NationStates Jolt Archive

Come on own up.

Who here has not actually read a book by one of the classic authors? You know those books everyone knows about but never actually read. Even i have some wierd and glaring ommisions :P.

Utopia
Anything by Dickens except part of the Anthology
Ive never read Shakespeare of my own free will
HP Lovecraft
I was reading Dracula but it was too bad.
Ever read Frankenstein? I have but so many people havn't ya'll should.

As for the poets, you can pretty much assume i havnt :(
Exept for The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carrol which is REQUIRED reading.

http://www.literature.org/authors/carroll-lewis/the-hunting-of-the-snark/

Go on, own up... for one it'll remind me of all the other greats i've never read so i can fill in the gaps in my education.

Just a note...starting a thread called 'You Ignorant Swine' might potentially be flamebait.

I'll ask the mods.

~Czardas, Supreme Ruler of the Universe

Huxley, Brave New World
Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm
Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of wrath
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird (6 times, God I love that book!)

others.

Well if it is flamebait it isnt intended as such :P... I dunno if i CAN change it and i have no idea what i'd change it to :S.

Well if it is flamebait it isnt intended as such :P... I dunno if i CAN change it and i have no idea what i'd change it to :S.The mods might help.

~Czardas, Supreme Ruler of the Universe

I await their judgement... in the mean time... don't come in here and not confess, its cheating.

I've read far, far too much Shakespeare, mandatory, of course.
Most of Henryk Sienkiewicz's work.
Darkness at Noon, 1984, etc. etc.. all the dystopian nightmare stuff.
Some Kafka (the trial, the castle)
Lots of Sherlock Holmes stories.
Most or all of Mark Twain, including Puddin'head Wilson.
Some O. Henry
Most of the epochal SciFi stuff..

Probably a bunch more..

! theres a thing, whilst i have listened to all of Sherlocke holmes unabridged on BBC RADIO 7. I've never read any. Who'da thought it.

And to my detriment i dont actually know what the epochial Sci Fi stuff is...

I've read

a) Nearly everything by Dickens
b) " " " Orwell
c) " " " Shakespeare
d) To Kill a Mockingbird twice
e) Lord of the Flies
f) Practically everything by Melville except Moby Dick
g) Most of the literature on King Arthur and the Round Table

I'm really the wrong person to talk to. :p

~Czardas, Supreme Ruler of the Universe

Come on own up.

Who here has not actually read a book by one of the classic authors?

Who are the classic authors?

Utopia

Began reading it, but it was due back at the library before I finished it and never got it out again.

Anything by Dickens except part of the Anthology

Oliver Twist
David Copperfield
Great Expectations
The Signalman

Probably some more. Forced to read them. Not too keen on him

Ive never read Shakespeare of my own free will

Your not meant to read Shakespeare, you are meant to watch Shakespeare ;)

HP Lovecraft

Yep, lots. He's a bit of mixed bag, but the crap stories are worth it imo for the good ones :)

I was reading Dracula but it was too bad.

I quite liked it. Whilst not the best book I've read, it is very good. Same with Dracula's Guest.

Ever read Frankenstein? I have but so many people havn't ya'll should.

Easily one of the best books ever written imo. :)

As for the poets, you can pretty much assume i havnt :(
Exept for The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carrol which is REQUIRED reading.

I used to think that I didn't like poetry, but compared to a lot of other people I have read (and enjoyed) a lot.

EDIT: And I've read practically every single mystery novel ever written. I'm really into mysteries.

~Czardas, Supreme Ruler of the Universe

I thought we were supposed to list classics we haven't read. :confused: Or omissions mean something very different than what I think it means...

I've notices that all countries have their own classic lists. E.g. Dickens or Steinbeck are not in the shorter classic lists in Finland. I've read their books but not the ones everyone's supposed to read.

I haven't read any books by Kafka..
I need time to think...

Books or Authors I should have read but didn’t, and still don’t have them re-scheduled… If ever:

-Henry David Thoreau
-Walt Whitman
-Herodotus (tried it once, thought I’d like it, it's good for reference even if I can’t read it straight through).
-Dante’s Comedy (got through the first two, but petered out, not sure if I’ll actually try again)

On my to do list:
-Geoffrey Chaucer
-Moby Dick
-Mark Twain (not T.S and H.F)

milton - have an antique print that I picked up in a second hand bookstore ages ago and have yet to make it the whole way through (Its his entire collected works, quite a hefty tome)

Dracula and Frankensteine were both fantastic

steinbeck Mice and men was so predictable it HURT trash plot line although the writing itself is very good, pity.

