Lotus666
06-10-09, 08:07 PM
Taken from MSN...
Books you should read but never will...
As bookshops gear up for Christmas and nearly 800 new titles get published on the same day, MSN News names seven books everyone feels they ought to own, but which more often than not end up gathering dust on a sideboard or mantelpiece.
They sit on your bookshelf, silent, intimidating, ubiquitous. They catch your eye when you least want them to. They remind you of your inadequacy as a human being: that you are someone who can't organise their time to even read a page of printed words.
They are the books we feel we really ought to read... but somehow never do.
We invent dozens of reasons for their neglect. The time is never right. We're never in the mood. There's always something better to do - or rather, always something a little more interesting to do, and something that doesn't feel like it will be quite as much, well, hard work.
For these books exude an aura of the classroom. Maybe we tried - and failed - to read them at school. Maybe we saw a documentary or a dramatisation and felt we really ought to seek out the original.
Perhaps it's just a matter of feeling somehow more wholesome with Shakespeare or Tolstoy in our living rooms rather than just JK Rowling and Jeremy Clarkson.
Whatever the reason, these books loiter in our lives, taunting us with their impressive titles and venerable authors. We may succumb, but only for a few pages. Our consciences cleansed, we return the volume to where it came, and continue about our lives.
Never mind the 800 or so new publications that have just been launched on the market in a pre-Christmas sales frenzy. How many of these existing titles are already gathering dust on your shelves?
1. Hamlet
To read, or not to read? That is the question. The answer, invariably, is no. It may be the most feted of Shakespeare plays, with extraordinary flights of language and extremes of imagery. Yet it is also one of the bleakest pieces of drama ever written. To get the most out of it, you have to work hard and be in a very precise frame of mind (clue = not cheery).
2. The Lord of the Rings
You bought it when you were a child, because it looked like a grown-up book. Then you grew up, and decided it was childish. In the meantime the films came along, rendering the business of reading the 1000-page thing even less urgent. Still, it's nice to have it there, propping up that row of celebrity autobiographies.
3. Lady Chatterley's Lover
A dirty book! By a respectable author! Which means it's OK! A simplification, perhaps, but when DH Lawrence's novel was prosecuted in 1960 for obscenity, the publicity probably resulted in many more sales than would otherwise have been the case. Whether many have read his tale of lust and metaphysics is another matter.
4. War and Peace
Another mammoth text. It's long been the punchline to unfunny jokes ("I was waiting for the gas man to call. It would have been quicker to read War and Peace!"). Yet its reputation bestows an air of grandeur upon any book collection, and the presence of Tolstoy's epic upon your shelves is guaranteed to impress an in-law or potential other half, for whom you are trying to exhibit evidence of advanced intelligence.
5. Pride and Prejudice
There have been so many adaptations of Jane Austen's classic, most notably by the BBC in 1995 starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, it almost feels like we know the text already. It is a truth universally acknowledged that your pristine copy, purchased not long after the last TV episode was transmitted, will remain untouched upon your bookcase.
6. Moby Dick
Herman Melville's story of one man's hunt for the titular whale is of a scope befitting its subject matter. The author fills hundreds and hundreds of pages with encyclopaedic observations and imaginative expositions on the aquatic beast. The reader dips their toe into this sea of words... and decides to try again at a later date.
7. Ulysses
This is the granddaddy of literary elephants in the room. James Joyce's mammoth account of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom (specifically, June 16, 1904) is packed with dense allusions, stylistic quirks and diversions into seemingly unrelated topics. Copies usually come with a map, glossary and a set of notes a third as long as the book itself. It is the ultimate accessory of the wannabe intellectual. It is an exhilarating, exhausting read. Yet making it to the end will leave you feeling like you've run the London Marathon, if not quite so sweaty.
O-kaaaay, I HAVE read them all, though I don't own them - wonder what that says about me? :mu: :rolleyes:
Books you should read but never will...
As bookshops gear up for Christmas and nearly 800 new titles get published on the same day, MSN News names seven books everyone feels they ought to own, but which more often than not end up gathering dust on a sideboard or mantelpiece.
They sit on your bookshelf, silent, intimidating, ubiquitous. They catch your eye when you least want them to. They remind you of your inadequacy as a human being: that you are someone who can't organise their time to even read a page of printed words.
They are the books we feel we really ought to read... but somehow never do.
We invent dozens of reasons for their neglect. The time is never right. We're never in the mood. There's always something better to do - or rather, always something a little more interesting to do, and something that doesn't feel like it will be quite as much, well, hard work.
For these books exude an aura of the classroom. Maybe we tried - and failed - to read them at school. Maybe we saw a documentary or a dramatisation and felt we really ought to seek out the original.
Perhaps it's just a matter of feeling somehow more wholesome with Shakespeare or Tolstoy in our living rooms rather than just JK Rowling and Jeremy Clarkson.
Whatever the reason, these books loiter in our lives, taunting us with their impressive titles and venerable authors. We may succumb, but only for a few pages. Our consciences cleansed, we return the volume to where it came, and continue about our lives.
Never mind the 800 or so new publications that have just been launched on the market in a pre-Christmas sales frenzy. How many of these existing titles are already gathering dust on your shelves?
1. Hamlet
To read, or not to read? That is the question. The answer, invariably, is no. It may be the most feted of Shakespeare plays, with extraordinary flights of language and extremes of imagery. Yet it is also one of the bleakest pieces of drama ever written. To get the most out of it, you have to work hard and be in a very precise frame of mind (clue = not cheery).
2. The Lord of the Rings
You bought it when you were a child, because it looked like a grown-up book. Then you grew up, and decided it was childish. In the meantime the films came along, rendering the business of reading the 1000-page thing even less urgent. Still, it's nice to have it there, propping up that row of celebrity autobiographies.
3. Lady Chatterley's Lover
A dirty book! By a respectable author! Which means it's OK! A simplification, perhaps, but when DH Lawrence's novel was prosecuted in 1960 for obscenity, the publicity probably resulted in many more sales than would otherwise have been the case. Whether many have read his tale of lust and metaphysics is another matter.
4. War and Peace
Another mammoth text. It's long been the punchline to unfunny jokes ("I was waiting for the gas man to call. It would have been quicker to read War and Peace!"). Yet its reputation bestows an air of grandeur upon any book collection, and the presence of Tolstoy's epic upon your shelves is guaranteed to impress an in-law or potential other half, for whom you are trying to exhibit evidence of advanced intelligence.
5. Pride and Prejudice
There have been so many adaptations of Jane Austen's classic, most notably by the BBC in 1995 starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, it almost feels like we know the text already. It is a truth universally acknowledged that your pristine copy, purchased not long after the last TV episode was transmitted, will remain untouched upon your bookcase.
6. Moby Dick
Herman Melville's story of one man's hunt for the titular whale is of a scope befitting its subject matter. The author fills hundreds and hundreds of pages with encyclopaedic observations and imaginative expositions on the aquatic beast. The reader dips their toe into this sea of words... and decides to try again at a later date.
7. Ulysses
This is the granddaddy of literary elephants in the room. James Joyce's mammoth account of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom (specifically, June 16, 1904) is packed with dense allusions, stylistic quirks and diversions into seemingly unrelated topics. Copies usually come with a map, glossary and a set of notes a third as long as the book itself. It is the ultimate accessory of the wannabe intellectual. It is an exhilarating, exhausting read. Yet making it to the end will leave you feeling like you've run the London Marathon, if not quite so sweaty.
O-kaaaay, I HAVE read them all, though I don't own them - wonder what that says about me? :mu: :rolleyes: