Ulysses. It’s one of those books that has always been on that long list of books I “ought to read” but wasn’t terribly keen on reading. I had been told repeatedly — by many English teachers and professors — that it was a difficult book to read so I had steered clear.
For the last little while at work, it has been the book that is “on deck” — I’ve been scanning an early two volume edition page by page at high resolution and, as often happens, I’ve been reading bits of the text as I am setting up and editing pages. It’s different, for sure, but not really that difficult, especially by modern standards. So I have decided to add it to my “to read” list instead of my “ought to read” list.
I’m not the only person with a “meaning to/ought to read” list of course. Most people have one, and many bluff their way through conversations pretending to have read various important texts. BookRiot has a great list of 20 books most commonly on the pretend-to-have-read list. Here’s the books, annotated with my thoughts:
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (85 mentions) — I have tried. Really. Three or four times but I just don’t like Austen’s style. I will probably never read this one.
- Ulysses by James Joyce — see above
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville — again, I tried. Ick.
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy — nope. No interest.
- The Bible — I have read the complete Old Testament (chapter and verse; I read it when I was in England) and most of the New Testament, as well as most of the Apocrypha.
- 1984 by George Orwell — had to read this for school; re-read it a few years later; eager to read it again! Surprised Brave New World isn’t on this list, too. I read and re-read it in the same years.
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien — yeah, another style-clash. I tried even after failing to make it through The Hobbit, but I just don’t like Tolkien’s wordiness.
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald — never bothered to try. Nothing against it; if it was on a bookshelf where I was in a cabin, or something, I’d give it a shot.
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy — Tolstoy again? No interest.
- Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger — read it in my “rebellious teen” phase. Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. Most of the plot is long-vanished from my memory.
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace — familiar with the title but otherwise no clue about this one.
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller — another one I read in my late teens and have mostly forgotten.
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — read for school and loved it; mostly remember it now because I’ve also watched the movie a few times.
- Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James — if you ever see me reading this, please slap it out of my hand. I’ve read parts of it — enough to know that the writing is middling and the plot causes headaches from all the eye-rolling.
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte — like Austen, I can’t cope with the writing style of the Bronte sisters (or most books of that era).
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky — another Russian novel that has never made it past the trivia stage in that I can match the author to the title. Never even considered trying this one.
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte — see comment on Jane Eyre, above.
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens — I’ve finished very little Dickens over the years, this is not one. Again, it’s his wordiness that gets in my way of enjoying his work.
- Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling — I read every one of them, though it took me a few years to start, by the last book, I was lined up on release day to buy a copy.
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (21 mentions) — this is one of the Dickens books I finished; I had to read it for a history course though, which made it much more interesting to me as I was reading it not for structure or character development but for historical flavour.
It’s admittedly a short list but I look at those 100-books lists, like Guardian’s Top 100 Books of All Time, and start to see some overlap as well as a few other titles I can add to my never-read-and-probably-won’t list like One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Tin Drum and Leaves of Grass (I tried that one. Ugh, no.).
I also have a “try again” list — some of those are pictured, right — books I’ve either never managed to finish or have read but forgotten significant portions.
It comes down to this: like food, reading is a very personal thing. Just like I would never seriously mock someone for not liking a common food (How can you not like strawberry jam! Everyone loves strawberry jam!), I am not going to condemn someone for never having read an “important” book. Of course, I might raise my eyebrow if my BS meter goes off while you’re bluffing…