30-day Challenge! - Day 17: Books you want to read but are afraid to?

[Joseph]

I was all set to say none, and then it hit me, the book up next on my list does indeed fit this description.

Madame Bovary

[Kainzow]

Anything by Hemingway!

[Kent]

Gravity's Rainbow

Started it for my 12+2 challenge, now utterly, paralyzingly confused. I've been avoiding it for the last two weeks and distracting myself with other books while telling myself I'm psyching myself up for another dive back in...

[Desertorum]

I finished Lolita couple weeks ago, and in my opinion it wasn´t that bad.

I´m really coward when it comes to horror/suspense/war books or movies. I try to avoid them because I see dreams about them or I´m not able sleep…(and also our house is in middle of the woods and I spend nights here alone…no mr.king in my house! Even though I have read his books when I was younger and liked them)
But I am proud of myself for I have conquered some of the books I thought I might not be able to (and even liked them) like Puhdistus and The Unknown Soldier.
I´m also happy that I have tried some longer classics (especially russian) with this group and found that I really liked some of them. But still finnish classics are really daunting.

I´m really interested to hear, have some of you read the books you were afraid of? And have you liked them?

[Tytti]

Kent wrote: "Gravity's Rainbow"

My friend just finished it and gave it five stars, also started another Pynchon's book straight after. Then again, he might be the most well-read person I know and seems to like challenging books.

Desertorum, it might be that we know that Finnish classics tend to be quite realistic, that's one reason why I haven't read Minna Canth. At the moment "The Midwife" by Katja Kettu interests me (because of the forbidden love affair between the titular character and an SS-officer) but the language might be too much, and everything else as well... The trailer for the movie looks great, too, but I guess it's hard to make Lapland look bad.

[Abbey]

Anna Karenina...a friend read it and said the first half was so hard ot get through, but the second half was great!

[Terris]

I just decided to do the group read of One Hundred Years of Solitude and I'm afraid!! I think I tried to read it once before & just couldn't do it. But I was busier then, & I think I might try to listen to it this time. Maybe that will help (fingers crossed!!).

[siriusedward]

War and peace
Great expectations
Grapes of Wrath.Afraid to not like it .Till now I read only his short stories and those I loved.Very poignant and wistful .

[Loretta]

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

[Rhedyn]

Hmmm... Not really sure.

[Renee]

For me, it would probably have to be War and Peace. I started it once, but didn't get very far before starting another book. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for it, but it's one that seems intimidating to me. I know quite a few people in this group really liked it though so that will give me some incentive to give it another try.

[Jehona]

The 120 Days of Sodom

[Maggie the Muskoka Library Mouse]

All the Light We Cannot See
World Without End
War & Peace

[Terry]

Ulysses

[Rosemarie]

The Road

[Cynda]

Les Miserables -- all that French History scares me but I so want to read the book anyway.

[Patty]

The Exorcist

[Luke]

Anything on my Long Read Possibilities shelf. It's why I restrict myself to reading only one of them per year (shelf doesn't include works I don't have copies of): https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

[Sherry]

Moby Dick.

I'm less afraid of the length than the fact that I hate it when animals die.

[Robin P]

Embarrassed to admit that I have never read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Everyone was reading it in junior high but even then I didn't want to read about the Holocaust.

I am fine with long books, and have read numerous chunksters, but I avoid horror and true crime. I also can't read anything about torture, if that seems to be happening, I will skim over to a later part of the book.

[Joseph]

The Road This is a totally irrational fear. I hated On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and the similarity in title makes me fear this book.

[Lori]

Joseph- don’t fear The Road for the title. It’s an amazing read.

[Cynda]

Like others, I have feared horror. I have read and found good Frankenstein and Dracula. Someday I will try Lord of the Flies.

[Robin P]

I think it is perfectly legit to skip over whale anatomy and processing in Moby Dick and French politics and the Battle of Waterloo in Les Miserables. I read Les Mis when I was about 12 and thought I had to read every word, even though they meant little to me.

A few years ago I read Ulysses with an online group. They posted lots of notes and references. But I also had the audio and I felt like sometimes it was best to just listen to it like poetry and not even try to figure it out! But I would say I am still afraid, or unwilling to read Finnegans Wake. Also Infinite Jest. Life is too short!

[Piyangie]

Any horror story! Not my kind.

[Joseph]

Lori wrote: "Joseph- don’t fear The Road for the title. It’s an amazing read."

I'll definitely get to it one of these days.

[Lynn, New School Classics]

I must be afraid to read Lonesome Dove. For two years it has been on my lists and I just don't read it. I even ordered a brand-new copy and bought the Audible audiobook, but I don't start it. Maybe it is the length...probably. I did see the mini-series on tv when I was a teenager. All I remember is dirty cowboys taking baths before sleeping with prostitutes, a prostitute getting kidnapped and abused....men seeking revenge. All this seen through a young teenage girl's eyes. l I really really hate books where women are abused. Maybe that is part of it. I haven't really thought about it until this question.

[Laurie]

I'll have to go with In Search of Lost Time partially because of the length and partially because of the style. I own Swann’s Way so I hope to at least tackle that much someday.

[Wreade1872]

I think i got through all my scary ones by now, but am worried about a few things that i'm afraid might be boring, Jane Eyre and something by Booth Tarkington.
Also i have a lot of books by Olaf Stapleton and A.E. Merritt to do both of which i've read before but am worried their writing will feel duller with more reads.