Yes, the title is stolen from dovegreyreader - but this Sunday Confessions is a little different. It's by way of a game, which my friend Barbara-from-Ludlow introduced to me, I believe, but which has been enjoyed by Literary Types for many a year.In some circles it is fun to see which books you have in common - which ones all of you have read. In The Clan there is a very small list, owing partly to Our Vicar's predilection for non-fiction, partly to The Carbon Copy's dislike of everything pre-1900 (excepting Jane Austen, thank goodness) and habit of re-reading the same dozen books time and again. Our Vicar's Wife and I can make dozens of shared reads - but those which all four members of The Clan have read are:
-Pride and Prejudice
-Diary of a Nobody
-Wuthering Heights
-The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
-1984
I think that may be it.
But this isn't the game I'm going to foist upon you today. This one is called 'Humiliations', but it isn't as drastic as it sounds. The idea is to group together a literary bunch (hey presto), and each has to confess to three famous books they haven't read - and really should have. REALLY should have. Can you stand the booing and hissing? I hope so, cos I'd like you all to contribute to the comments, and not make me the *only* one revealing my literary ignorance.
For the purpose of this, let's only count them if you've reading nothing by that author - i.e. I haven't read Great
Expectations, but I've read my fair share of Charlie D, so that's off. But I have now revealed further ignorance. Oops.Ok, here goes. My little list of three. Get ready to make a united gasp of horror.
-To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
-Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
-Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Shocked? Time to confess...
Well I have never read To Kill a Mockingbird or Brideshead and I have to say I have no real desire to. Sorry! Anna K I have read once and, quite frankly, found her so annoying I found myself yelling Jump as the train approaches. The book does not finish there, however, but goes on for ages more in the most incredibly boring fashion. I did, however, love War and Peace so I am not a totally hopeless case. I have never read and have no intention of reading Ulysses. So there are my three
ReplyDeleteMy list would probably be worryingly long but just off the top of my head: Pickwick Papers, Moby Dick, Far from the Madding Crowd. Isn't there a novel (by David Lodge possibly) in which some US Eng Lit professors are playing this game and one of them gets carried away and admits to never having read Hamlet -- with disastrous results for his career?
ReplyDeleteI read an article in Bookseller just the other week about this game which has led a publisher whose name I've blanked from my memory (Orion,I think) to publish cut-down versions of the classics which I think is an appalling idea. So there!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I've read and loved the 3 you mention Simon. My three would be Moby Dick (even cut-down, I couldn't get past Call me Ishmael), Ulysses and The Faerie Queene.
Let's be honest, Simon, you're never going to read anything that's been translated from the Russian. And I note that you missed Lord of the Rings off your list - surely your greatest humiliation?
ReplyDeletePlease excuse Colin...
ReplyDeleteAfraid I have no intention of reading Lord of the Rings. Nope.
BUT do feel quite smug that I have read Ulysses, Moby Dick and half of The Faerie Queene - but while you love my three, Lyn, I didn't take to any of yours...
This is a case in which my eyes are bigger than my, well, my reading capability. I read, but I also collect. I confess to never having read Charles Dickens - though I want to and am not sure where to start, Anna Karenina, and Middlemarch - which I own and do want to read.
ReplyDeleteOh heavens yes the Faerie Queen -- I've never read it and I don't think I ever will. I have had a go at Ulysses but I doubt if I will ever be able to claim to have read it all the way through.
ReplyDelete