Maria -

I'd go a step further: what all writers need to understand is STORYTELLING. That's the basic requirement. As to having to read to write, who did Defoe read? Etc. Once upon a time there were animals walking the face of the earth with the capacity to speak, but no language.........


Mike

Go down my local shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon, and you can still see some of those animals Mike.

JB

I found the Big Read competition threw me into throws of activity, in my to do list of books to read. Got me through Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mocking Bird, which were both stunning. What is this problem people seem to have with The Great Gatsby? I am a highly prejudiced Fitzgerald fan though...

Ulysses (makes a good book end - one day when I am bedridden for weeks I might get through it)
Brighton Rock (I live in the town, I really should have read it, I do at least now own it, well I'm halfway there...)
Catch 22, (own it, and it's not very big, really no excuse)
Clock Work Orange - I even met the man when I was 18, I am ashamed.

But as has been said, thw writing should over ride the reading.. It's just fitting it all in...

Yes, I'm surprised how many people don't get on with Gatsby. Defoe can't have read novels, but poetry was a much bigger trade, and history and letters and essays and travel and philosophy and speeches were all seen as literature then too. Nowadays we only seem to count fiction and lyric poetry as art.

Emma

Hey Ali,

I also live in Brighton but haven't read the must-do Greene novel.

JB

Makes me won't to do a survey in Brighton of people who have actually read it. Then that could spiral out of control into wanting to know how many people had read famous books set in places in which they live.
I am going to read it next, halfway through Paul Auster's latest, then I shall dip back into the Brighton past.

What's the obsession with not having read 'The Satanic Verses'? Maybe no one's read it because it's pretentious rubbish. And as for Ulysses - I was one of those who had to suffer through it at uni, being taught by a myopic albino who couldn't see us at the back of the lecture hall, so it doesn't have very good memories for me.
I've tried and tried to get started on War and Peace, but to no avail - I keep being distracted by smaller books. One day, perhaps...

Mmmm I confess, too many things to mention!

JB, I loved 'Far from the Madding Crowd' - I watched the film at the cinema too. It's a real love triangle with some tragic events, give it a go.

Kat

I also loved Far From the Madding Crowd. Then again, I adore Thomas Hardy's writing.

ALTHOUGH when I started Jude the Obscure -- maybe a decade ago? - I couldn't get into it and eventually dropped the book somewhere. I've never finished it. And THIS is supposed to be his 'masterpiece'. Oh well. I suppose I should give it another try.

archgimp puts his hand up

Another Brightonian who's never read Brighton Rock here.

I've got the record though...

I did Far from the Madding Crowd at school, and didn't get it at all, just felt that Hardy was determined to make everything as gloomy as possible. I think I'd get the point a bit more, now, but I'm not sure I can be bothered to try.

Emma

(Clears throat) ....

... Lord of the Rings.

Can you believe that?

Very easily, as I haven't read it either.

Emma

Nor me. No thanks.

Myrtle

In fact, I started this thread because there are lots of books I feel I 'should' have read, and wondered what other people's were, but LOTR I'll admit to missing out on without shame. My mother read us The Hobbit when I was a child, but that was quite enough.

Emma