Sane Max wrote:Here's a list of the books people claim to have read but haven't.
I am embarrassed to admit I have not read over half of them.
1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
2. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
3. The Bible
4. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
5. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
6. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
7. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
8. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
11. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
12. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
13. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
14. The Odyssey by Homer
15. Ulysses by James Joyce
16. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
17. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
18. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
19. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
20. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
21. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
22. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Hmm, I've read 2 (why the fuck would anyone lie about that one, its a quick, fun, read), 4 (a real slog, worse than War and Peace in my opinion), 7, 8 (great, great book), 9 (one of my all-time favourites, I reread it every couple of years as it is a quick read), 10, 11 (hard to read, but I have always liked the Napoleonic era so finished it), 12 (school read, hated it), 14 (and the Illiad), 18 (another school read, but a damn good book), 20 (yet another school read and worth it), and 21 (and another school one, but was bored by it). I suppose the prevalence of some of the American classics was doing high school in the US. I would say most people my age were forced to read those. I tried to read Ullyses a few years ago, but gave up. I have zero interest in the others on the list.
When I die I want the Arsenal players to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.