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.
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.
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 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.
Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamozov and (I hang my head in shame) The Odyssey. I’ve also started and stopped Don Quixote so many times it’s ridiculous.
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.
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 👌
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.
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.
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.
Lots of classics I still have not read and feel I should...Catcher in the Rye, Grapes of Wrath, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Pride and Prejudice, Midnight's Children, In Cold Blood. I get sidetracked and know I will never clear my ever growing TBR stack. 😆
In Cold Blood probably wouldn't be something I might like. The thing is classics are 'bigged-up' sometimes, as if there's a deficit in your reading history of you don't read certain books. A bit of cultural snobbery, me thinks.
Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad. After several hundred pages, I stopped reading it. I renewed the library loan a couple of times. After a year or so, I gave up and returned it.
That’s the thing, I wanted to read Life and Fate, but I read that the story begins in Stalingrad. I probably should go directly to Life and Fate, as most people do, and then consider whether I’d like to go back to Stalingrad.
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.
Hated that book. Don’t read it. Not missing anything.
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.
It’s surprisingly a great ride.
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.
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!
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.
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!
East of Eden will roll when you get started. Not a slog at all. And so memorable!
That seems to be the consensus around here!
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.
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 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.
Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamozov and (I hang my head in shame) The Odyssey. I’ve also started and stopped Don Quixote so many times it’s ridiculous.
Same story with Don Quixote. I’m going to tackle it for good next year.
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.
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.
The Gulag Archipelago.
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'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.
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.
Oh, just the resident stack on my dresser. The titles rotate but it remains.
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.
Lots of classics I still have not read and feel I should...Catcher in the Rye, Grapes of Wrath, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Pride and Prejudice, Midnight's Children, In Cold Blood. I get sidetracked and know I will never clear my ever growing TBR stack. 😆
Catcher in the Rye is on my list, too! Same with Portrait of the Artist. I’m ambivalent about In Cold Blood.
In Cold Blood probably wouldn't be something I might like. The thing is classics are 'bigged-up' sometimes, as if there's a deficit in your reading history of you don't read certain books. A bit of cultural snobbery, me thinks.
Definitely true. Also true: There are no Classics Police arresting us for skipping whatever doesn’t catch our fancy.
The world is bad enough with plenty of cultural policing going on, e.g. public libraries coming under fire 😞
Having hated both Portrait of the Artist and Catcher in the Rye…I would 100% say delay in favor of Austen haha
Grapes of Wrath! First read it in high school and have re-read it over the years. It’s so good.
Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad. After several hundred pages, I stopped reading it. I renewed the library loan a couple of times. After a year or so, I gave up and returned it.
Maybe you’ll come back to it. Grossman’s Life and Fate is on my list. But it’s daunting!
That’s the thing, I wanted to read Life and Fate, but I read that the story begins in Stalingrad. I probably should go directly to Life and Fate, as most people do, and then consider whether I’d like to go back to Stalingrad.
That makes sense. We’ve got to find our own paths through this jungle.