How many of these most lied-about books have you read?
Here’s the list of the 20 books that people most often think they should have read, say they have read, but often haven’t read.
For me the grand total of books on that list actually read is eleven:
(1) Both Alice books. Annotated version. Loved them.
(2) 1984 I read when I was eleven or twelve. It gave me nightmares, but boy, did I read it. Read it many times since. The other evening I was talking to a friend and I referred to something as “doubleplusungood.” My friend had no idea what I was talking about, but for me a word like that has become part of the everyday English language.
(3) Lord of the Rings. Tried and tried and tried but couldn’t get past the first few pages. This happens to me with most novels of the fantasy genre (or whatever you call it).
(4) War and Peace. Had to read it for school. Liked the people (peace?) parts, hated the war parts.
(5) Anna Karenina. In high school—yep! Was lukewarm about it; I don’t think I understood it.
(6) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Do the Basil Rathbone movies count? No? Then no. But I loved those movies. And I love the name “Basil Rathbone.”
(7) To Kill a Mockingbird. Read it a long time ago, and just didn’t care for it. I know that makes me some sort of pariah, but although I finished it in order to find out what was going on with Boo Radley, otherwise it seemed sort of like the Movie of the Week.
(8) David Copperfield. Yes, and am very fond of it—maybe because although it’s fiction, it’s a bit autobiographical (Dickens, that is, not me), and I think that comes through. I was introduced to it in the wonderful Classic Comics version. Don’t laugh; those things were great.
(9) Crime and Punishment. Also read in high school. Very much taken with it. I thought, wow, here’s someone who’s thinking about the big stuff.
(10) Pride and Prejudice. Tried and failed. I have no Jane Austen receptors. And yet I am a woman. Go figure.
(11) Bleak House. Never even tried.
(12) Harry Potter. My son wanted me to read them, so I read numbers one and two and a third of the way through number 3 I gave up. They’re clever and lively, but my patience with them had run out. I just didn’t care anymore.
(13) Great Expectations. Saw the movie, but no to the book.
(14) The Diary of Anne Frank. As a child and again as an adult. I also wrote about Anne here.
(15) Oliver Twist. Now, that’s an interesting question. Did I read it? It’s the first one I have to think about. I saw the incredibly excellent David Lean movie. I saw the more sanitized musical version “Oliver.” But did I read the book? I must confess I don’t know, but if I had to guess I’d say no.
(16) Fifty Shades trilogy: seems a bit anomalous in the company of the others on the list, but no.
(17) And Then There Were None. I don’t like mystery or detective stories. Haven’t read it; have no urge to.
(18) The Great Gatsby. Oh, yes, many times. And therein lies a tale.
(19) Catch-22. Of course, when it first came out. I was a teenager, and it seemed really different—funny, dark humor, wild and crazy timeline.
(20) The Catcher in the Rye. Yes, at 13, a good age to read it.
I’m also wondering why two of my favorite classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, aren’t on there. I think it’s because people actually do read—and love—Jane Eyre. I also read and loved Wuthering Heights, but it’s a far more difficult book and I have a hunch it’s much less commonly read. Plowing through all that Yorkshire-accented dialogue from some of the characters doesn’t make it any easier, either. .
And by the way, I don’t think I’ve ever lied about reading a book.
1. “Both Alice books. Annotated version. Loved them.” Me, too!
2. 1984. I also read this when I was rather young, and have done so multiple times over the years.
3. Lord of the Rings. Read it, but I’m not that crazy about it.
4. War and Peace. TL;DR.
5. Anna Karenina. No.
6. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Annotated version. Loved them.
