Quite An Odyssey

[Hastati]

One thing I'll add, having a Kindle has got me reading a lot of older works that I would never have read in hard copy. I am reading a lot more 18th and 19th century novels/poetry simply because they are available free of charge or very cheaply. I am a big WB Yeats fan and it is so nice having all of his works at hand and being able to just read a few random poems or an essay at the drop of a hat. Also, seeing something here on Frothers got me reading the works of M.R. James, and he is utterly brilliant. I'll see something mentioned on a forum in the papers and just go hunt for it on the Kindle or as free epub book. This is a golden age for reading.

[Badger Loving Fluffster]

Bit piece reading (being force fed) the bible doesn't count, but hey... welcome to Catholicism

On the list it is only two for me:
The Hobbit (as a kid, and then in later years the spoof "Soddit" which was a jolly good laugh and actually much easier to read)
Catch-22

The Odyssey and 1984 I started (several times in the case of The Odyssey) but never got very far.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Treasure Island were on reading lists at school which meant they got a cursory scan but I am embarrassed to say I had little interest in reading when I was at school and actually had the time to do it...

[An Absent Humphrey]

Also, seeing something here on Frothers got me reading the works of M.R. James, and he is utterly brilliant.

Yeah, I like M R James as well.
You may find this useful:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pfmfr

[An Absent Humphrey]

I've never got the Kindle/ebook thing.
It's not for me.
All jokes aside about online personas, but it's not an anti-technology thing. I just like the physical presence of books (I'm sure we all do). I like to see books on bookshelves. I like picking them up, the feel of them. I like that they're not fragile and I can throw it around or not worry if I bang my bag with it in, or if I spill something on it. But I also like the way an actual book tells the story of the story - how it gets dog-eared as someone has folded a corner when they stop reading, or have marked a passage. And I like how I can see the folded corner get successively nearer the end of the book - keeping track of my progress. I like books that have been read and used - browned and dirty with folded corners. How it lives and ages. A Kindle and its ilk just doesn't capture that romance of owning a book. I can see the advantages of having one (contains a lot of books at once), but fuck it, those advantages just aren't enough - just not for me.

[Altius]

I've read 9 of those books. I guess that's not too bad.

I really enjoyed Moby Dick, although it was a school assignment and my classmates seemed bored to tears. I found it very exciting and fascinating, and read it a second time a few years later.

I also read The Iliad when I was about 17. I remember several times reading about spears going through helmets, to the point where I started to wonder what was the point of even wearing a helmet in the first place.

Another book which I was forced to read but ended up enjoying very much was Lord of the Flies.

[Klingsor]

Libravox has some of the James stories read by a chap called Peter Yearsley, at first he seems a bit dull but he is very good, perfect for the stories.

[kawasaki]

Oh, 'list of classic books I can fib about reading so I look really clever'

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 read it
3. The Bible read some of it, goes with the Catlick
4. Moby Dick by Herman Melville read the children's classics abridged version
5. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
6. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway Hemingway is a really crap writer. I read his essay 'A Moveable Feast'. He's a name-dropping twat too
7. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
8. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
9. 1984 by George Orwell read it, Animal Farm is better. His essay 'Down and out in London and Paris is worth a look too
10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
11. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy started it, decided life was too short...
12. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
13. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
14. The Odyssey by Homer
15. Ulysses by James Joyce started it, decided it was a pile of pish
16. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
17. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte it's on the bookshelves...
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

I have read a fair chunk of Balzac's Comedie Humaine though. Some of them in French

[kawasaki]

Also, seeing something here on Frothers got me reading the works of M.R. James, and he is utterly brilliant.

Yeah, I like M R James as well.
You may find this useful:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pfmfr

and this.

http://www.mrjamespodcast.com/about-the-podcas/

It gets a bit precious at times though.

If you've got Spotify there are some M R James audiobooks on there read by Brit actors

[EnglishRed]

I've actually read a respectable number of those books. Some at school (Pride and Prejudice, The Bell Jar) and university (The Odyssey) but mostly after making a decision as a precocious (pretentious?) Teen to read a load of classic and in particular penguin modern classics. Some bona fide greats there. 1984, Catch 22, Lolita, Of Mice and Men ..I even read War and Peace as a 17 year old-I skipped a lot of the pontificating but generally enjoyed it. I seem to remember the Borodino bits being good.

Strangely despite being a fantasy nerd as a kid I've never read the Hobbit.

[Hastati]

I've never got the Kindle/ebook thing.
It's not for me.

I can see that. The Kindle is great because it means I have about 300 odd books available anywhere, anytime. It doesn't replace my library, it just makes part of it portable. When I'm on holiday I can burn through a novel a day, so having the Kindle beats carting 10-12 books in the suitcase. Any book I really want to keep I buy in hard copy, I have plenty of duplicates between the Kindle and the library. It's also useful for reading pdfs of wargame rules. I personally don't know anyone who has stopped buying hard copy books because they have a e-reader.