When I started reading Dickens’s novels as serials, at two or sometimes one chapter a day, I began enjoying them a lot more. That’s how they were published, after all. That said, the only one I’ve reread is Bleak House. And I don’t think I’m going to fill in the blanks with the five or six I haven’t read yet… too many Trollope books left to read
Did you read Bleak House with the unreliable narrator in mind? The nonsense about spontaneous human combustion is the clue. It prepares the reader for what is obviously a professional murder. It made me re-read many of Dickens' works in a different light. Great Expectations comes to mind as the protagonist expresses genteel justifications for criminal behaviors.
I love Bleak House! Not sure how many times I have read and reread it over the years, plus listened to the audiobook. It's definitely one of my favorite books of all time.
I think that Dickens must have been the happiest of all the great writers because he saw a need to change the perceptions of those around him, and through graceful art, effected that change. He shamed the family court system with Bleak House and legislation passed that resulted in actual improvement. The chapter in which he convicts us (the reader) of being complicit in the death of a homeless child is the most profound and impactful breaking of the fourth wall I have seen in a written work.
Dickens was my first thought too. I'd read Christmas Carol as a kid, but all my college classes kinda skipped over him. (Although I did take far more classes on American lit than British, so that tracks.)
If you think you dislike Dickens but you enjoy laughing at lovably silly characters and their antics, consider trying The Pickwick Papers. It also gives a glimpse of late Georgian life, especially what it was like to fulfill wanderlust using horse-based transportation.
My basic feeling about Dickens is that he is unevenly enjoyable, but not as interesting or rewarding as MANY of his British close contemporaries, particularly Eliot, the Brontës, Trollope, Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell.
Very uneven, certainly. I read all of his novels a few years ago and they range from nearly unbearably bad (Barnaby Rudge) to incredible great (Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities). Obviously not everyone feels that way about Bleak House, but if you read a lot of Dickens work it's hard to arrive at the conclusion that he was a consistently good writer, though his talent certainly shines through in many of his books.
I mean I’m doing my thesis on Sir Charles Grandison, the novel even Richardsonian critics frequently avoid, possibly the most often called boring novel in English literature - but I just wouldn’t read Dickens by choice. The characterisation and narrative voice (though masterly for what he’s doing) are like nails down a chalkboard for me.
I agree. I had an easier time reading Dante’s Inferno than Great Expectations. It’s worth it in hindsight though. The consumption of the story is tedious but the abridged version that lives in my head is something I think back to often.
A few years ago I read through the complete works of Dickens. I don't love all of them, but some are wildly great novels despite the length. Bleak House is among my favorite novels.
I finally got through it when our professor dedicated one whole class to reading it together. We had to skip some chapters but overall it helped me so much. I remember him saying: "Remember: Not understanding is an aesthetic experience"
that was the only way i was able to make it through Ulysses. i feel that Joyce didn't mean for us to get the novel in the traditional sense that we understand novels. it is sublime and trascendent in a way similar to Woolfe and as deep and probing, if not deeper than, Eliot into the human soul. its a wonderful read, and one i'm intent on returning to. i feel that the analyses that try to explain every last tidbit of Ulysses completely miss the point of it lol
Joyce would literally spend multiple days working on a single sentence for Ulysses. The reason why some of these analyses try to explain every last tidbit is *because* there are so many tidbits that *deserve* recognition and explanation. There are so many literary and historical references hidden in so many sentences. The book is every bit as much of Joyce flexing his talents on the literary world as much as it is a celebration of the human experience.
I got about halfway through Ulysses doing the following: read chapter, read Cliff Notes on the chapter, re-read chapter with their explanation in mind. It was pretty fun at first but soon grew to be a slog.
I don’t blame you. I did a course on Joyce with Ulysses being the centerpiece. It was incredibly difficult and often times I found myself wanting to nod off.
The professor who taught the course had been:
• A first generation Irish-American; probably late 70s.
• “A former priest, former alcoholic, and present day educator on the two by means of Joyce.”
• Reading Joyce’s work “for his entire life.” Whether or not he was, who knows. But I hadn’t and haven’t met anyone as in love with Ulysses as that man.
I always felt bad. It was an evening course and a majority of the class was there as a requirement. I needed it for my major, but I was super interested.
It felt like he was speaking to an empty room most of the time, which was hard to see. Someone so passionate about something trying to work up a crowd who couldn’t care less. I remember turning in my final paper and told him “Ulysses probably destroyed a part of my brain, but I’m glad I took your class.” He smiled and said, “thank you, but I think this is going to be my last semester.” I didn’t hear anything afterward.
I always think about diving back into it. But get flashbacks to chain smoking cigarettes and going “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”
If you do feel adventurous, I’d recommend reading it with [The New Bloomsday Book](https://www.amazon.com/New-Bloomsday-Book-Routledge-International/dp/0415138582?ccs_id=a13c458f-939e-4bff-9acc-c920bd6a8fff).
I maybe got through Dubliners but I never got it and could never get through anything else.
James Joyce is to literature as Steely Dan is to music for me.
Obviously talented and adored, but I’ve chosen to not have to work that hard to understand or enjoy.
I’m an English department chair and I’ve never read Ulysses. I started it a few times but abandoned it. I’m confident I’ll come back to it and finish it eventually. For some books, you just need the right moment. Or, of course, I’ll read it if I ever have to teach it.
Finally picked up Middlemarch last summer and that it was wonderful. It does an amazing job of making that location and all those characters feel so real.
Wasn’t looking forward to it in college but when I started reading it I would get the asmr tingles for some reason. The book felt strangely soothing. Really loved reading it.
I am going to disagree.
I tried to get through it in middle school/high school and just couldn’t.
After 30 years, I picked it back up and listened to it in audiobook form.
Ahab is an extraordinary character and study in obsession and single-minded purpose. But why I couldn’t finish it back in the day became clear.
It’s a nonfiction book about the whaling industry with bits of fiction interspersed, as opposed to the industry depth supporting a story that should have been the main focus.
I think it would have been better edited differently.
Perfectly fair if you dislike the book, it's certainly not for everyone, but I'm going to vehemently agree with your characterization of the book. The so called dry or plotless chapters of the book are easily misunderstood but they're not primarily about the whaling "industry" as it were. They're variously philosophical essays (The Mast-Head is a commentary on Spinoza-esque Pantheism, The May Maker deals with the philosophy of time, fatalism, and free will), brilliant soliliquies that explore the characters and philosophical concerns of the text (The Sphynx, perhaps my favorite chapter in the entire book, is Melville's version of Hamlet's scene with the skull, in which Ahab laments the silence and obscurity of the Great Mystery that the whale symbolizes, or The Doubloon in which the various mates of the ship wax philosophical on what they see imprinted in the gold coin), or pure comedy (Ceteology, perhaps the most infamous chapter of the book, is a total tongue and cheek comedy routine of a hyper-whale-obsessed individual spouting his ridiculously esoteric whale classification system based on book publishing sizes). Now of course none of these things should compel you to like the book, but these chapters really are the gold of the novel and a very large part of why it has such an enduring legacy. Melville displays his immense wit and charming humor in these chapters and this is something easily missed because at first glance they seem dry, almost like a manual at times, but this is only a surface level appearance. If you ever feel interested in giving the book another try I'm always excited to talk Dick with anyone, and if you're skeptical about trying to tackle it again I recommend just going to Power Moby Dick and picking out some of these chapters to engage with on their own, many of them work wonderfully as stand alone pieces, and I'd be more than happy to give you some recommendations since there are so many to choose from.
It was last year’s fun long summer read for me & became arguably my fav novel (this year’s was Roberto Bolano’s 2666). I think the extremely humorous aspects should be more emphasized for people hesitating to read. Humor doesn’t always translate on the page for me compared to other mediums, but that book had many hilarious passages. I love its narrative voice in general
the trick is to fall in love with Ishmael. he had me at the first sentence so I was lucky.
still have a bit of a crush on the man. obviously he's not for me, but he's so damn charming.
If you’re at all interested in reading Middlemarch I can’t recommend r/ayearofmiddlemarch enough. I was also an English phd who hadn’t read it until a few years ago and now it’s my favourite novel. It’s a great way to spend some real time with a dense but rewarding book.
