I've always wanted to read ________.

[Marc]

Complete this sentence with a title or author you keep meaning to read. Feel free to give a little background/explanation (or don't--go with your gut).

[Jennifer]

The Naked Lunch.

[[deleted user]]

Infinite Jest.

[Marc]

Jennifer wrote: "The Naked Lunch."

Really liked this when I first came across it--hadn't read anything like it, but it was also part of 20th century class, so there was lots of engaging discussion.

[Marc]

AnnLoretta wrote: "Infinite Jest."

No small commitment there!

[[deleted user]]

Marc wrote: "AnnLoretta wrote: "Infinite Jest."

No small commitment there!"

Well, I'm nearly 64. It's not that I can't or won't read it, I'm just not certain I want to go where it wants to take me. And I am unquestionly acquiescent to a book.

[[deleted user]]

Marc wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "The Naked Lunch."

Really liked this when I first came across it--hadn't read anything like it, but it was also part of 20th century class, so there was lots of engaging discussion."

Loved it when I read it, but I'm so, so much older now, and so much more knowing, and thus, so much more fragile. If you truly wish to read it, you should, when you're ready. But don't be seduced into watching the film first. Just my thoughts.

[Marc]

I keep telling myself I'll read Infinite Jest when it shows up at the library (but I'm well aware that the branch I visit doesn't stock it, so I'd have to put a hold on it to actually borrow a copy). I'm usually pretty acquiescent to a book, too, but some of them I seem determined to resist or unwilling to bend to the author's will (the The Tin Drum was definitely one I fought against the whole way through).

[[deleted user]]

Marc wrote: "I keep telling myself I'll read Infinite Jest when it shows up at the library (but I'm well aware that the branch I visit doesn't stock it, so I'd have to put a hold on it to actually borrow a copy..."

Agree. Yet The Flounder is one of my favorite books of all time.

[Whitney]

War and Peace. I think I've read all the other chunky Russian kitten squishers, but not this one. A Dance to the Music of Time is always beckoning as well. I read the 1st volume, but at this point would need to start over.

Naked Lunch I probably read 4 or 5 times, and everything else by WB at least once. I still have the copy with the torn cover that a friend gave me in high school, the perfect time to discover Burroughs. I think it was Joe Lansdale who said that Burroughs' biggest contribution was to get 15 year-olds excited about language. It seemed like a fair assessment.

I was pretty stoked about The Tin Drum when I was a teenager as well. I still don't know how I had all that time back then. Maybe because there was no internet.

[Whitney]

Ohh, oooh! A little early, but for those who want some Burroughs holiday cheer, the entirety of "The Junky's Christmas" is on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6kHN...

[Richard]

AnnLoretta wrote: "Infinite Jest."

yup!

[Richard]

Whitney wrote: "Ohh, oooh! A little early, but for those who want some Burroughs holiday cheer, the entirety of "The Junky's Christmas" is on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6kHN..."

i got that for christmas once, from a junky friend.

[Richard]

I've always wanted to read One Hundred Years of Solitude - i have it, i've read page one 3 times, i hear it's wonderful, but i just can bring myself to do it

[CD]

The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson.

There's a deluxe collectible edition with the rest of the RLS section in my library. I've never read it! Maybe later this summer . . .

[Jennifer]

Wuthering Heights and anything by Jane Austen. I keep saying I really should, but then...I pick up My Life as a White Trash Zombie. Go figure.

[Marc]

But the zombie book was a 4-star rated read for you, Jennifer! Who knows what kind of disappointment you could be facing with Wuthering Heights :p

I enjoyed Love in the Time of Cholera much more than One Hundred Years of Solitude. I still enjoyed the latter, but not as much.

[Jennifer]

Marc wrote: "But the zombie book was a 4-star rated read for you, Jennifer! Who knows what kind of disappointment you could be facing with Wuthering Heights :p

I enjoyed Love in the Time of Cholera..."

That's what I tell myself....But then, from what I understand maybe grand disappointment is the theme of Wuthering Heights....

[Marc]

If it makes you feel any better, I've got an unread copy of Wuthering Heights on my shelves at home.

Hadn't heard of The Body Snatcher of The Flounder until this thread.

[[deleted user]]

Jennifer wrote: "Marc wrote: "But the zombie book was a 4-star rated read for you, Jennifer! Who knows what kind of disappointment you could be facing with Wuthering Heights :p

I enjoyed Love in the Time of ..."</i>

<i>CD wrote: "[book:The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson.

There's a deluxe collectible edition with the rest of the RLS section in my library. I've never read it! Maybe later this..."

Marc wrote: "If it makes you feel any better, I've got an unread copy of Wuthering Heights on my shelves at home.

Hadn't heard of The Body Snatcher of The Flounder until this thread."

Me, either, "The Body Snatcher," but I have it in the few of my grandfather's books I have (his signature, "1929" on the title page in fading blue fountain pen ink, dear man), so I've bookmarked it. Stevenson is so philosophical, has such a strange turn of mind. I've never read what I think of as his "boys'" books, "Treasure Island," "Kidnapped," but I love his essays and Dr. J and Mr. H. Thanks, CD.

I've never read "Wuthering Heights," either, for some reason it repels me. Heathcliffe, indeed, I think to myself, indeed, indeed.

Oh, P.S., The Flounder seems impenetrable in the beginning and plodding, until you give your mind over to it, and then it's hysterical. (The Mind Snatcher!)

[Mark]

Jennifer wrote: "The Naked Lunch."
I have had this book for ten years but haven't got round to reading it for some reason.

[Jennifer]

Mark wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "The Naked Lunch."
I have had this book for ten years but haven't got round to reading it for some reason."

Same here. There it sits on the shelf waiting.

[Marc]

Had to read Naked Lunch for a fiction class on late-20th century fiction. Ended up quite taken with it but not sure I would have made much sense of it without the class (which put it in the context of following in Dada/Surrealist footsteps and thinking of culture as a kind of metaphorical drug; lotsa trippy imagery and addiction explorations).

Makes me wonder what the oldest unread book I have on my shelves is... ? I suspect somewhere around 15 yrs old.

[CD]

Now I have read The Body Snatcher. Turns out I had read it! Just a long time ago - like the last century.

It is familiar story that I just conflated with several other renditions and real world events.

A good short story from and concerning the Victorian era.

[Marc]

The Discworld series has a pretty devoted following from what I understand, Sealstichery.

I don't mind discovering that I'm re-reading something, CD, but when I purchase a second copy of a book I already own without realizing it, I start to worry...

I finally cracked into Javier Marias's YOUR FACE TOMORROW trilogy (Fever and Spear is book 1), which has been sitting on my shelf for many, many years. Can't believe I waited this long!

[Jennifer]

I finally read Something Wicked This Way Comes

[Marc]

Looks like it was well worth the wait based on your review!

I haven't read much Bradbury, but did recently read and enjoy his short about the "butterfly effect" and time travel--online free here: "A Sound of Thunder"
It was mentioned in Stephen King's 11/22/63.

[Jennifer]

I suppose it is dated....I enjoyed it.

[Marc]

That's all that really matters.

[Herbette]

The Man Without Qualities

[Whitney]

Herbette wrote: "The Man Without Qualities"

I am deciding between that one and Miss MacIntosh, My Darling as my next door stopper read.

[Marc]

With a combined total of just over 200 reviews for those two door stoppers! Not too many people have rose to that challenge. I'd never heard of either. There's supposed to be some huge book coming out soon (2017)... [googling now to see if I can track it down... ]... Alas, I couldn't find it.

[Herbette]

wow, I'll put "miss macIntosh" on my list immediately. unfortunately, no turkish translate -1200 page long challange for me : )

[Quentin]

The Golden Days (Also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber, etc.), unabridged, in the original Chinese. If I can read that in my life time (I have to bone up on my Mandarin first), I shall consider myself a reader.

[Chris]

...my own epitaph.

[Whitney]

Pretty sure it's "He died for our sins".

(Or am I confusing you with a different Christ?)

[Chris]

That's the other guy.

Easy mistake to make, though. We're a lot alike, except for he had long hair, a beard, was a decent human being, and the whole son of God thing. Other than that, we could be twins.

[Cree]

The sound and the fury

[Marc]

Shakespeare wrote his own epitaph, Christ, so you could be in good company and make vet on to your next I've-always-wanted-to-read selection if you followed suit...

Cree, I loved The Sound and the Fury enough to make me want to read all of Faulkner (I've got plenty more to go). Have you read anything else by him?

[Whitney]

Ditto to Sound and the Fury! I was also on the Faulkner completeness bandwagon, but never managed to get through Mosquitos or A Fable. I think I made up for it with at least three readings of a few others, as well as collected letters etc..