Shakespeare, yeah I used to date a shakesperean actor

on the subject of playwrites MARLOW! seriously under rated explorations of morality and religion without the populism that shakespeare obsessed over.

lots of sci-fi 'classics' although they are mostly in my dads library atm so no titles to hand, but a lot of them use the twist to become semi-mythological rather then modern scifi which forcuses too much on plausability, the semi-mythological element allows them to explore more esoteric aspects of morality etc rather then simply having the same plot lines only set in space. bleh to modern scifi

poetry... more then I care to recount, although I prefere modern poetry rather then traditional, odes are so boring

I've never read 1984, despite the fact that I have a copy waiting in my car.

I've only read "metamorphosis" by Kafka.

I detest Dickens, and have only read "A Tale of Two Cities". (It was either that or fail 12th grade English class. I think I made the wrong choice.)

Come on own up.

Who here has not actually read a book by one of the classic authors? You know those books everyone knows about but never actually read. Even i have some wierd and glaring ommisions :P.

Utopia
Anything by Dickens except part of the Anthology
Ive never read Shakespeare of my own free will
HP Lovecraft
I was reading Dracula but it was too bad.
Ever read Frankenstein? I have but so many people havn't ya'll should.

As for the poets, you can pretty much assume i havnt :(
Exept for The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carrol which is REQUIRED reading.

http://www.literature.org/authors/carroll-lewis/the-hunting-of-the-snark/

Go on, own up... for one it'll remind me of all the other greats i've never read so i can fill in the gaps in my education.

Read nothing on your list apart from Shakespeare (planning to read Lovecraft though). Also have not read Steinbeck (probably going to, mainly because so many people I know have recommended I don't).

Dang, it's hard to list things you do not know... So below are some authors I plan to read but haven't yet.

- Mark Twain, everything apart from Tom Sawyer (and that five years ago).
- Voltaire.
- Jules Verne, except for "Around the world in 80 days"

Crime and Punishment by Fedor Dostevsky

The Millers Tale by Chaucer

1984 and Animal Farm by Orwell

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Vanity Fair by William E Thackeray

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

Asimov is the true author of classics, the rest can sod off :p

Anyway I've read 1984, Animal Farm, Lots of Jules Verne, lots of CS Lewis, Shakes, The Art of War, Shogun (if that’s 'classic' or not...), Some of Plato and Socrates’ little things, and stuff that I'm sure I've blocked out from my memory.

Nothing by Twain or Dickins

Haven't read War and Peace , Lord of the Flies, The communist manifesto or Mein Kampf (As a politics student I really should)

ive never read past the first page of any jane austin book.

now before you go "DUH!" you should remember that i am FEMALE.

i like the movies/miniseries made from her books so it seems like i should enjoy the novels but .....welll...there it is.. i cant get past the first page.

some Shakespeare
a couple of the Canterbury Tales (in middle english, thankyou very much :p)
Frankenstein
Dracula
Candide (Voltaire)
1984
Animal Farm
Plato's Repubic (although i have no idea what was going on)
Of Mice and Men (seeing as someones already mentioned it)
Death of a Salesman
A load of Robert Frost poetry

that all i would think that is of relevance to this thread...

Come on own up.

Who here has not actually read a book by one of the classic authors? You know those books everyone knows about but never actually read. Even i have some wierd and glaring ommisions :P.

Utopia
Anything by Dickens except part of the Anthology
Ive never read Shakespeare of my own free will
HP Lovecraft
I was reading Dracula but it was too bad.
Ever read Frankenstein? I have but so many people havn't ya'll should.

As for the poets, you can pretty much assume i havnt :(
Exept for The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carrol which is REQUIRED reading.

http://www.literature.org/authors/carroll-lewis/the-hunting-of-the-snark/

Go on, own up... for one it'll remind me of all the other greats i've never read so i can fill in the gaps in my education.
When my children were small, we bought a set of books called, "The Great Books." Over the years, I read almost all of them, except for many of the works on mathematics, about which I have always had a mental block. Heh!

And the really great thing about it is that most of my children read them too!

I have read all of the ones in your list.

Dang, it's hard to list things you do not know... So below are some authors I plan to read but haven't yet.


- Voltaire.

That one was a huge disappointment. (for Finns, especially if there is any females, Lindberg's Candida was quite interesting)

Haven't read War and peace, Anna Karenina and many other Russian classics. (have read quite many by Dostojevski, Tsehov, Turgenev etc)
I really should read The Grapes of Wrath. I try to remember it the next time I go to library.