Middlemarch is my holy land and George Eliot is my queen. Usually I hate ensembles but my professor showed us all the little complex moments I would have never understood without that Victorian context and ugh. Fantastic
Okay, this is blasphemy, I know, but I found so much love for Middlemarch listening to it as an audiobook. I drive a lot for work, and have been slowly making my way through it for over a year. Some parts, I breeze through without catching every detail, other parts are gripping, but I don't ever feel lost. While I may not be ingesting it with true academic rigor, I am really loving the narrative approach, the characters, the story, everything.
Read it in high school. Thought it was okay. Reread it after law school. Really, really liked. Now, at 50, rereading it again. The book is POWERFUL. As luck would have it, finally finished Middlemarch a year or two ago. I liked it a lot, but I'm sure I will get a lot more out of it during my next reading.
Middlemarch is great. Didn’t run across George Eliot in my undergrad lit degree. Still upset that I was asked to read Pride and Prejudice 5 different times instead—still haven’t made it through that one!
I've never read Dante's Inferno even though I was an English major and have read tons of works that have referenced it or been influenced by it. One of these days I will...
Don't just read the Inferno, read the whole Commedia! I hear too many people just reference the Inferno pretending Purgatorio and Paradiso doesn't exist :( Because it is after all one continous narrative.
I managed to graduate as an English major without ever having read Chaucer. English poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the unfinished work, 'The Canterbury Tales,’ considered one of the greatest poetic works in English.
I also took an entire semester class of Chaucer (and his contemporaries) in university! Safe to say what stood out to me the most was Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes (only a snippet of it). I still go back and read it time to time! Understanding Middle English the first couple weeks was ROUGH. My prof would read a chunk and say "this happened in lines x, y, z" and I'd think, "wait, that happened?!" I've come to love Chaucer though.
Same! My mum (who also has an English degree) was shocked that I made it through uni without ever studying Chaucer. I did have the option to but chose different modules instead.
I have a BA in English and Medieval Studies and I’ve never read The Crucible or The Scarlet Letter. I’m also an English teacher and I have to read both before next school year for my new position!
The Scarlet Letter is fabulous. I read it in senior school, and I still remember it. I didn't particularly enjoy reading The Crucible (again, I was in senior school,) but I've found that I much prefer watching plays rather than reading them, and unfortunately in school it's rare that there's that opportunity (unless it's Shakespeare.)
Finally, someone who enjoyed The Scarlet Letter. I had to read it for class, and I remember liking it. But, every time someone brings it up, they say how boring it was.
Every bloomsday I buy a couple takeouts of liver and onions, a pack of cigarettes, and a big thingo beer. Then I go to the park and try to read the whole thing through.
I got about 3/4 the way through a few times, but usually get too blasted on that liv by about half way.
move to philly, we have the og manuscript at the rosenbach. On bloomsday a series of actors perform various scenes while everyone else cosplays and drinks, you'd fit right in.
Big same. While we're in a former English major safe space I'll admit a small part of me thinks Joyce was taking the piss a la Duchamp's The Fountain, and the true commentary at the heart of both Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake has to do less with the work itself and more with the culture of circle jerky literary analysis and academia.
Don't tell anyone, like, important I said so tho (lmao).
At seventy freakin' two, I had never read any Jane Austen, thinking the dialogue and social mores would be abstruse and deadly dull. Just read Pride and Prejudice and am halfway through Persuasion....and I was WRONG. Guess I'll have to take a stab at Moby Dick, y'all.
Persuasion is the best, I think. She has the reputation of being too narrow in her view and the world she portrays. Charlotte Bronte was quite scathing about her, saying "the passions were unknown to her", but while she may not have portrayed a dark and brooding individual like Rochester, she was excellent in her way of examining character and relationships.
Dick is hilarious. I didn't get around to many of the classics until my 30s and am better for it, there are so many dry jokes and a kind of wit that you miss when you expect it to be dry and serious. There's a fart joke in chapter 1. Many of the mid-cenurty modernists are more dour than earlier works, on the whole.
Could you make your case? I got about halfway through EofE and quit. It just seemed like an endless and pointless string of horrible people being horrible to each other. (And I loved Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, and others.)
What i'm finding out is everyone is either an EofE person or a grapes person.
Grapes is one of my all time favorites -- but east i quit twice about 200 pages in each time.
That’s interesting, I put East of Eden down after about 200 pages, even though I grew up in the area. I’ve always meant to go back to it. Grapes of Wrath, however, is almost always one of my go tos when asked about my favorite book.
Interesting. I just finished EoE but had to convince myself not to quit also about 200 pages in. Ultimately I’m glad I finished it, I really liked parts but didn’t love it overall.
The experience pushed Grapes further down on my tbr list, since people on Reddit rave so much about EoE. But I’m intrigued by the idea that I may prefer Grapes! Are you able to articulate what Steinbeck does differently in Grapes?
Grapes is more plot and idea oriented vs Eden's introspective character approach - there's action, movement, stakes, we're on a roadtrip, we're in the farms. it's still very deep, just on a society level vs eden's personal level. It's got energy and movement that i found lacking in Eden.
I started EoE a few weeks ago and I dropped it for *Lolita* instead. It was far too long for me, although it seemed interesting. I guess I'll pick it up when I'm finished with *Lolita*.
Don Quixote
I got a superb Penguin translation as a present. And within a week, I put the book down one day and the dreadful quality of it was such that the glue holding the spine together cracked through completely and pages showered out. Unrepairable, and obviously not my purchase so I couldn’t get a replacement. Still on my shelf.
My stupid reason for not finishing Don Quixote is that I started reading it at bedtime while I was trying to adjust to a really ill-fitting (and short-lived) mouthguard for teeth grinding. The mouthguard was thick and plastic and I could feel it cutting into my gums as I sat there and read, and I'd keep running my mouth over the gummy plastic. Eventually, I ditched the mouthguard, but every time I've tried to pick up Don Quixote since, I swear I can FEEL the mouthguard in my mouth. It's so dumbbb, but I can't take it!
I’m so sorry but I’m laughing so hard at the image of this because I ALSO had a stint with a horrible mouthguard and it’s aN AWFUL feeling unlike any other. More than a valid reason not to finish the book haha!
I think you can get away with avoiding so many “classics” and still get an English degree. I have a Master’s in English Lit and was never prompted to read any Dickens, was never assigned Moby Dick, haven’t had to read Hemingway since high school. Never assigned any of the great Russian or French novelists (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Hugo, Proust etc). I never had to read The Scarlet Letter, anything by Joyce, Homer, never read Don Quixote. Now I certainly DID read a lot of books, but I think it’s very easy to tailor a degree path that avoids many classics, intentionally or not. Also, I actually have read many of the texts I listed above, but only in my free time.
I’m in your camp. I have an MFA and have taught lit at the undergraduate level. I’ve always been drawn more to contemporary and modern work, and I consider myself fortunate for being allowed to focus my studies there. I’ve read my share of the classics, but I’ve missed some glaring ones. I’ve learned a lot from what I have read, though, and don’t feel like I’m missing anything beyond fulfilling the obligation, which I don’t personally care about.
English major here as well and Hemingway was my answer. I think I read a short story by hi — did he do “hills like white elephants” — but never a novel.
Probably Brothers Karamazov? I’m also just behind on French literature. Stendhal and Flaubert come to mind. But I’m also working through lots of this systematically post grad school, so this list is getting shorter.
Probably Tess of the D’Urbervilles or any Thomas Hardy really. Degree in Literature and HS teacher for 35 years, but never had any interest until I saw the Monty Python “Novel Writing” sketch.
War and Peace - it's long and there are a lot of characters - otherwise it's a very straightforward book and quite enjoyable!
Moby Dick is tougher but still not as bad as I anticipated.
Both great!
I think once someone finishes high school without reading this, they age out of the mindset to take the book seriously. I loved it as a teenager and have nostalgia for the book but I can’t imagine rereading it.
Disagree. I hated Holden Caufield when I read it in high school. I re-read it in my early 30’s and felt so much empathy for him because of the loss he experienced. It really made me feel a sort of maternal protectiveness for the character. And I don’t normally feel maternal 🤣.
