I just started reading it aloud to my kids. What no one bothers to tell you is that Melville is surprisingly funny. Moby Dick was one of my favorites in college, even the dreaded cetology chapters.
This post is eminently relatable, particularly the tragic reality that saying, "yes" to one book means saying, "no" to countless others. Choosing what to read is like stewardship. Not to be taken lightly. And yet at the same time not so seriously that it paralyzes us from reading.
My "to-read" list on Goodreads has over two hundred books on it. Right now, I'm painfully aware of the fact that I haven't yet read C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. I keep seeing it come up and keep thinking, "I should really read that." So...I should really that.
It's worth it! And get to the end. Many fans of the first two volumes complain about the third, That Hideous Strength, because it doesn't take place in space. But I think it may be the book that brings together more of CSL's characteristic concerns than anything else he wrote.
Ashamed to say the whole Harry Potter franchise (all seven volumes!). It took my 10 yr old grandson to dare me to read it. The fun was then sharing trivia questions back and forth with him as I progressed thru the series. Not a classic per se but It became our fun summer book club we shared together. Delightful!
My son (12 year old) really struggles with reading and pretty much hates most books. In a family of bibliophiles it’s a tough dynamic! We started reading aloud with him the Harry Potter series this summer with him reading a paragraph out loud, and then my husband or I read a paragraph, back and forth. It’s been so fun! And he’s (gasp!) actually enjoying it! If you haven’t already read it, the Redwall series is SO GOOD and a blast to read with kids 10 and over.
So Joel takes it upon himself this morning to magnify my guilt and feelings of inadequacy as I sit in my office surrounded by thousands of books I'll probably never get around to reading.... ; )
There are far too many classic works of fiction that fall into this category because of their length. Zina mentioned Moby Dick. Other gaps in my reading: War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, Ulysses, The Man Without Qualities, several novels by Dickens....
But since for pleasure I tend to grab fiction rather than non-fiction, often books like this, for me, are history--volumes I've acquired because they are interesting, indeed, because I *know* I would enjoy them, but that it's hard to make time for. For example:
Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed, or Champlain's Dream
Philippe Sands, East West Street
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands
And then, of course, there's anything at all by Hegel!
Haha! I’m going to tackle a few of those classic novels next year, but I also get the challenge on the nonfiction. Fischer can sure lay the words down. I read African Founders a couple years ago; that sucker took me two weeks to finish. It was fascinating, but it left a dent in my calendar. I loved Johannes Fried’s biography of Charlemagne, but I can’t work up the steam to read his survey of the Middle Ages.
I encourage you to read East West Street. It is excellent and you would fly through it. I have also read the second book in the sequence The Ratlines..also excellent. I have the final one 38 Londres Street ready to read in September 👌
Yes!! Yes yes yes! I thought it would be a labor of love for book club and I couldn't put it down. I breezed through it in a weekend and I am midway through memorizing several paragraphs of the opening to chapter 13 because they are possibly my favorite (excluding Scripture) passage in anything I've ever read. Do it!
I tackled Middlemarch, East of Eden, The Brothers Karamazov and a number of Dickens novels on audiobook. This proved to be a greater time commitment than reading would have been, but worth it in my estimation.
I've been putting off Dominion by Tom Holland and Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin. Maybe someday soon...?
Brothers Karamazov. I know it's good. I know I will love it. I have started it many times, have even gotten half way through. WHY can't I finish it? Call it Reader's Block. Also have never read Middlemarch, and I might. I own it. For some reason I don't have guilt about that one though
It took me a long time to read Don Quixote and Madame Bovary. I liked the first, the second not so much. I’m currently stalled on Kristin Lavransdattir. Not sure why because I am liking it.
Me too on Kristin Lavransdatter! I really enjoyed the first two books but somehow don’t feel drawn to read the third. I’m committing myself to read that by the end of the year.
I also recently started both Madame Bovary & Don Quixote as part of a personal project to work through classics I haven't read. Was put off by Madame Bovary - I know things are going to turn out badly for her but there's no real reason to root for her in the meantime. I got as far as her move to town. Does it get better? Don Quixote also seemed sort of played out in the first few chapters - he's going to perpetually make the same idealistic errors over and over that he makes from the start (at the Inn etc). Again, does it improve? Keen to hear other's thoughts!
Haven't read Madame Bovary. Finally read Don Quixote, finished it earlier this year. I read the recent translation by Edith Grossman. The pace of Don Quixote does pick up, especially in Part II. Cervantes uses Quixote's madness as a vehicle for social observation and commentary. He often seems to be asking the reader to question if Quixote is as mad as the people around him. It is as if Quixote is the only serious actor in a comedic farce, but the farce is real life.
