What makes someone well read?

[Will]

One of my biggest secret pleasures was telling some of the people on such an Austen thread that Pride and prejudice and Zombies had been set as a GCSE text.

Especially as it was true.

[R.M.F.]

It's funny how Shakespeare is seen as the zenith of writing, and yet, when it first appeared, it was looked down on as populist dross!

[Lynne (Tigger's Mum)]

I've read a lot of books but find I have forgotten a lot of them as well. I'm not worried, it means my tiny brain has still got spare capacity.

[Jim]

Will wrote: "Will & Will - makes us sound like a firm of solicitors! ;=)"

With a waiting room provided with battered copies of James Joyce books for the waiting clients!

[Carol]

As we have said before, there is often a certain snobbishness about literary works, and sometimes the term 'culture vulture' is particularly apt.
For me it is all entertainment and I love films as much as I love books. Colin Firth swimming through the lake in P. and P. still makes me thrill, just as it does thousands of others.

[David]

Will wrote: "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a proper bit of story telling. And there are fewer better collections of short stories than Dubliners. The Dead in particular is a damn good read.

I agree with you about those too.

[Carol]

Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "I've read a lot of books but find I have forgotten a lot of them as well. I'm not worried, it means my tiny brain has still got spare capacity."
Yes, same here and it's rather cheering to think of it like that!

[Stuart]

Carol wrote: "As we have said before, there is often a certain snobbishness about literary works"

Although I agree with this statement, I also think it is increasingly countered by people condemning such works out of hand as being unreadable or pretentious.

I personally loved Ulysses and I'm loving One Hundred Years of Solitude. Had I read either of them twenty years ago I would have thought they were crap.

I think the term 'well-read' in itself is pointless. It's just another judgement that one person makes of him or herself or of another. Books, in my opinion, are there to be enjoyed first. I love magical realism and some of the classics. Doesn't make me well read. Just means I find those books enjoyable. I also like Come Dine With Me and Four in a Bed...

[Tim]

I consider a book to be well read if I can remember what it was about after I finish it.

I myself cannot be well read, since I contain no writing (although there are labels attached to various garments, mostly proclaiming me to be St Michael, or best before last tuesday...)

[Jim]

I'm afraid I've probably passed my 'best before' date

[Gingerlily - The Full Wild]

Jim wrote: "I'm afraid I've probably passed my 'best before' date"

The best is yet to come I'm sure!

[Jim]

Gingerlily - Elephant Philosopher wrote: "Jim wrote: "I'm afraid I've probably passed my 'best before' date"

The best is yet to come I'm sure!"

Well selling fifty plus books in a weekend does give a buzz :-)

[David]

Will wrote: "Yup. I have been involved in similar discussions over the years. It seems that it's okay to dislike Joyce but Austen is sacred!"

Perhaps it is time for Austen to be updated:

http://davidhadleyauthor.wordpress.co...

[Jim]

I'm just waiting for them to remake 'The good, the bad and the ugly' in the mould of Four Weddings and a Funeral :-)

[Tim]

That would be "The good, the bad and the effing Ugly"...

[[deleted user]]

I'm sure there's a list somewhere — probably on Guardian Books — which contains a list of books one is supposed to have read in order to qualify. Needless to say, I didn't make the cut.

I have read lots of capacious Victorian novels, but I don't consider myself well-read because my interests are too narrow.

[Carol]

Re Joyce. In The Times yesterday, it said that in the GCSE exams this year many candidates' work bore a strong resemblance to Joyce's stream-of-consciousness flow. In one English lit, paper, several candidates had given a one-paragraph answer that ran to three pages.
Also, it was often difficult to tell if answers had been spelled correctly, as the handwriting was indecipherable.

[Stuart]

I love Joyce's style. Gabriel Garcia Marquez also has paragraphs that run on and on but they are magnificent. The stream of consciousness style for me is the ultimate in writing. I think there's a big difference between bad writing and bad punctuation - the latter being perhaps the reason why the candidates paragraphs ran on. Perhaps though Mr Gove's education reforms have bred a host of innovative literary geniuses?

[Kath]

There's a huge difference in knowing the rules and flouting them for the effect you want and writing never having known there were any rules in the first place.

[Carol]

Should the candidates be penalised for writing in the same style as Joyce? Presumably, yes, as I don't see how you can distinguish between grammatically unusual writing and intentionally unusual writing.
It's a long time since I read Marquez, but when I did I really liked his descriptive style of writing.

[Stuart]

I'm reading One Hundred Years of Solitude at the moment and loving it!

I see what you mean about stream of consciousness writing and grammatically incorrect writing. The difference in my view is in the flow and the musicality - the fact that the sound of the words is as important as the words themselves. Grammatically incorrect writing will generally sound clunky and disjointed.

[Carol]

I might be mistaken, but I think I remember reading that Marquez used to read what he had written every day to a group of friends.
The only thing was that he was not telling them the proper story. He was writing parallel chapters all the time, so they were really surprised when they read the final version. If this is true, then he was incredibly clever.

[Jim]

He'd have been even cleverer if he'd written down both stories and sold them ;-)