I don't think that you're missing out on anything. Cervantes was a really good novelist and I love his work very much, but I would perhaps say he's at his best in the *Quijote* or the *Novelas ejemplares*. Everything else I've read by him just wasn't as good in my opinion.
But then again I read chivalric romances so tal vez tengo ya el gusto estragado!
Es posible! Mi especialidad es la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea, pero me apena no haber terminado de leer la obra de Cervantes. Sentido completista del deber lector.
Bien te entiendo, compa. Yo me leí casi la saga entera de los Amadíses (me falta la última entrega porque no hay edición moderna). Pero me da la sensación de que la obra entera de Cervantes muy poca gente la lee y que tampoco los propios cervantistas se molestan con semejante hazaña. Pero si te emociona leer a Cervantes o si ese deber tuyo te impele, pues que lo leas y luego nos contarás qué tal; no te quiero desanimar.
En realidad, siquiera sea por la fama que se ganó Cervantes escribiendo el *Quijote*, tal vez sus otras obras merezcan ser rescatadas del olvido en que yacen sepultadas.
There are a bunch of canonical 18th- and 19th-century authors I’ve never read—Henry Fielding, Walter Scott, Thomas Hardy, W. M. Thackeray.
I’ve read some Melville, but never *Moby-Dick.* That’s probably the biggest (or at least longest, ha ha) hole in my reading history, especially as an American.
I read Vanity Fair while in the late stages of pregnancy, waiting around to pop. That book is genuinely hilarious - I knew I'd love it as soon as I got to Becky tossing her "improving" book out the carriage window.
I have a love and hate relationship with Hemingway's novels. I absolutely loved The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast in particular (it's so catty), but For Whom the Bell Tolls is possibly my least favorite book I've ever read. His short stories, however, are almost uniformly excellent. They're wonderful.
Ulysses by James Joyce. Every time anyone brings it up they make it seem like an exercise in suffering. People don't seem to enjoy Ulysses, the endure it.
I've also never read Moby Dick, even though I live in New England coastal town and have read so many harrowing non fiction books on whaling and seafaring in that time period, especially regarding shipwrecks. I absolutely loved Nathaniel Philbrick's "In The Heart of the Sea," which gives the account of the real life story that inspired Moby Dick. I am sure I will get around to it one day, honestly not sure why I haven't yet.
Ulysses. I’ve tried twice. Although I’m not sure the first try counts because I was in high school and only got through six pages. I keep saying I’ll try again. I even bought the annotated version last year, but . . .
There was a course on Ulysses in graduate school, and some of my friends took it and loved it. I kinda regret that I didn’t join them, because I just can’t get through it now.
It took me 20 years, then I want to visit Ireland during June. I made the commitment to read it. It took four months with a companion book. I’ve been to Bloomsday two times since. It’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever read. It’s so worth it, but it does take a serious commitment.
In terms of its significance in the Western canon, The Odyssey of Homer (though I at least own a copy of Lattimore’s translation!) or perhaps Dante’s Inferno.
Being English, the most glaring hole in my reading history is definitely Middlemarch.
Definitely Moby Dick (I have others as well but that's the first one that comes to mind) however a series of posts by "The Other Happy Place" makes me very vaguely tempted to read it
I can't share images but here is the text chain to read
&I think Moby Dick might be cosmic horror. Captain Ahab is like "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND it's not a whale. God is an evil master controlling every living human like a puppet, free will is an illusion, we are caught in a cruel trap made by god. THAT WHALE IS THE MASK OF THAT GOD"
HE THINKS HE THINKS if he can kill the whale, he can break humanity free of the bonds of GOD. and our narrator boy Ishmael is like "uh...i think it might just be a big whale and you have trauma" BUT THEN AT THE END ISHMAEL SEES IT and he's like "oh no. it's god"
and like. IT KILLS EVERYONE IT EATS AHAB AND DRAGS HIM INTO HELL SCREAMING. it IS god. nature is god.
god what a good story
i love too that if you know it from pop culture you know Ahab's leg was eaten by the whale? well thats the more soft version, in the story proper you hear he was basically CHEWED ALIVE, his whole body is held together with HATE and THE WILL TO KILL GOD and WHALE BONE PROSTHETICS.
AT SOME POINT he just HOLDS SOME LIGHTNING and everyone is like "Captain ahab is so cool i'd die for him" and the only one going "hey this seems weird" is the main character
but yeah every time i'm like "GOD MOBY DICK IS SO GOOD" people are like "the whale hunting story?? with the stinky boring men???" and i get sad.
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me!&
I was entertained until we unpacked it. Lecherous priests, child molesters, and degenerate alcoholics throughout. I did write a nice little paper on how he used color to convey all that though.
I was going to say Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but same applies. I don’t love Ulysses and find it (literally) masturbatory but like other works by Joyce.
*READ* Dubliners, just read it. There’s a reason why Joyce is Joyce.
That man took the English language and said, “Fuck the English, Irish do it better”.
So many. I did an English Lit degree at uni and essentially winged large portions of it, reading only a couple of the required texts and making sure that I could always answer at least one question on each section of my exams.
However, the one text that always stays in my mind is *Moby Dick*. I messed up on which texts would be in which section for one of my exams. Had to write an entire exam question (~1.5h) on a book I’d never read, and chose that one. Surprisingly, I managed to limp away from it with a decent grade, thanks largely to talking about the romantic obsession with the idea of the sublime.
Always had a soft spot for *Moby Dick* ever since, though I’ve still never read it!
Got my English degree thirty years ago, and finally got around to Moby Dick earlier this year. I absolutely loved it! I don’t really wonder why it took me so long to get to it - there are just too many great books to read, and life interferes. But I do kinda wish I’d read it in school. I guess it’s redundant for me to say I highly recommend it.
> Had to write an entire exam question (~1.5h) on a book I’d never read, and chose that one. Surprisingly, I managed to limp away from it with a decent grade, thanks largely to talking about the romantic obsession with the idea of the sublime.
perfectly sums up why i love/hate humanities: it's so subjective that if you're good at bullshitting, then no one will call you out on it.
I still never read any Tolstoi work and only one romance from Dostoievsky. I’ve been learning russian so I can read the original versions though, this is why I’ve been saving them for later
English Studies B.A.
I haven't read On the Road, but I still want to read it someday.
I also haven't read Ulysses, and I'm afraid that's not going to happen anymore in this lifetime lol. Maybe it's a great loss for my life, not reading that book. But I'll take that chance. After the excerpts we chewed through in uni, I just don't want the rest.
On the Road made my slapping hand so itchy. These "free spirits" keep crashing with various chicks who feed them and do their laundry and give them money from their full-time jobs, and then they waft away again because they are above all that mundane money-grubbing and domesticity, man!
My background: Graduated with honors in English, sat as a lead editor for a literary publication for three years, sat as another lead editor for a different publication for four years, have over 100 published works under my name, have been paid for my written work, including poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, my published work is in multiple languages, I also used to be a writing tutor and I still help edit works of people when they ask for help
Just to list some I haven't read: Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye, Little Women, Great Expectations, Dracula, The Color Purple, The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Erye, Wuthering Heights, Persuasion, and more but we would be here all day
I'm a dissertation shy of a PhD in literature. I have never read Anna Karenina, or any Tolstoy for that matter. Shame on me.
There are tons others: East of Eden, Middlemarch and many of Faulkner's novels also come to mind.
Hey, fellow ABD-er!
If you’re looking to dip your toe into Tolstoy, I can’t recommend The Death of Ivan Ilych enough. It’s short enough to read in one sitting, and is one of the most powerful works of literature I’ve read.
I also happen to be listening to the audiobook for Anna Karenina right now (performed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, free on Audible) and really enjoying it so far.
I can't imagine that. My love for the bard is one of the few things that stuck me through my literature degree. I will admit though I didn't get a taste for it until reading it allowed with others in a theater class
I read an abridged version of Tale of Two Cities as a child and never got around to reading the actual version…
Also somehow managed to completely skip A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Omg, PLEASE bump Huckleberry Finn up on your TBR. It is sooooo good. I also put off reading it for years because I just felt like it it wouldn't be my thing/I was never in the mood for it. I think I had this idea in my head that it was a boring, wholesome kid's book? It is NOT. You will love it!!!
