managed that yet...

I 'did' Huckleberry Finn at school, without ever actually reading it. Wish I had now, it's incredibly innovative in what Twain was doing, but nobody managed to explain that to me, and why it was worth persevering.
Emma

I played Huckleberry Finn at the Children's Theatre in Johannesburg for two summer months when I was 13. Love those stories.

JB

I haven't read every posting on this thread, so someone else may have said this too, but just what is the essence of this shame everyone's on about? It seems to me that it's some sort of programmed guilt about the 'classics' we should have read but haven't. Well, I used to feel this guilt too but I was cured about 30 years ago when I was sitting on a train between Cardiff and Swansea trying to read a John Fowles book – because I thought I ought to. It really was a pile of pretentious crap but I struggled on anyway. Then, suddenly this voice whispered in my ear: 'You don't have to read this, you know. Life's too short'. So I immediately threw it out the window and since then have never read a book because I thought I should.

In a similar vein, Philip Pullman was going on once about how writers should know the classics, as in Greek and Roman mainly I think. His argument was that the classics covered every kind of plot, archetype, character, etc. But I think there's an equally strong argument for someone not knowing any classics, including more modern novels, because then they can write with freshness and lack of inhibition. And if they happen to cover a plot that Aristophenopolous did in the third century BC, so what? It sounds like they're going to anyway.

Terry

I think it's mainly mock-shame we're talking about on this thread, isn't it? Just light-hearted, but an interesting look at what we consider the books we 'ought to have read'. And I don't think that's a bad thing at all - we choose what to read next from recommendations, largely, and the classics are that if nothing else - hugely recommended. I don't feel actual guilt about what I haven't read, but I do have a sense of 'must get round to that one', to see what the fuss is about, though I'll not persevere if it gives me no pleasure.

Myrtle

Hi Terry

I guess it is to do with knowledge of your art. As writers seeking publication, it is handy to have a knowledge of the classics and other great literary works, modern or otherwise. Ok, so it isn't necessary, but just like a bricklayer likes to know some aspects of, say, carpentry or plastering, we writers like to know what we're talking about.

I agree it isn't necessary, and also wholeheartedly applaud your point that a whole mountain of these 'classics' are not only liguistically outdated, but also insufferably boring.

JB

JB,

Good point, and I'm certainly not saying that writers should not have knowledge of their craft. It's just that I don't always agree with what's seen by the literary establishment (for want of a better word) as the classics. But I think we've had this discussion before on this site, so I shouldn't raise it again, i.e. the objective/subjective quality debate.

How about books/writers we're embarrassed to have read? (If that hasn't already been raised on this thread.) I'll kick if off with 'The Other Side of the Story' by Marian Keys, the chick-lit book I had a go at recently. I only managed 20 pages before my brain went on holiday to Majorca where there's more chance of intelligent entertainment. It was embarrassingly bad - made me blush in fact that anyone would put their name to such crap.

Terry