7. To Kill a Mockingbird. Read it and liked it. You’re freaky!
8. David Copperfield. Nope.
9. Crime and Punishment. Read it when I was young, but I don’t remember much.
10. Pride and Prejudice. Nope.
11. Bleak House. “Never even tried.” Ditto.
12. Harry Potter. No, not interested.
13. Great Expectations. I tried to read it for school but don’t think I made it through.
14. The Diary of Anne Frank. No. One of the few on this list I regret not having read.
15. Oliver Twist. No, but I saw Polanski’s film version, which was okay.
16. Fifty Shades trilogy. No, thank you.
17. And Then There Were None. I’ve read it more than once. Great book! Did I mention that you’re weird?
18. The Great Gatsby. Read it, liked it, saw the movie (Redford, Farrow).
19. Catch-22. I read it multiple times as a teenager, and saw the movie.
20. The Catcher in the Rye. I read it once long ago and failed to see what the big deal was.
Only 1984 and Catch-22 when I was a kid, but I was also a sci-fi fan then, so both of them sorta fit the genre.
But that other stuff – phooey.
I’m not going to go through the whole list, but you must read Great Expectations. I love Dickens, and that was my favorite one. Beautiful book. Oliver Twist is also a very enjoyable read…you should give it a whirl.
I’ve read almost every Jane Austen book out there. Tough to get started, but once you get into the style, very fun. Helps to watch the movies, too, to get a feel for what’s going on. The dialogue is tough for us modern people to read due to the different style at the time. I get lost in the dialogue a lot…only singular quotation marks used, hardly any attribution given, so you really have to pay attention.
Harry Potter…I read them, but the first one was actually not that great. It was poorly written, overused adverbs to an annoying degree, and wasn’t that exciting for me. But it was written for kids, so I give her a break on that. I liked books 2, 3 and 4. The rest got to be way too long and way too wordy. They needed a good edit, but the publisher wasn’t going to disrupt that gravy train!
Yes: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, and 20.
Everything except Harry Potter, All Lord of Rings, 50 Shades. (What the fuck is that doing in there? Had to get some politically correct female bullshit?)
And Parker takes the lead!
vanderleun:
50 Shades may indeed be BS, but it’s far from politically correct or feminist, from what I’ve read about it.
I’ve read them all but Sherlock (must read), the 50 Shades and the Agatha Christie (though I’ve read other Agathas).
How is 50 Shades on this list!?!
Also, the Harry Potter series. Didn’t read. Saw one of the movies. Why is it on this list? Should be on a list of must-reads for kids.
I assume that the idea behind including the S&M books on the list is that people lie in claiming that they didn’t read them, whereas people lie in claiming that they did read the others. I really didn’t read the S&M books, I swear!
Regarding Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nation he wrote, “I read in it.”
2, 14, 18,19,20
Had to. Hate Russian literature. Bunch of depressives. I would want to kill myself if I was one of them too.
In fact I just went through an old book of classic short stories recently, and came to the realization that almost every story was about some dysfunctional person doing dysfunctional things, and that if that reflected the interior life of most authors, it’s no wonder that both popular and intellectual culture are so screwed up.
Imagine a social life without neurotics.
I’ve read 12 of them, but am afraid to say which ones (but will say that 50 Shades is not among them)….
What? No Slaughter House 5? One of the more interesting books besides 1984 I had been forced to read in high school.
DNW:
You mean, like the Stepford Wives?
Or maybe we’re talking about Brave New World. They sent their neurotics (or let them escape) to the Savage Reservations, if I’m not mistaken, where they didn’t spoil the happy contentment of the rest.
No literature, art, or music, and probably no real humor too. But hey, it’s not a bad tradeoff, right? Personally, I’ll take the neurotics.
Years ago I was talking to a cousin of mine about some other cousins in the family. The latter group had been raised by parents who were a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and the kids were really really well-adjusted. They were nice, and I liked them, but there was also something very offputting about them. For example, they had terrible singing voices (and I mean awful), but they had such boundless self-confidence that at one large family event they sang a song (and played guitar, poorly) that they had written, and it seemed to have 100 verses. But they thought they were great! The other cousin of mine turned to me and said “Remind me, when I have children of my own, to make sure they grow up with some neuroses.”
It was awfully funny. Luckily or unlikely, it’s not that hard to do.