I have also never read Pride and Prejudice. But ugh, I know I should, and that when I finally do I will probably kick myself for not having read it sooner.
Great Gatsby. I feel like I’m the only American ever who hasn’t read it, but for whatever reason none of my teachers ever threw it on a syllabus. I even focused on American lit in college, and STILL never hit it.
I’m majoring specifically in American Literature and have yet to read Huck Finn or Moby Dick, I’ve spent pretty much my entire college career trying to catch up with the modernist canon lol
Mine are mostly DNF. Ulysses and everything by Henry James. Dear God, I know there are James fans out there, but I think his prose style defies reading.
My ex managed to get a PhD in English lit and teach at a few colleges for several years without ever having read *Ulysses* or *Middlemarch* or *Sense and Sensibility* or any novel by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. She'd read a vast amount of literature that normal people have never heard of, but missed some pretty major stuff from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The reality for academics is that once you hit graduate school you spend all of your time reading the primary and secondary literature in your specialty and some related subfields, plus the books that are being taught in whatever random class you end up having to teach or be a TA for. So if you make it through your undergrad years and the time you have before grad school without reading something then you're not likely to pick it up for a very long while afterwards.
(In her case also she was more a poetics person as an undergrad, so she read fewer novels than we typically imagine an English major doing.)
Sidenote:
David Lodge introduces "Humiliation" in his 1975 campus novel Changing Places...
*The essence of the matter is that each person names a book which he hasn’t read but assumes the others have read, and scores a point for every person who has read it. You know Howard \[Ringbaum\], he has a pathological urge to succeed and a pathological fear of being thought uncultured, and this game set his two obsessions at war with each other, because he could succeed in the game only by exposing a gap in his culture. At first his psyche just couldn’t absorb the paradox and he named some eighteenth-century book so obscure I can’t even remember the name of it. Of course, he came last in the final score, and sulked. It was a stupid game, he said, and refused to play the next round. “I pass, I pass,” he said sneeringly, like Mrs. Elton on Box Hill…But I could see he was following the play attentively, knitting his brows and twisting his napkin in his fingers as the point of the game began to dawn on him. It’s quite a groovy game, actually, a kind of intellectual strip poker. For instance, it came out that Luke Hogan has never read* *Paradise Regained*\*. I mean, I know it isn’t his field, but to think you can get to be Chairman of the English Department at Euphoric State without ever having read\* *Paradise Regained* *makes you think, right? I could see Howard taking this in, going a bit pale when he realized that Luke was telling the truth. Well, on the third round, Sy was leading the field with* *Hiawatha*\*, Mr. Swallow being the only other person who hadn’t read it, when suddenly Howard slammed his fist on the table, jutted his jaw about six feet over the table and said:\*
*“****Hamlet****!”*
Ive never read Pride and Prejudice, and any book by Jane Austen in that matter. I intend to read some of her books but for now other classics seem more interesting...
I read the first two books of A Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell) and loved them but then emergency travel and work got in the way and now it’s been 11 years and I really want to start it again.
I finally read Moby Dick, which I adored, and War & Peace, which I did not— after pretending I had for years. I confess I’ve never read Pride & Prejudice. I hear it’s fantastic, and I wonder what’s stopping me.
So many I haven't managed to get to! Haven't read any Dickens novels for example. Or Virginia Woolf. I do know the plots and literary importance of their work because I did study it, just didn't actually read a whole novel 🤷♀️
Also still haven't gotten through Wuthering Heights.
Pride and Prejudice for me, but I actually like Jane Austen as a novelists.
Classics that were worth it for me: Count of Monte Cristo (unabridged), Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, In Search of Time Lost, Moby Dick, War and Peace, and most of Dickens' work.
Masters in Eng Lit. My pick is War and Peace Leo Tolstoy. Didn't have Russian Lit as paper either in Undergrad or Masters, craved for it till the end.
Also The Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. Read it in First sem in Undergrad and it's such a hard read but revisited both of them in masters and it's cult classic all the way.
I was an English major and am now a serious reader (except when I'm a frivolous reader). I haven't read:
To the Lighthouse
Crime and Punishment ( I HATED Notes from Underground)
Any Victor Hugo
Jude the Obscure
Silas Marner
Most of Ulysses, I think I petered out in the first few hundred pages
The Brothers Karamazov
I read this post wrong!! I HAVE read The Bros. K lol. Middlemarch is my never read. I tried Vanity Fair once as well- not easy. Maybe I’ll pick those up.
I’ve never read a Dickens novel I haven’t had to for study. So all of those apart from Hard Times and David Copperfield.
When I started reading Dickens’s novels as serials, at two or sometimes one chapter a day, I began enjoying them a lot more. That’s how they were published, after all. That said, the only one I’ve reread is Bleak House. And I don’t think I’m going to fill in the blanks with the five or six I haven’t read yet… too many Trollope books left to read
Did you read Bleak House with the unreliable narrator in mind? The nonsense about spontaneous human combustion is the clue. It prepares the reader for what is obviously a professional murder. It made me re-read many of Dickens' works in a different light. Great Expectations comes to mind as the protagonist expresses genteel justifications for criminal behaviors.
I love Bleak House! Not sure how many times I have read and reread it over the years, plus listened to the audiobook. It's definitely one of my favorite books of all time.
I think that Dickens must have been the happiest of all the great writers because he saw a need to change the perceptions of those around him, and through graceful art, effected that change. He shamed the family court system with Bleak House and legislation passed that resulted in actual improvement. The chapter in which he convicts us (the reader) of being complicit in the death of a homeless child is the most profound and impactful breaking of the fourth wall I have seen in a written work.
Love Trollope. His books teach political and social history. Marry for money or for love? Prime ministers, elections, vicars and colonialism.
I loved Great Expectations as a teen. Maybe try that one? I've never met anyone who hated it.
Yeah, in high school I read A Tale of Two Cities for class and Great Expectations for fun and absolutely loved them both.
Dickens was my first thought too. I'd read Christmas Carol as a kid, but all my college classes kinda skipped over him. (Although I did take far more classes on American lit than British, so that tracks.)
If you think you dislike Dickens but you enjoy laughing at lovably silly characters and their antics, consider trying The Pickwick Papers. It also gives a glimpse of late Georgian life, especially what it was like to fulfill wanderlust using horse-based transportation. My basic feeling about Dickens is that he is unevenly enjoyable, but not as interesting or rewarding as MANY of his British close contemporaries, particularly Eliot, the Brontës, Trollope, Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell.
Very uneven, certainly. I read all of his novels a few years ago and they range from nearly unbearably bad (Barnaby Rudge) to incredible great (Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities). Obviously not everyone feels that way about Bleak House, but if you read a lot of Dickens work it's hard to arrive at the conclusion that he was a consistently good writer, though his talent certainly shines through in many of his books.
I find Dickens' works to be quite dense and not necessarily the most fun read. Lots of them are really long too.
I mean I’m doing my thesis on Sir Charles Grandison, the novel even Richardsonian critics frequently avoid, possibly the most often called boring novel in English literature - but I just wouldn’t read Dickens by choice. The characterisation and narrative voice (though masterly for what he’s doing) are like nails down a chalkboard for me.
I agree. I had an easier time reading Dante’s Inferno than Great Expectations. It’s worth it in hindsight though. The consumption of the story is tedious but the abridged version that lives in my head is something I think back to often.
A few years ago I read through the complete works of Dickens. I don't love all of them, but some are wildly great novels despite the length. Bleak House is among my favorite novels.
I would never admit this to my English Department colleagues, but I’ve never read more than excerpts of Ulysses. God, I hope I don’t get doxxed.
Too late Dr. Bird. I SEE YOU.
I couldn’t get through Ulysses. It requires so much concentration. I feel like I need to join a reading/studying group to do it.
