Posted on 03/02/2022 9:20:32 AM PST by C19fan
They're the books we know we’re meant to have read – but which many of us are too daunted by to actually pick up and start.
That hasn’t stopped nearly half of Britons from pretending to have devoured classics in an attempt to impress others.
An overwhelming 95 per cent of people find reading older novels and plays hard work, a poll has found. However many said they bluff their literary knowledge to appear more intelligent.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
1:Tolstoy "War and Peace"
2:Shakespeare "Hamlet"
3:Melville "Mody Dick"
4:Emily Bronte "Wuthering Heights"
5:Orwell "Animal Farm"
6:Dickens "Bleak House"
7:Hugo "Les Miserables"
8:Hugo "Hunchback of Notre Dame"
9:Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby"
10:Joyce "Ulysses"
I’ve read all but Ulysses (which is on my ‘bucket’ reading list). I’m a bit of a book worm though...
Just like Elaine on “Seinfeld” - I felt the same way about the movie “The English Patient.”
Everyone felt obliged to say how beautiful, romantic, engaging it was. I felt is was boring, saccharine shlock.
I thought “Ulysses” would be number one. It has the reputation of the most unread read novel in history. Perhaps people could not get through the work and gave up.
I read “War and Peace” last year. For me, it was a fast read. It helped a lot I have some knowledge of the Napoleonic Era and Russian culture.
“Wuthering Heights” is many things but boring it is not. I think most people read it based on the classic movie and are shocked at how violent and brutal the novel is.
I watched “The English Patient”. It is a morally repugnant work.
Hated it. Kept waiting for it to get better because it was supposed to be so awesome.
Reading Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is hardly daunting, its an easy read. Anyone of Joyce’s tomes should be at the top of the list because you’d have to be a masochist to want to wade through them, even though they are of significant literary importance.
I read War and Peace last year also. I was fascinated with his take on Napoleon...
On the most loved and lasting impressions category I find all works by Hemmingway to be my favorites. In the cheap novel category, anything by Dean Koonz. Holds my attention, creeps me out, reinforces my fear of man, and allows me to ignore my wife when I choose to.
I think Ulysses isn’t anywhere near #1 because there’s a fear of running into someone who actual read it. Joyceans start spouting off about “the ineluctable modality of the visible” and the bluffer is in trouble.
"Moby Dick" was a struggle, I'll grant you that.
I just can't get into Shakespeare at all.
Not on the list but "Infinite Jest" was a book I found very difficult to get into. In fact, I don't think I ever made it past the first 100 pages and I've attempted it more than once. The footnotes alone are longer than most other novels and I'm told they are vitally important in understanding the novel.
On a list of unread novels by American authors, I’d include “Gravity’s Rainbow”, I tried but just couldn’t get all the way through it.
I have read Hamlet, and Animal Farm.
I think I also read The Great Gatsby, but my aging memory is protecting me from remembering it.
Hamlet isn’t meant to be read - it is meant to be acted. Reading it silently is, indeed, boring, but the story is good. Don’t waste your time trying to psychoanalyze Hamlet though.
Animal Farm was sort of “anti-Communism for kids.” American kids might benefit from reading it, but it is kinda depressing.
2) Hamlet, might have had a little bit in High School.
3) Moby Dick, Read that in High School
7) Les Meserables, Saw the Play.
8) Hunchback, Saw the Disney version
9) Saw the movie
I’m half way to being an impressive Brit. LOL
I think that’s like Libertarians who claim they’ve read all of Ayn Rand’s novels.
Gatsby is the most overrated American novel outside of any POC fiction.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Just get the video.
Diane:
How would you characterize “The Great Gatsby”?
Thornton Melon:
He was... uh... great!
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