I’ve read LOTR, the Harry Potter books, Catch-22 and 1984. The rest hold no interest for me.
…and fifty shades of stupid is a trilogy? Pfeh.
I’ve read and liked most of them.
When I was in junior high I loved Catcher In The Rye.
My favorite in high school was Catch-22. I worked as an usher in a movie theater at the time and saw the movie version about 30+ times. Loved the movie as well, but it seemed like everybody leaving the theater hated it.
A few years ago a college student working for me who was an English Lit major turned me on to Thomas Hardy. I started with The Mayor of Casterbridge and ended up reading them all and loving them. My favorites I think were Tess of the D’Ubervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd.
I’ve read 11. Dickens is over-represented on this list.
I’ve read 14 of them (not 50 Shades or Harry Potter).
Loved most of what I read, especially War and Peace. My mother gave it to me to read and was surprised when I kept running to her to translate the French dialogue. She’d just assumed we were studying French in school…(and Latin…and Greek. Boy, was she ever shocked!)
@ K-E
Yes, Great Expectation is very special.
Whoops! I meant Great Expectations!
Yes to 1-3, 6-8, 10-13 and 15. Austen and Dickens for me are a staple, but I wish Trollope would make it into more lists of this sort. I think he has a loyal and slowly growing following, and I’m one of them.
This kind of thread is something I’m best off avoiding… but I’ll enter here long enough to say I haven’t and seriously seriously doubt I will ever read Harry Potter, and although I read the first 50 Shades book out of curiosity and because it seemed possible it might fit in with some research I was doing, it was such utter subliterary garbage I can’t imagine reading any more.
All through the 1990s I was the L.A. Times Book Review’s go-to reviewer for anything no one else knew much about, from Japanese fiction, Latin American, Eastern European, Soviet Russian, Native American, etc.
I’ve also done reviews for the Washington Post, on and on… But this will probably just piss some of you off. Since Amazon reviews became so important, everyone’s an expert now.
Actually, just thinking for a few seconds about Harry Potter and 50 Shades of Vanilla Bondage has irritated me.
I’d rather, just for a minute or two, think about Cesare Pavese-The Devil in the Hills, Hermann Broch-The Sleepwalkers, Witold Gombrowicz-Cosmos, Yukio Mishima-Spring Snow or The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Christa Wolf-Cassandra, Georges Perec-Life (a User’s Manual), Robert Musil-The Man Without Qualities, Thomas Pynchon-The Crying of Lot 49, Joseph Roth-The Radetzsky March, Thomas Mann-Death in Venice or The Magic Mountain, Dostoyevsky-any of his Big Four novels, Anthony Powell-A Dance to the Music of Time, Andrey Biely-Saint Petersburg, Ismail Kadare-The Pyramid, J. M. Coetzee-Disgrace, Georges Bataiile-Story of the Eye, the latest translation of Marcel Proust.
None of these are forbidding, impenetrable books. We’re not talking about Wyndham Lewis-Apes of God. Or Gertrude Stein-The Americans.
Recent novels: Jennifer Egan-A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jonathan Franzen-Purity, Claire Vaye Watkins-Gold Fame Citrus, Dennis Cooper-Guide.
Couldn’t get into Jane Austen? Wow. Read them all and saw the movies and TV series.
I couldn’t get into Dickens. That was maybe because we were forced to read “Dombey and Sons” in High School. If you want to go to sleep, try reading that book.
Catch-22 was a favorite. It was really an anti-war novel and I don’t know that I’d like it now. 1984 still seems prescient.
I read the Alices at a very young age.
Couldn’t get into any of the Russians.
These days, I mostly read conservative authors, such as Levin, Schweizer, Steyn, Coulter, Malkin, Goldberg, Spengler, Diana West, David Limbaugh. Horowitz and Shlaes.
The list is of “the top 20 books that Britons have lied most about reading.”
Britons.
Sniff.
Frog:
Oh, I didn’t see that about it being Britons. No wonder there’s so much Dickens.