Madame Bovary does not get better. That’s part of the point, but that doesn’t mean you *have* to read / finish it.
It’s interesting that you pair these two together (just happenstance, but still) because Don Quixote is repetitive but since it’s humor, I don’t mind. (I’ve seen buster keaton do a prat fall a million times, but I’ll still laugh.) It’s endearing and charming to see Quixote try and fail and try and fail and yet never flag. Meanwhile: It’s depressing to see Mdme B do the same, because she’s digging a deeper hole for herself.
I've been meaning to read something by Willa Cather for years, but I haven't taken the plunge. I know you've reviewed at least two of her novels.
I read 1984 when I was in 7th grade (I was a big Bowie fan, and his Diamond Dogs album with its 1984 suite of songs was popular at the time), and it practically scarred me for life.
I just recently read O Pioneers! by Willa Cather and loved it. I immediately picked up The Song of the Lark and liked it very much (although not quite as much as O Pioneers). She has quickly become one of my favorite authors and I will be reading My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop very soon. I highly recommend her!
I attended a college named for St. Francis DeSales. Quotes from his writing were all over the school. I have a copy of The Introduction to the Devout Life, his spiritual classic from the 1500s, that I have started and stopped multiple times. I really need to make it a goal to finish it through. The guilt of not reading this book hits me every year on his feast day.
One trick is to rope in a friend on the exercise. Sometimes the simple mutuality makes the reading not only easier but opens up the book in a way we can’t do on our own.
It is marvelous, but I also love his ‘letters to people of the world’ compiled and published by Tan Books. Sometimes a good way to get over a hurdle is to fall in love over small bits and pieces.
Usually your open comments have a lot of variety but I find it funny (and reassuring) that all my books I’ve stalled on have also already been listen here! East of Eden, Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye. I don’t believe in being embarrassed about these things, or guilted into reading them, but those are the ones that I do really want to get to before too long.
For me, Don Quixote. My summer reading goal, but other things keep getting in the way.
For my wife Boccacio's Decameron. She has been attempting to finish it for as long as we have been together. The icing on the cake is that it came up at a dinner party recently, and she was told that it wasn't worth tackling unless one could read it in the original Italian.
One book that has gotten in the way of Don Quixote is "The British Are Coming," the first of the American Revolution trilogy by Rick Atkinson. Rich in detail and with character development and narrative arc more like a classic novel. I will definitely read the entire trilogy (the third volume will be out next year). Highly recommended in the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the sigining of the Declaration of Independence.
I’ve heard great things about The British Are Coming. If I might plug something from my own backlist, I wrote a biography of Paul Revere back in 2010—The Revolutionary Paul Revere. The publisher is planning on re-releasing it next year. I had barely thought of it in over a decade, so I bought the audio and listened to it. Weird experience. Familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. But, humbly, I think it’s really good.
There are the ones I should have read, of course, but then there are the ones I read and barely remember anything about them except that I read them. That’s classics stuff – of the important books that may not have been given classics status (by whoever bestows the ratings) I will not speak.
So… Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, Bleak House, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, assorted Conrads, assorted Henry James, Middlemarch, and I don’t think I can go on because it’s too depressing to think about. There’s a bunch of Greek philosophy that I’ve dipped into but not read in their entirety. Read prose translations (Rouse, I think) of the Odyssey and the Iliad back in the late Cretaceous, but no verse translations. There are Shakespeares I’ve never gotten around to (doubt I’m unique there). Have read Moby Dick and Billy Budd, but no other Melville (I understand a couple of his other novels are supposed to be pretty good). Hawthorne – Read The Scarlet Letter (and remember almost none of it) and some of the short stories.
The list of books I should read before I’m planted is almost certainly longer than the list of books I’ve read. Doubt I’m unique there either.
I had a decade plus (12 to early/mid 20s) when I read almost nothing but sf and some mystery/suspense for pleasure and I believe it did a real number on my attention span and willingness to deal with doorstop novels (a novel is supposed to run about 60,000 words). In my mid-70s and haven’t entirely recovered from that yet, but I’m working on it. Should be taking another run at Bleak House or starting Middlemarch. So what am I doing instead? Finally getting into a little Nabokov. I don’t do systematic reading at all.
