Someone at Britain's Telegraph newspaper hit on the bright idea to visit the Ways With Words Festival and accost people with the question, "Which great books are you embarrassed to admit you have never read?" I recall a recent discussion, with Jorge and Dan the Camel Cricket Man and D.J., about just this topic. The Telegraph link is here; it includes a video clip (my computer has no sound, so I have no idea what all those people are saying).
Let's see what great books I have that I have not read:
Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift)
Slaughterhouse-five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
One-Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Light in August (William Faulkner)
Finnegan's Wake (James Joyce)
Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)
Also I own a copy of Milton: The Complete Poems (so complete that it includes even those written in Latin). I'll never read it. Anyhow, who has time to read everything? And why would this be embarrassing to admit? I'm not embarrassed to say what I have not read. If I do ever get around to reading Finnegan's Wake, by the way, I doubt I'll ever finish it.
2008/07/28
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A Slowly Growing List of Things to Look Forward To When You Have a Child
- Every day is either Christmas or Halloween or Birthday or Easter
- Leave those cats alone! They're going to scratch you and it will hurt
- You cannot lie under circumstances, but nor can you tell the literal truth
- Geez that kid is sharp
- Can I have cake? Can I have cake? Can I have cake? Huh? Daddy? Can I have cake?
- For the last time, stop asking me!
- Noticing the growth: taller and a bit heavier to carry
- Children's television shows
- Food. Wasted food
- Remembering that you once acted this way yourself
- Watching where the both of you are going
- The joy of hearing the word "fuck" being used experimentally, and justifying this experimentation by saying "Well they learn it eventually"
- TANTRUMS
- Sitting down together on the living room floor, a mess of blocks & cars & plush Care Bears strewn around you, discussing the complexities of each car's identity, its name, and why it is so humorous
- Having to take responsibility for someone else for a change
- More frustration than you're prepared for
- Wicked cackling
- Drawings of potato guys
- Learning about the world all over again
- Circular Logic
- Unexpected hugs and words put beautifully together out of context
- Waking up after 4 hours of sleep, and unexpectedly having to confront shit, in more than one place, including the carpet, a big toe, a butt, a bed, a toilet seat, and underpants
5 comments:
I have not read anything by Jane Austen or the Brontes. I'm not embarrassed about that, though.
I do have a copy of Anna Karenina that I haven't read, though. And I will also admit my shame that I have not read Moby Dick.
I do recommend Slaughterhouse-five and 100 Years of Solitude. You should go to the penalty box. Two minutes. You feel shame.
I haven't really read anything by Faulkner except "A Rose for Emily."
I have read NO Jack Kerouac. I picked it up once, and I didn't like it.
I forgot: I own and have not read War & Peace; Thomas Mann's Death in Venice; I have read the title story of The Things They Carried but not the rest of the book; I have read half of Invisible Man.
I do not own nor have I read Grapes of Wrath, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and many other books that American high school students often are required to read. This may have been due in part to unwillingness on my part to do any kind of work in high school.
AND: Lonesome Dove has been sitting on my shelf for some time, and I think, You goddamn enormous novel, I'll read you one of these days...
Too many to list, but here are a few:
James Joyce (currently reading Dubliners, though)
Tolstoy
Dostoevsky
T.S. Elliot
Moby Dick
Great Expectations
Huck Finn
Tom Saywer
Hills Like White Elephants (short story)
Never finished these:
Hamlet
Beowulf
Canterbury Tales
Paradise Lost
If anything, Mr. Dan, read Huck Finn, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and Hills Like White Elephants (the latter takes 10 minutes).
T.S. Eliot is indecipherable and The Wasteland made me froth at the mouth in irritation.
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