Off the top of my head... ones I remember:

Chuck Dickens:
A Tale of Two Cities
A Christmas Carol

Charlotte Bronte:
Jane Eyre

Emily Bronte:
Wuthering Heights

Homer:
The Odyssey

Kurt Vonnegut:
Fahrenheit 451

Machiavelli:
The Prince

Voltaire:
Candide

Arthur Miller:
Death of a Salesman

John Steinbeck:
The Grapes of Wrath

Mark Twain:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

William Faulkner:
The Sound and the Fury

Robert Heinlein:
Stranger In A Strange Land

You gotta read Catch-22, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984, and my personal favorite, See Spot Run, an epic tale that cuts too close to home. :P

Has no-one thought to mention Poe? In my opinion he's one pf the most effective writers of his genre, both in prose and poetry. Admittedly not all of his work is amazing but a substantial quantity of it is.

Come on own up.

Who here has not actually read a book by one of the classic authors? You know those books everyone knows about but never actually read. Even i have some wierd and glaring ommisions :P.

Utopia
Anything by Dickens except part of the Anthology
Ive never read Shakespeare of my own free will
HP Lovecraft
I was reading Dracula but it was too bad.
Ever read Frankenstein? I have but so many people havn't ya'll should.

As for the poets, you can pretty much assume i havnt :(
Exept for The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carrol which is REQUIRED reading.

http://www.literature.org/authors/carroll-lewis/the-hunting-of-the-snark/

Go on, own up... for one it'll remind me of all the other greats i've never read so i can fill in the gaps in my education.
Utopia? No.
Dickens? I think.
Shakespeare? Yes.
HP Lovecraft? Yes.
Dracula? No.
Frankenstein? No.

I don't tend to like "classic" literature unless they have been updated. Modern is definitely more my style, though I have enjoyed some of my mom's favorites from when she was a kid; we have similar tastes.

Is the problem with this thread that people can't read properly, or their overbearing desire to showoff what books they've read supercedes the fact it's nothing to do with the thread?
It's a thread about books you've not read.
Perhaps it's a bit of a daft subject, but that's no excuse to spam up the place with books you have read.

Is the problem with this thread that people can't read properly, or their overbearing desire to showoff what books they've read supercedes the fact it's nothing to do with the thread?
It's a thread about books you've not read.
Perhaps it's a bit of a daft subject, but that's no excuse to spam up the place with books you have read.
Well, let's see ... um ... I haven't read "It Takes A Village," or anything by Ann Coulter, or anything by Norman Vincent Peale. :D

The communist manifesto or Mein Kampf (As a politics student I really should)

Really depends on the type of Politics you study.

Political Science or Philosophy, then maybe. But if you are just studying (say) Modern British Politics then it isn't really nessasery. Road To Serfdom would probably be more useful in an abstract kinda way.

Anyway, Mein Kampf is probably one of the most boring books ever written, your not missing much.

Kurt Vonnegut:
Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury surely?


Anyway, classics I haven't read but want to/feel I should:

Voltaire - Anything in general, Candide in particular.

Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, I've only read a couple of his books.

Same with Steinbeck, Only read East of Eden, Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath.

Same with Graham Greene, only read The Power and the Glory.

I feel I should finish the Foundation books by Asimov.

Probably should get around to finishing Clockwork Orange too.

I read some Shakespeare in high school, but I can't say I enjoyed it. I've read all the Sherlock Holmes stories by A.C. Doyle; Siddhartha; The Catcher in the Rye (yes, of my own volition); 1984; War of the Worlds and the Time Machine by Wells; Treasure Island, Jekyll & Hyde, and the Black Arrow by Stevenson; and on the list goes. I haven't read most of the great poets except a few things by Tennyson and probably others they made me read in school. I've read Gulliver's Travels. I've never read anything by Melville, Steinbeck, Shelley, Hemingway, or Woolfe. My knowledge of theatre is detestable. And I've never seen Citizen Kane (who has, anyway?).

I mostly read stuff that I think will be pertinent to my development as a writer.

The Supreme Protector of Gortrog

I read Fahrenheit 451(I loved it), but I thought Ray Bradbury wrote that, not Kurt Vonnegut.

We read a short story in English class by Kurt Vonnegut that I liked; it was about making everyone equal...in everything(looks, intelligence, strength, speed, etc.)...can't remember the name though...

I read Shakespeare...Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, liked'em both.

The Scarlett Letter by Hawthorne was good...

Haven't read-
Asimov
Voltaire
Melville
Twain(outside of school)
Never heard of Ann Coulter
I once pretended I read The Grapes of Wrath and The Old Man and the Sea
I only read The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart by Poe
I have read part of The Odessy
Nope to Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, Dracula, Frankenstein
Only the Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis

I've read a lot of Shakespeare. I don't like it at all. The Outsiders was great, I've read that twice. I read Lord Of the Flies in english, it was terrible. I read Fahrenheit 451, and didn't like it. Of Mice and Men wasn't too great. To Kill A Mockingbird was great, though.