I've listened to it twice, as well as Bleak House (once, I think). That seems to work well as long as you get a good narrator. There's a version of Twain's A Tramp Abroad where I just adore the narrator (Grover Gardner) - a fairly old version since I originally listened to it on cassette, probably back in the 90s, but still available on Audible. His delivery is exactly how I would imagine the real Mark Twain's would have been.
Moby. Dick. 🐋
I get it. Ouch, I get it. But I’m doing it. I’m pretty sure that’ll be on my big-ass classic novel goal next year.
same
It’s surprisingly a great ride.
Hated that book. Don’t read it. Not missing anything.
I just started reading it aloud to my kids. What no one bothers to tell you is that Melville is surprisingly funny. Moby Dick was one of my favorites in college, even the dreaded cetology chapters.
I read that in college. A bit more than anyone really needs to know about whales and whaling, but I still enjoyed it.
I read it with a book club, which made it fun and kept me on track. I don't love it, but two of my friends adored it and their zest was infectious.
Yup.
This post is eminently relatable, particularly the tragic reality that saying, "yes" to one book means saying, "no" to countless others. Choosing what to read is like stewardship. Not to be taken lightly. And yet at the same time not so seriously that it paralyzes us from reading.
My "to-read" list on Goodreads has over two hundred books on it. Right now, I'm painfully aware of the fact that I haven't yet read C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. I keep seeing it come up and keep thinking, "I should really read that." So...I should really that.
It's worth it! And get to the end. Many fans of the first two volumes complain about the third, That Hideous Strength, because it doesn't take place in space. But I think it may be the book that brings together more of CSL's characteristic concerns than anything else he wrote.
Thanks for the encouragement, Peter!
Ashamed to say the whole Harry Potter franchise (all seven volumes!). It took my 10 yr old grandson to dare me to read it. The fun was then sharing trivia questions back and forth with him as I progressed thru the series. Not a classic per se but It became our fun summer book club we shared together. Delightful!
My son (12 year old) really struggles with reading and pretty much hates most books. In a family of bibliophiles it’s a tough dynamic! We started reading aloud with him the Harry Potter series this summer with him reading a paragraph out loud, and then my husband or I read a paragraph, back and forth. It’s been so fun! And he’s (gasp!) actually enjoying it! If you haven’t already read it, the Redwall series is SO GOOD and a blast to read with kids 10 and over.
I read all but the last two! Not sure why I stopped. I’ll start reading them to Naomi when she’s ready.
So Joel takes it upon himself this morning to magnify my guilt and feelings of inadequacy as I sit in my office surrounded by thousands of books I'll probably never get around to reading.... ; )
There are far too many classic works of fiction that fall into this category because of their length. Zina mentioned Moby Dick. Other gaps in my reading: War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, Ulysses, The Man Without Qualities, several novels by Dickens....
But since for pleasure I tend to grab fiction rather than non-fiction, often books like this, for me, are history--volumes I've acquired because they are interesting, indeed, because I *know* I would enjoy them, but that it's hard to make time for. For example:
Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed, or Champlain's Dream
Philippe Sands, East West Street
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands
And then, of course, there's anything at all by Hegel!
Haha! I’m going to tackle a few of those classic novels next year, but I also get the challenge on the nonfiction. Fischer can sure lay the words down. I read African Founders a couple years ago; that sucker took me two weeks to finish. It was fascinating, but it left a dent in my calendar. I loved Johannes Fried’s biography of Charlemagne, but I can’t work up the steam to read his survey of the Middle Ages.
African Founders is another of his that looks really interesting.
I encourage you to read East West Street. It is excellent and you would fly through it. I have also read the second book in the sequence The Ratlines..also excellent. I have the final one 38 Londres Street ready to read in September 👌
Thanks! I saw the 38 Londres Street in bookstores when it came out and have it saved in my Amazon shopping cart... along with a lot of things.
Moby Dick, Middlemarch, East of Eden.
East of Eden is one I’m seriously thinking about for next year. My friend Hannah says it’s one of her favorite books.
East of Eden will roll when you get started. Not a slog at all. And so memorable!
I encourage you to read this. It is a great book! Probably my favorite book of all time.
Yes!! Yes yes yes! I thought it would be a labor of love for book club and I couldn't put it down. I breezed through it in a weekend and I am midway through memorizing several paragraphs of the opening to chapter 13 because they are possibly my favorite (excluding Scripture) passage in anything I've ever read. Do it!
That seems to be the consensus around here!
One of my all time favorites!!! Love love love it!!
East of Eden is my favorite book of all time.
