10. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand: Love it. Read it three time, listened to it several more. NO MATTER HOW MUCH I LIKE THE REST OF THE BOOK..”THAT PART” always makes me glassy eyed. I always hurry through it.
9. On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin: Never read it. Why should I? I am willing to bet it is a boring as all get out.
8. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo and A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens: I have read A Tale of Two Cities multiple times and listened several more. I love it. The entire thing.
7. 1984, George Orwell: Read this between five and ten times and have listened to it multiple times. Scary book. Brilliant.
6. Democracy in America, Alexis De Tocqueville: I have tried multiple times, but can’t get through it.
5. The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith: Made myself get through it. The overall message is good.
4. Moby Dick, Herman Melville: I love this book. I first read it at age seven. Much of it went over my head, but I have read and re-read it many times.
3. The Art of War, Sun Tzu: Bah. I’ve tried. Boring as hell.
2. The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli: Still trying this one.
1. Ulysses, James Joyce: Not even interested. This is really funny, too, because of my ignorance of what it really was. I had read the Odyssey, and couldn’t believe I enjoyed it so much. I felt much the way about the Odyssey that William F. Buckley felt about Moby Dick. It was fantastic, and I thought, “why had so many teachers made this stuff sound like torture to read?” I felt cheated to have been scared away from it! So I thought (in my literature-istic ignorance) that Ulysses would be really good. I very nearly barfed. I thought “What is this CRAP? What kind of poseur even reads this stuff and treats it like a work of art?” Not my cup of tea...
I was a die-hard Richard Lattimore fan (one of my Greek profs was a friend of his) but my daughter read it in the Fagles translation and I've decided I like it. Lattimore is all about preserving the form, Fagles gets the meaning into modern English. Two very different choices.
“I first read [Moby Dick] at age seven.”
Woah, that’s impressive!