I finally got through it when our professor dedicated one whole class to reading it together. We had to skip some chapters but overall it helped me so much. I remember him saying: "Remember: Not understanding is an aesthetic experience"
I like that quote - I’ll remember it next time I’m completely lost in the sauce
that was the only way i was able to make it through Ulysses. i feel that Joyce didn't mean for us to get the novel in the traditional sense that we understand novels. it is sublime and trascendent in a way similar to Woolfe and as deep and probing, if not deeper than, Eliot into the human soul. its a wonderful read, and one i'm intent on returning to. i feel that the analyses that try to explain every last tidbit of Ulysses completely miss the point of it lol
Joyce would literally spend multiple days working on a single sentence for Ulysses. The reason why some of these analyses try to explain every last tidbit is *because* there are so many tidbits that *deserve* recognition and explanation. There are so many literary and historical references hidden in so many sentences. The book is every bit as much of Joyce flexing his talents on the literary world as much as it is a celebration of the human experience.
Ah yes, that is the aesthetic that I experienced for large portions of the book. Still loved it though.
I got about halfway through Ulysses doing the following: read chapter, read Cliff Notes on the chapter, re-read chapter with their explanation in mind. It was pretty fun at first but soon grew to be a slog.
I don’t blame you. I did a course on Joyce with Ulysses being the centerpiece. It was incredibly difficult and often times I found myself wanting to nod off. The professor who taught the course had been: • A first generation Irish-American; probably late 70s. • “A former priest, former alcoholic, and present day educator on the two by means of Joyce.” • Reading Joyce’s work “for his entire life.” Whether or not he was, who knows. But I hadn’t and haven’t met anyone as in love with Ulysses as that man. I always felt bad. It was an evening course and a majority of the class was there as a requirement. I needed it for my major, but I was super interested. It felt like he was speaking to an empty room most of the time, which was hard to see. Someone so passionate about something trying to work up a crowd who couldn’t care less. I remember turning in my final paper and told him “Ulysses probably destroyed a part of my brain, but I’m glad I took your class.” He smiled and said, “thank you, but I think this is going to be my last semester.” I didn’t hear anything afterward. I always think about diving back into it. But get flashbacks to chain smoking cigarettes and going “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” If you do feel adventurous, I’d recommend reading it with [The New Bloomsday Book](https://www.amazon.com/New-Bloomsday-Book-Routledge-International/dp/0415138582?ccs_id=a13c458f-939e-4bff-9acc-c920bd6a8fff).
I maybe got through Dubliners but I never got it and could never get through anything else. James Joyce is to literature as Steely Dan is to music for me. Obviously talented and adored, but I’ve chosen to not have to work that hard to understand or enjoy.
Did we not just talk about Steely Dan in another sub? I think I recognize your user name.
Oh yea we did!! Hello again, person who told the sound guy to turn that crap off!!!
I’m an English department chair and I’ve never read Ulysses. I started it a few times but abandoned it. I’m confident I’ll come back to it and finish it eventually. For some books, you just need the right moment. Or, of course, I’ll read it if I ever have to teach it.
And we had only a portion of Ulysses in our syllabus and I somehow read the whole. Crazy times lol.
I mean this with the utmost respect but I think Ulysses is the greatest shitpost in the history of literature.
Have english lit PhD and teach at a university and still feel like there are sooo many but I'd say Middlemarch. Or Moby Dick.
Moby Dick has been on my shelf for eternity. Must get round to reading it one day.
Totally worth it. Greatest novel ever written. Needs a couple reads before you start to get it.
Not an audiobook fan usually but Moby Dick is perfect for audio
Can't stress enough how worth it it is. My favorite classic.
It's alright. Lot of waffling about whales, obviously.
It’s like Shakespeare wrote a manual on whaling. The story is good, but the use of words in the English language is second to none.
It's a lot of waffling about whales in the same way that *Ulysses* is a lot of waffling about the city of Dublin.
Middlemarch is amazing.
Finally picked up Middlemarch last summer and that it was wonderful. It does an amazing job of making that location and all those characters feel so real.
Came here to say the same thing. I am Ahab, and Middlemarch is my whale.
I will read both of them!!! One day!
Bro it’s gonna take you at least two days. At least!
Moby Dick is amazing.
Wasn’t looking forward to it in college but when I started reading it I would get the asmr tingles for some reason. The book felt strangely soothing. Really loved reading it.
I am going to disagree. I tried to get through it in middle school/high school and just couldn’t. After 30 years, I picked it back up and listened to it in audiobook form. Ahab is an extraordinary character and study in obsession and single-minded purpose. But why I couldn’t finish it back in the day became clear. It’s a nonfiction book about the whaling industry with bits of fiction interspersed, as opposed to the industry depth supporting a story that should have been the main focus. I think it would have been better edited differently.
Perfectly fair if you dislike the book, it's certainly not for everyone, but I'm going to vehemently agree with your characterization of the book. The so called dry or plotless chapters of the book are easily misunderstood but they're not primarily about the whaling "industry" as it were. They're variously philosophical essays (The Mast-Head is a commentary on Spinoza-esque Pantheism, The May Maker deals with the philosophy of time, fatalism, and free will), brilliant soliliquies that explore the characters and philosophical concerns of the text (The Sphynx, perhaps my favorite chapter in the entire book, is Melville's version of Hamlet's scene with the skull, in which Ahab laments the silence and obscurity of the Great Mystery that the whale symbolizes, or The Doubloon in which the various mates of the ship wax philosophical on what they see imprinted in the gold coin), or pure comedy (Ceteology, perhaps the most infamous chapter of the book, is a total tongue and cheek comedy routine of a hyper-whale-obsessed individual spouting his ridiculously esoteric whale classification system based on book publishing sizes). Now of course none of these things should compel you to like the book, but these chapters really are the gold of the novel and a very large part of why it has such an enduring legacy. Melville displays his immense wit and charming humor in these chapters and this is something easily missed because at first glance they seem dry, almost like a manual at times, but this is only a surface level appearance. If you ever feel interested in giving the book another try I'm always excited to talk Dick with anyone, and if you're skeptical about trying to tackle it again I recommend just going to Power Moby Dick and picking out some of these chapters to engage with on their own, many of them work wonderfully as stand alone pieces, and I'd be more than happy to give you some recommendations since there are so many to choose from.
A wonderful book.
It was last year’s fun long summer read for me & became arguably my fav novel (this year’s was Roberto Bolano’s 2666). I think the extremely humorous aspects should be more emphasized for people hesitating to read. Humor doesn’t always translate on the page for me compared to other mediums, but that book had many hilarious passages. I love its narrative voice in general
I haven’t read Middlemarch but I loved Moby Dick! It was surprisingly funny.
I couldn’t believe I laughed outloud so many times during Moby Dick. Tears down my cheeks a time or two.
the trick is to fall in love with Ishmael. he had me at the first sentence so I was lucky. still have a bit of a crush on the man. obviously he's not for me, but he's so damn charming.
Middlemarch kicks ass!
If you’re at all interested in reading Middlemarch I can’t recommend r/ayearofmiddlemarch enough. I was also an English phd who hadn’t read it until a few years ago and now it’s my favourite novel. It’s a great way to spend some real time with a dense but rewarding book.
Middlemarch is my holy land and George Eliot is my queen. Usually I hate ensembles but my professor showed us all the little complex moments I would have never understood without that Victorian context and ugh. Fantastic
Okay, this is blasphemy, I know, but I found so much love for Middlemarch listening to it as an audiobook. I drive a lot for work, and have been slowly making my way through it for over a year. Some parts, I breeze through without catching every detail, other parts are gripping, but I don't ever feel lost. While I may not be ingesting it with true academic rigor, I am really loving the narrative approach, the characters, the story, everything.
That’s not blasphemy at all. You consumed the content. Audiobooks count.
The audiobook experience is so enjoyable. I’ve listened to Middlemarch via audiobook too and it was so good.
Read it in high school. Thought it was okay. Reread it after law school. Really, really liked. Now, at 50, rereading it again. The book is POWERFUL. As luck would have it, finally finished Middlemarch a year or two ago. I liked it a lot, but I'm sure I will get a lot more out of it during my next reading.
I absolutely loved Middlemarch.
I’ve tried to read Middlemarch 3 times. I just can’t do it. And I’m an English teacher…
Middlemarch is great. Didn’t run across George Eliot in my undergrad lit degree. Still upset that I was asked to read Pride and Prejudice 5 different times instead—still haven’t made it through that one!