Oh East of Eden is so good! Do it!
Reread East of Eden for the first time since high school last year and it was phenomenal, much better experience than my first read
I loved East of Eden. I did not like Moby Dick. Middlemarch I'm afraid is looking down on me from my bookshelf. I haven't read it yet.
East of Eden is one of the best. I read it last month. I expected it to take about a month to read, but I finished it in about a week.
I tackled Middlemarch, East of Eden, The Brothers Karamazov and a number of Dickens novels on audiobook. This proved to be a greater time commitment than reading would have been, but worth it in my estimation.
I've been putting off Dominion by Tom Holland and Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin. Maybe someday soon...?
Dominion is excellent. East of Eden and Brothers are high on my list for next year.
I've also been putting off Dominion. Maybe a goal for next year.
Dominion is 👏
Agreed. I loved Dominion.
Brothers Karamazov. I know it's good. I know I will love it. I have started it many times, have even gotten half way through. WHY can't I finish it? Call it Reader's Block. Also have never read Middlemarch, and I might. I own it. For some reason I don't have guilt about that one though
I’ve always struggled with Brothers Karamazov too.
It took me a long time to read Don Quixote and Madame Bovary. I liked the first, the second not so much. I’m currently stalled on Kristin Lavransdattir. Not sure why because I am liking it.
Good topic!
I loved Kristin Lavransdatter. But I bailed on Don Quixote. Will definitely be revisiting.
Me too on Kristin Lavransdatter! I really enjoyed the first two books but somehow don’t feel drawn to read the third. I’m committing myself to read that by the end of the year.
I also recently started both Madame Bovary & Don Quixote as part of a personal project to work through classics I haven't read. Was put off by Madame Bovary - I know things are going to turn out badly for her but there's no real reason to root for her in the meantime. I got as far as her move to town. Does it get better? Don Quixote also seemed sort of played out in the first few chapters - he's going to perpetually make the same idealistic errors over and over that he makes from the start (at the Inn etc). Again, does it improve? Keen to hear other's thoughts!
This was also my problem with Don Quixote. It just seemed like the same thing over and over just in a slightly different way. I got bored.
Haven't read Madame Bovary. Finally read Don Quixote, finished it earlier this year. I read the recent translation by Edith Grossman. The pace of Don Quixote does pick up, especially in Part II. Cervantes uses Quixote's madness as a vehicle for social observation and commentary. He often seems to be asking the reader to question if Quixote is as mad as the people around him. It is as if Quixote is the only serious actor in a comedic farce, but the farce is real life.
This is super helpful, thank you!
Madame Bovary does not get better. That’s part of the point, but that doesn’t mean you *have* to read / finish it.
It’s interesting that you pair these two together (just happenstance, but still) because Don Quixote is repetitive but since it’s humor, I don’t mind. (I’ve seen buster keaton do a prat fall a million times, but I’ll still laugh.) It’s endearing and charming to see Quixote try and fail and try and fail and yet never flag. Meanwhile: It’s depressing to see Mdme B do the same, because she’s digging a deeper hole for herself.
I've been meaning to read something by Willa Cather for years, but I haven't taken the plunge. I know you've reviewed at least two of her novels.
I read 1984 when I was in 7th grade (I was a big Bowie fan, and his Diamond Dogs album with its 1984 suite of songs was popular at the time), and it practically scarred me for life.
LOL!
And yes on Cather!
Willa Cather is one of my favorite classic authors I’ve discovered as an adult. She is simply extraordinary
Ok, you've convinced me - she's next on my list!
Death Comes for the Archbishop is quick and wonderful!
I just loaded it and My Antonia on my Kindle.
You are in for a treat!
I second Joel’s reply. A real treat. She’s one of my favorite authors, and those are my two favorites of hers.
Love her!!
I just recently read O Pioneers! by Willa Cather and loved it. I immediately picked up The Song of the Lark and liked it very much (although not quite as much as O Pioneers). She has quickly become one of my favorite authors and I will be reading My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop very soon. I highly recommend her!
Thanks for the tip. I've found all of these titles for free at standard ebooks.org!
I’m looking forward to reading both of those!
I attended a college named for St. Francis DeSales. Quotes from his writing were all over the school. I have a copy of The Introduction to the Devout Life, his spiritual classic from the 1500s, that I have started and stopped multiple times. I really need to make it a goal to finish it through. The guilt of not reading this book hits me every year on his feast day.
One trick is to rope in a friend on the exercise. Sometimes the simple mutuality makes the reading not only easier but opens up the book in a way we can’t do on our own.