Neo,
Classic Comics. No apologies. When the balloon goes up; when the sky is falling and earth’s foundations flee, I want you by my side.
I have not read Pride and Prejudice, but if you are peculiar enough, the movie version or Pride and Prejudice…And ZOMBIES will be out soon.
Catch-22: Read the first 5 chapters, could make no sense of it. After joining the Air Force, read it, found it the funniest book I’d ever read. Five years later, it was the saddest. Ten more years, both funny and sad.
Chris,
Thomas Hardy was one of my favorite authors in high school, couldn’t get enough. At that time of life, I was also enthralled by Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolf and in college by The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass. Which upon hindsight might mean I was all over the place when it came to literary tastes, and so I remain.
Followed your link to see what you said about Gatsby; I totally agree.
As a side-benefit, I discovered you have some commenters who are fans of my all-time favorite author, Dorothy Dunnett.
How serendipitous of us!
It has been interesting to compare notes on books here; I always find it interesting to see what interests (or doesn’t) other people. (That line needs an editor, but it’s too late to think about it.)
CAPS FOR MY THOUGHTS TO AVOID HTML TAGS
(1) Both Alice books. Annotated version. Loved them.
AGREED!! READ MANY TIMES
(2) 1984 I read when I was eleven or twelve. It gave me nightmares, but boy, did I read it. Read it many times since. The other evening I was talking to a friend and I referred to something as “doubleplusungood.” My friend had no idea what I was talking about, but for me a word like that has become part of the everyday English language. DITTO
WHEN 1984 DROPS OUT OF THE WORLD’S CONSCIOUSNESS YOU KNOW WE ARE LIVING IN IT
(3) Lord of the Rings.
LOVED MOST OF IT, BUT ADMIT I SKIMMED A LOT OF THE MORE ESOTERIC PARTS
(4) War and Peace.
HAVEN’T READ
(5) Anna Karenina. HAVEN’T READ
(6) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. READ ALL OF THE STORIES SEVERAL TIMES. LOVE CUMBERBATCH’S UPDATE (MOSTLY BECAUSE I ADORE HIS WATSON)
(7) To Kill a Mockingbird. LIKED IT MOSTLY BECAUSE I FELT A KINSHIP TO SCOUT; IT WAS MY FIRST INTRODUCTION TO WHAT PEOPLE MEANT WHEN THEY TALKED ABOUT RACISM – EVEN THOUGH IT IS ABOUT AS ANTI-RACIST A BOOK AS ONE CAN HAVE
(PS Uncle Tom’s Cabin is undeservedly slighted these days; it is amazing)
(8) David Copperfield. Yes, and am very fond of it–maybe because although it’s fiction, it’s a bit autobiographical (Dickens, that is, not me), and I think that comes through. I was introduced to it in the wonderful Classic Comics version. Don’t laugh; those things were great.
THEY REALLY WERE VERY GOOD ABRIDGMENTS, AND AT LEAST GOT THE PLOT-LINE ACROSS TO PEOPLE WHO WOULD NEVER READ THE ENTIRE BOOK — I THINK I READ DAVID, BUT REALLY NOT SURE NOW
(9) Crime and Punishment. READ – GAVE ME NIGHTMARES
(10) Pride and Prejudice. LOVE IT (PLAYED MRS. BENNETT IN A COLLEGE PRODUCTION)
(11) Bleak House. READ A PLAY-SCRIPT OF IT
(12) Harry Potter. ENJOYED AT THE TIME, KEEPING UP WITH THE KIDS; TRIED TO READ “PAST” THE EXCESS VERBIAGE IN THE LATER BOOKS
(13) Great Expectations. READ — NO BIGGIE
(14) The Diary of Anne Frank. OF COURSE
(15) Oliver Twist. I THINK I READ AN ABRIDGMENT — LIKE NEO, I’VE SEEN SO MANY ADAPTATIONS I’M NOT SURE
(16) Fifty Shades trilogy: OH GOOD GRIEF! THEY MIGHT AS WELL HAVE LISTED BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (AND PROBABLY WOULD HAVE 20 YEARS AGO)
(17) And Then There Were None. READ ALL OF CHRISTIE (AND MOST OF THE CLASSIC DETECTIVE WRITERS) AND ACTUALLY LIKED THIS ONE PARTICULARLY
(18) The Great Gatsby. MEH
(19) Catch-22. DIDN’T KNOW ENOUGH TO LIKE OR DISLIKE THIS ONE WHEN I READ IT
(20) The Catcher in the Rye. READ IT FOR SCHOOL; NOT MY FAVORITE
I’m also wondering why two of my favorite classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, aren’t on there. I think it’s because people actually do read–and love–Jane Eyre.