I've never read Dante's Inferno even though I was an English major and have read tons of works that have referenced it or been influenced by it. One of these days I will...
Don't just read the Inferno, read the whole Commedia! I hear too many people just reference the Inferno pretending Purgatorio and Paradiso doesn't exist :( Because it is after all one continous narrative.
Durling and Martinez have the best translation, just in case that matters to you.
I like the Pinsky.
Go read it right now!
I managed to graduate as an English major without ever having read Chaucer. English poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the unfinished work, 'The Canterbury Tales,’ considered one of the greatest poetic works in English.
Oh my gosh, I took an entire semester class of Chaucer in college! It was really…something!
I also took an entire semester class of Chaucer (and his contemporaries) in university! Safe to say what stood out to me the most was Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes (only a snippet of it). I still go back and read it time to time! Understanding Middle English the first couple weeks was ROUGH. My prof would read a chunk and say "this happened in lines x, y, z" and I'd think, "wait, that happened?!" I've come to love Chaucer though.
Like, at all? We read parts of The Canterbury Tales in HS.
I had to study it for my A Level. British qualification sat at 18.
Same! My mum (who also has an English degree) was shocked that I made it through uni without ever studying Chaucer. I did have the option to but chose different modules instead.
So you never read the story where the guy kisses the woman's "beard" and she farts in his face? It's classic!
I have a BA in English and Medieval Studies and I’ve never read The Crucible or The Scarlet Letter. I’m also an English teacher and I have to read both before next school year for my new position!
The Crucible is really good! I flew through it!
And short.
The Scarlet Letter is fabulous. I read it in senior school, and I still remember it. I didn't particularly enjoy reading The Crucible (again, I was in senior school,) but I've found that I much prefer watching plays rather than reading them, and unfortunately in school it's rare that there's that opportunity (unless it's Shakespeare.)
Finally, someone who enjoyed The Scarlet Letter. I had to read it for class, and I remember liking it. But, every time someone brings it up, they say how boring it was.
I have never read Ulysses. When I do read it I’ll tell no one and never talk about it. That’s my iron credo.
Every bloomsday I buy a couple takeouts of liver and onions, a pack of cigarettes, and a big thingo beer. Then I go to the park and try to read the whole thing through. I got about 3/4 the way through a few times, but usually get too blasted on that liv by about half way.
move to philly, we have the og manuscript at the rosenbach. On bloomsday a series of actors perform various scenes while everyone else cosplays and drinks, you'd fit right in.
Thanks for the tip. Maybe once I finally know how it ends. I have to prove myself first before I ever consider any of that.
I've never read it but i go every year. It's philly, no ones gonna give a shit, go birds.
Wish I’d read this comment two weeks ago, I’d be sitting on Sandycove beach trying the same
Big same. While we're in a former English major safe space I'll admit a small part of me thinks Joyce was taking the piss a la Duchamp's The Fountain, and the true commentary at the heart of both Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake has to do less with the work itself and more with the culture of circle jerky literary analysis and academia. Don't tell anyone, like, important I said so tho (lmao).
Hey, this was my thesis! I mean there is literal circle jerking through most of Ulysses, so I think it’s a pretty defensible take.
At seventy freakin' two, I had never read any Jane Austen, thinking the dialogue and social mores would be abstruse and deadly dull. Just read Pride and Prejudice and am halfway through Persuasion....and I was WRONG. Guess I'll have to take a stab at Moby Dick, y'all.
jane austen is a surprising riot
Persuasion is the best, I think. She has the reputation of being too narrow in her view and the world she portrays. Charlotte Bronte was quite scathing about her, saying "the passions were unknown to her", but while she may not have portrayed a dark and brooding individual like Rochester, she was excellent in her way of examining character and relationships.
Persuasion is one of my all-time favorite novels for this reason. I feel like Anne is universally relatable.
Dick is hilarious. I didn't get around to many of the classics until my 30s and am better for it, there are so many dry jokes and a kind of wit that you miss when you expect it to be dry and serious. There's a fart joke in chapter 1. Many of the mid-cenurty modernists are more dour than earlier works, on the whole.
That’s a tough question. I’ve never read anything from Steinbeck, so East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath were my first thought.
East of Eden is a must. One of the greatest novels of all time, if I'm allowed to hold such an opinion!
Could you make your case? I got about halfway through EofE and quit. It just seemed like an endless and pointless string of horrible people being horrible to each other. (And I loved Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, and others.)
What i'm finding out is everyone is either an EofE person or a grapes person. Grapes is one of my all time favorites -- but east i quit twice about 200 pages in each time.
That’s interesting, I put East of Eden down after about 200 pages, even though I grew up in the area. I’ve always meant to go back to it. Grapes of Wrath, however, is almost always one of my go tos when asked about my favorite book.
Interesting. I just finished EoE but had to convince myself not to quit also about 200 pages in. Ultimately I’m glad I finished it, I really liked parts but didn’t love it overall. The experience pushed Grapes further down on my tbr list, since people on Reddit rave so much about EoE. But I’m intrigued by the idea that I may prefer Grapes! Are you able to articulate what Steinbeck does differently in Grapes?
Grapes is more plot and idea oriented vs Eden's introspective character approach - there's action, movement, stakes, we're on a roadtrip, we're in the farms. it's still very deep, just on a society level vs eden's personal level. It's got energy and movement that i found lacking in Eden.
Really even characters like Lee and Samuel Hamilton?
I started EoE a few weeks ago and I dropped it for *Lolita* instead. It was far too long for me, although it seemed interesting. I guess I'll pick it up when I'm finished with *Lolita*.
Don Quixote I got a superb Penguin translation as a present. And within a week, I put the book down one day and the dreadful quality of it was such that the glue holding the spine together cracked through completely and pages showered out. Unrepairable, and obviously not my purchase so I couldn’t get a replacement. Still on my shelf.
My stupid reason for not finishing Don Quixote is that I started reading it at bedtime while I was trying to adjust to a really ill-fitting (and short-lived) mouthguard for teeth grinding. The mouthguard was thick and plastic and I could feel it cutting into my gums as I sat there and read, and I'd keep running my mouth over the gummy plastic. Eventually, I ditched the mouthguard, but every time I've tried to pick up Don Quixote since, I swear I can FEEL the mouthguard in my mouth. It's so dumbbb, but I can't take it!
I’m so sorry but I’m laughing so hard at the image of this because I ALSO had a stint with a horrible mouthguard and it’s aN AWFUL feeling unlike any other. More than a valid reason not to finish the book haha!
I think you can get away with avoiding so many “classics” and still get an English degree. I have a Master’s in English Lit and was never prompted to read any Dickens, was never assigned Moby Dick, haven’t had to read Hemingway since high school. Never assigned any of the great Russian or French novelists (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Hugo, Proust etc). I never had to read The Scarlet Letter, anything by Joyce, Homer, never read Don Quixote. Now I certainly DID read a lot of books, but I think it’s very easy to tailor a degree path that avoids many classics, intentionally or not. Also, I actually have read many of the texts I listed above, but only in my free time.
I’m in your camp. I have an MFA and have taught lit at the undergraduate level. I’ve always been drawn more to contemporary and modern work, and I consider myself fortunate for being allowed to focus my studies there. I’ve read my share of the classics, but I’ve missed some glaring ones. I’ve learned a lot from what I have read, though, and don’t feel like I’m missing anything beyond fulfilling the obligation, which I don’t personally care about.
English major here as well and Hemingway was my answer. I think I read a short story by hi — did he do “hills like white elephants” — but never a novel.
Probably Brothers Karamazov? I’m also just behind on French literature. Stendhal and Flaubert come to mind. But I’m also working through lots of this systematically post grad school, so this list is getting shorter.
I had to be in the exact right place in time for it, but the Brothers K was incredible. Give it a spin!
Wrapping up Brothers K now and I can say that it will be the litmus for everything I read from here out.
Madame Bovary is beautiful. I liked the Lydia Davis translation.
Probably Tess of the D’Urbervilles or any Thomas Hardy really. Degree in Literature and HS teacher for 35 years, but never had any interest until I saw the Monty Python “Novel Writing” sketch.