Good idea! I just invited my husband to make this one our next joint read-alouds.
It is marvelous, but I also love his ‘letters to people of the world’ compiled and published by Tan Books. Sometimes a good way to get over a hurdle is to fall in love over small bits and pieces.
Usually your open comments have a lot of variety but I find it funny (and reassuring) that all my books I’ve stalled on have also already been listen here! East of Eden, Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye. I don’t believe in being embarrassed about these things, or guilted into reading them, but those are the ones that I do really want to get to before too long.
Yes, there’s a fun convergence here. Lots of us are hung up on the same stuff!
The Gulag Archipelago.
That one intimidates me.
I suspected I wasn't alone in that.
I've picked up Gulag Archipelago and put it down again at least twice. I just can't get past the anguish of the first two chapters.
That one has always cowed me. It’s sooo oppressive, which is (I suppose) exactly the point.
Gosh, that’s on my shelf. Hasn’t risen to “I should start that one soon” status. But I feel like I owe it to Solzhenitsyn to read it.
Yeah, same here. But it is tough.
For me, Don Quixote. My summer reading goal, but other things keep getting in the way.
For my wife Boccacio's Decameron. She has been attempting to finish it for as long as we have been together. The icing on the cake is that it came up at a dinner party recently, and she was told that it wasn't worth tackling unless one could read it in the original Italian.
One book that has gotten in the way of Don Quixote is "The British Are Coming," the first of the American Revolution trilogy by Rick Atkinson. Rich in detail and with character development and narrative arc more like a classic novel. I will definitely read the entire trilogy (the third volume will be out next year). Highly recommended in the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the sigining of the Declaration of Independence.
I’ve heard great things about The British Are Coming. If I might plug something from my own backlist, I wrote a biography of Paul Revere back in 2010—The Revolutionary Paul Revere. The publisher is planning on re-releasing it next year. I had barely thought of it in over a decade, so I bought the audio and listened to it. Weird experience. Familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. But, humbly, I think it’s really good.
I've been stalling to start reading Anna Karenina. Shall I just open the book and start at page1?
Yes! Go for it!
Yes! It really is a wonderful book. Once you get started, you’ll find it hard to put down.
Tolstoy's novels are real page turners. Short-ish chapters with cliff hangers. Great character, great reading.
My Tolstoy is nil, so that’s good encouragement.
Oh, Jeez, where to start?
There are the ones I should have read, of course, but then there are the ones I read and barely remember anything about them except that I read them. That’s classics stuff – of the important books that may not have been given classics status (by whoever bestows the ratings) I will not speak.
So… Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, Bleak House, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, assorted Conrads, assorted Henry James, Middlemarch, and I don’t think I can go on because it’s too depressing to think about. There’s a bunch of Greek philosophy that I’ve dipped into but not read in their entirety. Read prose translations (Rouse, I think) of the Odyssey and the Iliad back in the late Cretaceous, but no verse translations. There are Shakespeares I’ve never gotten around to (doubt I’m unique there). Have read Moby Dick and Billy Budd, but no other Melville (I understand a couple of his other novels are supposed to be pretty good). Hawthorne – Read The Scarlet Letter (and remember almost none of it) and some of the short stories.
The list of books I should read before I’m planted is almost certainly longer than the list of books I’ve read. Doubt I’m unique there either.
I had a decade plus (12 to early/mid 20s) when I read almost nothing but sf and some mystery/suspense for pleasure and I believe it did a real number on my attention span and willingness to deal with doorstop novels (a novel is supposed to run about 60,000 words). In my mid-70s and haven’t entirely recovered from that yet, but I’m working on it. Should be taking another run at Bleak House or starting Middlemarch. So what am I doing instead? Finally getting into a little Nabokov. I don’t do systematic reading at all.
Maybe try listening to Middlemarch while pottering?
I've listened to it twice, as well as Bleak House (once, I think). That seems to work well as long as you get a good narrator. There's a version of Twain's A Tramp Abroad where I just adore the narrator (Grover Gardner) - a fairly old version since I originally listened to it on cassette, probably back in the 90s, but still available on Audible. His delivery is exactly how I would imagine the real Mark Twain's would have been.
Would give that some thought, but I never picked up the audiobook habit. If I had to travel long distances, I might have, but...
Now, if the eyes finally give out, I may have to rethink that one.
Tony, audiobooks are amazing. Different than reading on the page for sure, but wonderful for a lot of books.
Most of those are on my list as well.