YES
I also read and loved Wuthering Heights, but it’s a far more difficult book and I have a hunch it’s much less commonly read.
YES — I JUST THOUGHT ALL OF THE CHARACTERS WERE UNCOMMONLY DENSE AND NOT VERY NICE
Well – that was fun! We should have Book Club more often!
Another list would be of books people think they know, but don’t, because they have only read adaptations or seen movies.
The Alice Books, of course; Peter Pan; Mary Poppins; Pinocchio; Bambi (notice a trend here?) — all are very different in the original book.
Read about half of them, parts of others. My favorites were “Crime and Punishment” and “David Copperfield”, in that order. I loved the way some insignificant act in one chapter of Crime and Punishment would show up later as something important, and the psychological bits really appealed. Dickens, OTOH, had a genius for names. Just reading the list of characters in David Copperfield is entertaining. If Dickens wrote a phone book it would be worth reading.
BTW, George Gamov claims that he lent P.A.M. Dirac “Crime and Punishment”. When he asked Dirac if he enjoyed the book, Dirac remarked that the sun rose twice in a single day. I’ve never heard anyone identify where that was.
I read “Crime and Punishment” and “The Catcher in the Rye” for school.
My generation almost grew up with “Harry Potter” – we were even roughly Harry’s age as the books were coming out. I lost interest in it around the fifth or sixth book, but out of a sense of loyalty I still read them all. On a separate note: it seems to me that many young Europeans of my generation learned English with Harry. I would have read the books in English anyhow, but I know many people who were just too impatient to wait for the translations to come out.
I also read “Lord of the Rings”, “The Great Gatsby”, and Anne Frank’s diary. I am never going to understand the fuss about Tolkien. I thought it was blah – legible, but hardly exceptional or even memorable.
For the rest of the list, I frequently read similar works or different works by the same author. For example, “Animal Farm” instead of “1984” (and some other dystopian novels, such as “Fahrenheit 451” or “Brave New World”). Several novels by Dickens, but not the ones mentioned on the list. One Agatha Christie, but not this one. Tolstoy’s shorter works (e.g. “The Kreutzer Sonata”), but not the two big ones.
I share your sentiment about Jane Austen. (And about “Jane Eyre”).
Proust, Dante, Chateaubriand, Zola, and Hugo also seem to be among the “should have read, but never really did” authors. From the more modern ones, maybe Eco.
The authors that people _actually_ read seem to be a completely beast: Elena Ferrante (I must be the only one in my circles who has still not read anything by her), Amos Oz, Muriel Barbery, Houellebecq, Murakami, Camilleri, Franzen, Isabel Allende… This is what people around me seem to read.
1984 – I read it and thought it was great. I’ve subsequently read “We” by Yevgeny Zemyatin, the book that Orwell based his book on. And he really, really drew from Zemyatin. “We” is to 1984 what Soviet history is to Animal Farm. Once you remove the influences, there’s not a lot to either of them.
Lord of the Rings – Read it more than once.
War and Peace – I knew if I stopped, I’d never pick it back up again. I made it halfway before I had to admit that I’d lost the story. I’ve never tried again.
Crime and Punishment – Yes. I like Dostoevsky much more than Tolstoy.
Harry Potter – A few chapters here and there.
Catch-22 – I read it and liked it.