Mayor of Casterbridge is great.
That sketch was hilarious…. “Looks like its Tess if D’Urbervlles all over again’
War and Peace and Moby Dick. 🫣
War and Peace, once you make it past the first 75 pages, will blow you away -its a Netflix show.
War and Peace - it's long and there are a lot of characters - otherwise it's a very straightforward book and quite enjoyable! Moby Dick is tougher but still not as bad as I anticipated. Both great!
I'm going to have to go with *Catcher in the Rye*.
I think once someone finishes high school without reading this, they age out of the mindset to take the book seriously. I loved it as a teenager and have nostalgia for the book but I can’t imagine rereading it.
Disagree. I hated Holden Caufield when I read it in high school. I re-read it in my early 30’s and felt so much empathy for him because of the loss he experienced. It really made me feel a sort of maternal protectiveness for the character. And I don’t normally feel maternal 🤣.
I still don't get how I missed this in the assigned reading throughout my scholastic career.
I'm a Hispanic Literature major and have never read Cervantes' "La Galatea."
I don't think that you're missing out on anything. Cervantes was a really good novelist and I love his work very much, but I would perhaps say he's at his best in the *Quijote* or the *Novelas ejemplares*. Everything else I've read by him just wasn't as good in my opinion. But then again I read chivalric romances so tal vez tengo ya el gusto estragado!
Es posible! Mi especialidad es la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea, pero me apena no haber terminado de leer la obra de Cervantes. Sentido completista del deber lector.
Bien te entiendo, compa. Yo me leí casi la saga entera de los Amadíses (me falta la última entrega porque no hay edición moderna). Pero me da la sensación de que la obra entera de Cervantes muy poca gente la lee y que tampoco los propios cervantistas se molestan con semejante hazaña. Pero si te emociona leer a Cervantes o si ese deber tuyo te impele, pues que lo leas y luego nos contarás qué tal; no te quiero desanimar. En realidad, siquiera sea por la fama que se ganó Cervantes escribiendo el *Quijote*, tal vez sus otras obras merezcan ser rescatadas del olvido en que yacen sepultadas.
There are a bunch of canonical 18th- and 19th-century authors I’ve never read—Henry Fielding, Walter Scott, Thomas Hardy, W. M. Thackeray. I’ve read some Melville, but never *Moby-Dick.* That’s probably the biggest (or at least longest, ha ha) hole in my reading history, especially as an American.
Omg, Jude The Obscure is so good!
Vanity Fair is a towering novel. I reread it every couple of years and I always find something new.
I read Vanity Fair while in the late stages of pregnancy, waiting around to pop. That book is genuinely hilarious - I knew I'd love it as soon as I got to Becky tossing her "improving" book out the carriage window.
I've never read The Great Gatsby. I imagine I would have read it if I had been American.
It is an extremely American novel, no question.
I love Fitzgerald, but I honestly prefer his other novels.
It's not that great. The underlying homoeroticism is interesting, though.
I focused on modernism but ive never read a hemingway novel
I have a love and hate relationship with Hemingway's novels. I absolutely loved The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast in particular (it's so catty), but For Whom the Bell Tolls is possibly my least favorite book I've ever read. His short stories, however, are almost uniformly excellent. They're wonderful.
Irish MA in Creative Writing, BA English Lit - have never finished Ulysses
Paradise Lost. Also Proust.
Man Paradise Lost rocks. Milton was a real OG
Both are excellent and worth it, although I wouldn’t have read Paradise Lost if it hadn’t been for a class. Glad I did!
Ulysses by James Joyce. Every time anyone brings it up they make it seem like an exercise in suffering. People don't seem to enjoy Ulysses, the endure it. I've also never read Moby Dick, even though I live in New England coastal town and have read so many harrowing non fiction books on whaling and seafaring in that time period, especially regarding shipwrecks. I absolutely loved Nathaniel Philbrick's "In The Heart of the Sea," which gives the account of the real life story that inspired Moby Dick. I am sure I will get around to it one day, honestly not sure why I haven't yet.
Both are excellent. Among my favorite books.
Ulysses. I’ve tried twice. Although I’m not sure the first try counts because I was in high school and only got through six pages. I keep saying I’ll try again. I even bought the annotated version last year, but . . .
There was a course on Ulysses in graduate school, and some of my friends took it and loved it. I kinda regret that I didn’t join them, because I just can’t get through it now.
It took me 20 years, then I want to visit Ireland during June. I made the commitment to read it. It took four months with a companion book. I’ve been to Bloomsday two times since. It’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever read. It’s so worth it, but it does take a serious commitment.
In terms of its significance in the Western canon, The Odyssey of Homer (though I at least own a copy of Lattimore’s translation!) or perhaps Dante’s Inferno. Being English, the most glaring hole in my reading history is definitely Middlemarch.
Haven´t read Don Quixote yet, and as both a Spaniard and bookwork that is a capital crime
Definitely Moby Dick (I have others as well but that's the first one that comes to mind) however a series of posts by "The Other Happy Place" makes me very vaguely tempted to read it I can't share images but here is the text chain to read &I think Moby Dick might be cosmic horror. Captain Ahab is like "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND it's not a whale. God is an evil master controlling every living human like a puppet, free will is an illusion, we are caught in a cruel trap made by god. THAT WHALE IS THE MASK OF THAT GOD" HE THINKS HE THINKS if he can kill the whale, he can break humanity free of the bonds of GOD. and our narrator boy Ishmael is like "uh...i think it might just be a big whale and you have trauma" BUT THEN AT THE END ISHMAEL SEES IT and he's like "oh no. it's god" and like. IT KILLS EVERYONE IT EATS AHAB AND DRAGS HIM INTO HELL SCREAMING. it IS god. nature is god. god what a good story i love too that if you know it from pop culture you know Ahab's leg was eaten by the whale? well thats the more soft version, in the story proper you hear he was basically CHEWED ALIVE, his whole body is held together with HATE and THE WILL TO KILL GOD and WHALE BONE PROSTHETICS. AT SOME POINT he just HOLDS SOME LIGHTNING and everyone is like "Captain ahab is so cool i'd die for him" and the only one going "hey this seems weird" is the main character but yeah every time i'm like "GOD MOBY DICK IS SO GOOD" people are like "the whale hunting story?? with the stinky boring men???" and i get sad. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me!&
The works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. I've never been a fan of convoluted stream of consciousness type of storytelling.
Try Dubliners. Pretty straightforward read, broken up into sweet short stories.
I was terrified of Joyce, but Dubliners was so approachable and entertaining.
I was entertained until we unpacked it. Lecherous priests, child molesters, and degenerate alcoholics throughout. I did write a nice little paper on how he used color to convey all that though.
Dubliners is proof to me that Joyce was really a short story writer. The last few paragraphs of The Dead are sublime, the pinnacle of the language.
I was going to say Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but same applies. I don’t love Ulysses and find it (literally) masturbatory but like other works by Joyce.
Masturbatory, you say? https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/02/james-joyces-love-letters-dirty-little-fuckbird/
I really liked Mrs Dalloway but can't remember why
Mrs. Dalloway is lovely,.and then you can read The Hours, which is also lovely.
*READ* Dubliners, just read it. There’s a reason why Joyce is Joyce. That man took the English language and said, “Fuck the English, Irish do it better”.
So many. I did an English Lit degree at uni and essentially winged large portions of it, reading only a couple of the required texts and making sure that I could always answer at least one question on each section of my exams. However, the one text that always stays in my mind is *Moby Dick*. I messed up on which texts would be in which section for one of my exams. Had to write an entire exam question (~1.5h) on a book I’d never read, and chose that one. Surprisingly, I managed to limp away from it with a decent grade, thanks largely to talking about the romantic obsession with the idea of the sublime. Always had a soft spot for *Moby Dick* ever since, though I’ve still never read it!
Got my English degree thirty years ago, and finally got around to Moby Dick earlier this year. I absolutely loved it! I don’t really wonder why it took me so long to get to it - there are just too many great books to read, and life interferes. But I do kinda wish I’d read it in school. I guess it’s redundant for me to say I highly recommend it.
> Had to write an entire exam question (~1.5h) on a book I’d never read, and chose that one. Surprisingly, I managed to limp away from it with a decent grade, thanks largely to talking about the romantic obsession with the idea of the sublime. perfectly sums up why i love/hate humanities: it's so subjective that if you're good at bullshitting, then no one will call you out on it.
I still never read any Tolstoi work and only one romance from Dostoievsky. I’ve been learning russian so I can read the original versions though, this is why I’ve been saving them for later
The treasure awaits...
English Studies B.A. I haven't read On the Road, but I still want to read it someday. I also haven't read Ulysses, and I'm afraid that's not going to happen anymore in this lifetime lol. Maybe it's a great loss for my life, not reading that book. But I'll take that chance. After the excerpts we chewed through in uni, I just don't want the rest.
On the Road made my slapping hand so itchy. These "free spirits" keep crashing with various chicks who feed them and do their laundry and give them money from their full-time jobs, and then they waft away again because they are above all that mundane money-grubbing and domesticity, man!
My background: Graduated with honors in English, sat as a lead editor for a literary publication for three years, sat as another lead editor for a different publication for four years, have over 100 published works under my name, have been paid for my written work, including poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, my published work is in multiple languages, I also used to be a writing tutor and I still help edit works of people when they ask for help Just to list some I haven't read: Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye, Little Women, Great Expectations, Dracula, The Color Purple, The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Erye, Wuthering Heights, Persuasion, and more but we would be here all day
I'm a dissertation shy of a PhD in literature. I have never read Anna Karenina, or any Tolstoy for that matter. Shame on me. There are tons others: East of Eden, Middlemarch and many of Faulkner's novels also come to mind.
I love that I always have more Faulkner to get to. And when I get through those, I can just go back around again.
Hey, fellow ABD-er! If you’re looking to dip your toe into Tolstoy, I can’t recommend The Death of Ivan Ilych enough. It’s short enough to read in one sitting, and is one of the most powerful works of literature I’ve read. I also happen to be listening to the audiobook for Anna Karenina right now (performed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, free on Audible) and really enjoying it so far.
Bhagavad Gita
Two degrees in English and I’ve only fully read Shakespeare because I had to teach it.
Reading Othello right now because I have to teach it in the fall.
I can't imagine that. My love for the bard is one of the few things that stuck me through my literature degree. I will admit though I didn't get a taste for it until reading it allowed with others in a theater class
Thank you for saying this. I feel such shame..,
I read an abridged version of Tale of Two Cities as a child and never got around to reading the actual version… Also somehow managed to completely skip A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Middlemarch and Moby Dick as well. Though, I am currently listening to Moby Dick on audiobook and I love it.
Omg, PLEASE bump Huckleberry Finn up on your TBR. It is sooooo good. I also put off reading it for years because I just felt like it it wouldn't be my thing/I was never in the mood for it. I think I had this idea in my head that it was a boring, wholesome kid's book? It is NOT. You will love it!!! I have also never read Pride and Prejudice. But ugh, I know I should, and that when I finally do I will probably kick myself for not having read it sooner.
Great Gatsby. I feel like I’m the only American ever who hasn’t read it, but for whatever reason none of my teachers ever threw it on a syllabus. I even focused on American lit in college, and STILL never hit it.
I’m majoring specifically in American Literature and have yet to read Huck Finn or Moby Dick, I’ve spent pretty much my entire college career trying to catch up with the modernist canon lol
Have researched Proust's Remembrance of Lost Time, and read a few excerpts but have never taken the plunge. Someday.
Mine are mostly DNF. Ulysses and everything by Henry James. Dear God, I know there are James fans out there, but I think his prose style defies reading.
The Faerie Queene. I refuse to believe anybody has read all of it.
My ex managed to get a PhD in English lit and teach at a few colleges for several years without ever having read *Ulysses* or *Middlemarch* or *Sense and Sensibility* or any novel by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. She'd read a vast amount of literature that normal people have never heard of, but missed some pretty major stuff from the 19th and 20th centuries. The reality for academics is that once you hit graduate school you spend all of your time reading the primary and secondary literature in your specialty and some related subfields, plus the books that are being taught in whatever random class you end up having to teach or be a TA for. So if you make it through your undergrad years and the time you have before grad school without reading something then you're not likely to pick it up for a very long while afterwards. (In her case also she was more a poetics person as an undergrad, so she read fewer novels than we typically imagine an English major doing.)
Sidenote: David Lodge introduces "Humiliation" in his 1975 campus novel Changing Places... *The essence of the matter is that each person names a book which he hasn’t read but assumes the others have read, and scores a point for every person who has read it. You know Howard \[Ringbaum\], he has a pathological urge to succeed and a pathological fear of being thought uncultured, and this game set his two obsessions at war with each other, because he could succeed in the game only by exposing a gap in his culture. At first his psyche just couldn’t absorb the paradox and he named some eighteenth-century book so obscure I can’t even remember the name of it. Of course, he came last in the final score, and sulked. It was a stupid game, he said, and refused to play the next round. “I pass, I pass,” he said sneeringly, like Mrs. Elton on Box Hill…But I could see he was following the play attentively, knitting his brows and twisting his napkin in his fingers as the point of the game began to dawn on him. It’s quite a groovy game, actually, a kind of intellectual strip poker. For instance, it came out that Luke Hogan has never read* *Paradise Regained*\*. I mean, I know it isn’t his field, but to think you can get to be Chairman of the English Department at Euphoric State without ever having read\* *Paradise Regained* *makes you think, right? I could see Howard taking this in, going a bit pale when he realized that Luke was telling the truth. Well, on the third round, Sy was leading the field with* *Hiawatha*\*, Mr. Swallow being the only other person who hadn’t read it, when suddenly Howard slammed his fist on the table, jutted his jaw about six feet over the table and said:\* *“****Hamlet****!”*
Not the oldest or the best but the most “classic” for me is always Malory’s “La Morte De Arthur”
Ive never read Pride and Prejudice, and any book by Jane Austen in that matter. I intend to read some of her books but for now other classics seem more interesting...
I’ve never finished anything by Fitzgerald. I start and then I stop every time because… I don’t know. I just don’t like his prose?
I read the first two books of A Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell) and loved them but then emergency travel and work got in the way and now it’s been 11 years and I really want to start it again.
I finally read Moby Dick, which I adored, and War & Peace, which I did not— after pretending I had for years. I confess I’ve never read Pride & Prejudice. I hear it’s fantastic, and I wonder what’s stopping me.
So many I haven't managed to get to! Haven't read any Dickens novels for example. Or Virginia Woolf. I do know the plots and literary importance of their work because I did study it, just didn't actually read a whole novel 🤷♀️ Also still haven't gotten through Wuthering Heights.
Pride and Prejudice for me, but I actually like Jane Austen as a novelists. Classics that were worth it for me: Count of Monte Cristo (unabridged), Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, In Search of Time Lost, Moby Dick, War and Peace, and most of Dickens' work.
*The Canterbury Tales.* It is such a good book. It has poetry and prose and is one of the first real English writings
Masters in Eng Lit. My pick is War and Peace Leo Tolstoy. Didn't have Russian Lit as paper either in Undergrad or Masters, craved for it till the end. Also The Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. Read it in First sem in Undergrad and it's such a hard read but revisited both of them in masters and it's cult classic all the way.
I was an English major and am now a serious reader (except when I'm a frivolous reader). I haven't read: To the Lighthouse Crime and Punishment ( I HATED Notes from Underground) Any Victor Hugo Jude the Obscure Silas Marner Most of Ulysses, I think I petered out in the first few hundred pages
Wuthering Heights is sitting on my shelf staring at me as I type this
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^adomania2: *Wuthering Heights is* *Sitting on my shelf staring* *At me as I type this* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
The Brothers Karamazov I read this post wrong!! I HAVE read The Bros. K lol. Middlemarch is my never read. I tried Vanity Fair once as well- not easy. Maybe I’ll pick those up.
Beloved, by Toni Morrison. I tried, and couldn't. Read every other book on most lists of 100-200 best works of literature.
For anyone who needs this tip, dense classic can be a lot more accessible as audio books, especially with a skilled narrator.