The Catcher in the Rye – I read it when I was the right age to enjoy it. Now that I’m older, I think I’d hate the special snowflake narrator.
I’ll call it 5.5 out of 20 (I want credit for the War and Peace effort!).
Anna – Tolstoy became an ideologue sometime while he was writing Anna Karenina. I enjoy his early short stories, but in his later ones he’s lost the ability to write characters as humans. They’re just spokesmen or archetypes. The Kreutzer Sonata was pretty good, though.
Nick:
I’m not familiar with We, but I doubt it has anything equivalent to Newspeak. If all Orwell had done is to invent and explain Newspeak, that would still have been a work of genius.
I have read about 2/3’s of the list. I do love Jane Austen (I re-read her books) and I also love Jane Eyre (which I also re-read, I also love The Professor by CB) I have never read Catcher in the Rye, if you can believe it. It was never assigned! What does that say about my jr. high school?
Truman Copote “in Cold Blood” is a great read,
interestingly the Prissy boy “Dill” in To Kill a Mocking bird, is modeled after him .
MollyNH:
Capote and Harper Lee were childhood friends.
and “scout” was Harper Lee..:)
Neo – True. Orwell was influential and a genius. But if you take his kernel of genius and add the history of the Russian Revolution, you’ve got Animal Farm. If you take his kernel of genius and add “We”, you’ve got 1984. It makes it harder to consider him a great writer once you’ve factored out his source material.
“We” is also a work of genius. It’s like free verse about mathematics. Very impressionistic. Zamyatin was writing in the new Soviet Union, in 1921. He understands totalitarianism. He just expressed it in a very different way.
(1) Both Alice books. Yup.
(2) 1984. Many times. One of the greats.
(3) Lord of the Rings. 25 pages. Never got the hullabaloo.
(4) War and Peace. No, but I read August 1914, that’s worth at least as much..
(5) Anna Karenina. Nope.
(6) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Yup. Read them as a kid, then again as an adult. Much different take.
(7) To Kill a Mockingbird. Yup. NBD.
(8) David Copperfield. Nope.
(9) Crime and Punishment. Nope.
(10) Pride and Prejudice. Nope, but I’ve seen at least 13 different movies and TV version. Does that count?
(11) Bleak House. Should have convinced me never to be a lawyer. Alas, I have a weak character.
(12) Harry Potter. 50 pages, blah, blah, blah.
(13) Great Expectations. Yup.
(14) The Diary of Anne Frank. Yes.
(15) Oliver Twist. Yes, but the musical crowds out my recollection.
(16) Fifty Shades trilogy. Shirley, you jest!
(17) And Then There Were None. Oh, yes.
(18) The Great Gatsby. Yes, could never figure out what the big deal was.
(19) Catch-22. Many times. My dad, a WWII vet (not Air Corps), said it was the best book about the war ever written. I read it in high school, and loved it. Then after the Army read it again, and loved it even more. There was even an officer in my outfit we called “Major Major.”
(20) The Catcher in the Rye. Yes — what a whiney, obnoxious, self-indulgent brat!
I read the original Alice books and really enjoyed them also! I don’t think I told any of my friends, either. Definitely went against my image as a tough football player but I read them both several times. To this day I can still recite some of the oddest parts,of them.
Holden Caulfield strikes me as the prototypical Millennial, an emotional cripple who thinks he knows everything.
Nick:
I never got the impression that Holden thinks he knows much of anything. He seem to be the personification of confused feeling, but he acknowledges that confusion. He is lost, and he knows it. All he knows is that there are a lot of “phonies” in the world and he doesn’t like them, and he’d like to protect children’s innocence. That’s about it.
At the end of the book, Holden’s in some sort of psychiatric treatment, if I recall correctly, and he indicates that at this point he “misses everybody,” including the people he’s dissed.
Ha! Your remark about War and Peace reminds me of how the late Joan Rivers said she read that book. She mimed furiously turning the pages and muttered, “Battle battle battle.” Then she paused and sighed, “Love!”