What do you think you 'ought' to have read?

[Dan (aka Utterbiblio)]

In the UK we have a book show brilliantly titled The Book Show and this week they featured someone talking about their reading habit and one thing they said really grabbed my attention. She said "I don't feel as if I will live long enough to read everything I want to read. I feel there are books I ought to have read".

This got me thinking, what books do I think I 'ought' to have read. My thoughts generally linger on the great classics both in terms of the great American novels, classic British novels and Russian literature. But if I had to choose three, they would be:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.
Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie.

Anybody else want to chime in and nominate three novels they think they 'ought' to read?

[[deleted user]]

If you're going to read Hemingway, start with "The Sun Also Rises". I've read it many times and it's always brilliant.

[[deleted user]]

Simon, Jane Austen is actually quite funny. And "David Copperfield" and "Great Expectations" are very entertaining. I found "A Tale of Two Cities" to be a pretty solemn, boring affair though. Haven't delved into Hardy yet.

I can't get enough of the great Russians. I love 'em all. "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev might be a good place to start for them. It's shorter and the young rebel character could almost be in a contemporary novel.

[[deleted user]]

For me it's poetry. I've read a majority of the great novels of the past, but I'm deficient on the poets.

[Dan (aka Utterbiblio)]

@Eric, Thanks for the Hemingway tip, I'll have to grab it very soon.

@Simon, I've only ever read one Dickens, but I've never felt the need to read him. I find myself of late wanting to return to older novels - the "classics" shall we say? So, I'm going to use this topic to build a list of must reads.

[[deleted user]]

Some more classics I have loved:

Anna Karenina (quite the potboiler)
War and Peace (Pierre and Natasha are two of the most endearing characters in fiction)
Don Quixote (made me laugh out loud numerous times)
Middlemarch (I read it a long time ago and loved it, but my memory of it is vague)
The Magic Mountain (a cracking, enjoyable intellectual voyage)

[[deleted user]]

Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn (my all time favorite book)
Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi (two great and hilarious memoirs, stuffed with interesting facts and incidents)
Innocents Abroad (hilarious travel writing)

[[deleted user]]

I have a somewhat convoluted answer, and that's that I feel I ought to have read books by the authors who will be looked back on fifty years from now as the defining authors of the 2010s and on. I'm the same way with music, particularly right now as Toronto is supposed to be to the 2010s as Seattle was to the 90s. So I'm thinking, if I lived in Seattle in 80s and 90s I would want to look back and say I saw Pearl Jam / Stone Temple Pilots / Nirvana in a small venue when no one else knew them. I'm pretty good at finding bands that go onto something great, but don't even know where to start with books. I'll definitely be following Lars Iyer and Andrew Miller, but I have a feeling there are a few books / authors out there right now that are not well known but are already influencing the fiction landscape. I ought to have read those...

[Tracy]

War and Peace ~~ It's so darn intimidating I can never get started!

[Jenni]

I have lots of gaps in my reading, especially when it comes to German and American literature. The first two choices are pretty obvious: Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann and Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The third would be a tie between The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. (Thanks for the tip, Eric!).

[Elizabeth☮]

there are works i feel i should have read by now, like Lolita and Crime and Punishment, but i can say that there are a number of books out there i haven't gotten to as an avid reader.

[Louise]

Knut Hamsun,
Margaret Atwood (I have 3 of her books so I will get to her soon :-)
Rabelais "Gargantua et Pantagruel" (I've read excerpts)
More Oscar Wilde.

[Tara]

I've always felt I should read Émile François Zola (though he seems to have fallen out of fashion). I imagine him to be France's William Faulkner - writing about the Rougons & Macquarts of Paris in place of the McCaslins, Sartoris and Compsons of Yoknapatawpha.

[David]

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman - I own a never opened copy and the book has been recommended to me by friends many times yet I still have not read it.

A Dance to the Music of Time - by Anthony Powell.

[[deleted user]]

I'll echo Powell. I've read the first of the twelve books, but don't remember too much about it.

Finnegan's Wake

Infinite Jest

[Katy]

I'm learning to shrug more at what I don't feel like reading, but some I still feel like I should read:

Milton's Paradise Lost
Tolstoy's War and Peace (got 2/3 way through, and gave up)
Moore & Gibbons' The Watchmen
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy

[Melissa]

The Greek and Roman classics. I've read Homer, Ovid, and the major tragedians, but not much else. I've only read the first two volumes of Proust, and that was some time ago.

[Jana]

Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
and...
hmmmm....
OK, there are 2 anyway.

Random thoughts:
I loved Anna Karenina. Thomas Hardy is absolutely amazing! Start with The Mayor of Castorbridge. Or start with Far From the Madding Crowd. But start, please!

OK - here's my third one: If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino. I have started it twice, loved it, then somehow didn't keep going. It sits on my nightstand. Taunting me.

[Dawn]

I'm laughing Jana! Just yesterday I returned Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" to the library ... I only made it about 10 pages in and for some reason it just wasn't speaking to me.

Just decided that about "The Master and Margarita" as well. I was loving it at first, but as it went on it was giving me a headache. Maybe in a month or two.

My three -
The Brothers Karamazov (this summer I hope)
The Iliad
Herodotus' The Histories (This has traveled to several continents and lived in at least three states with me. Still, it remains sadly unread.)

And after Tess of the D'Urbervilles made me want to slit my wrists - no more Thomas Hardy for me. It was a long time ago and I might be selling him short, but ... no.

Also - I've tried read Middlemarch so many times and despite numerous people going on about how it changed their lives - can't do it. I tried. Don't even feel like I "should" anymore.

I should make an effort to read more Hemingway. I enjoy reading books "about" him. And I love his house in Key West - I go there and hang out with the cats at least once a year. I did accomplish "The Sun Also Rises" last year. Maybe "For Whom the Bell Tolls" this year.

I "read" my first Faulkner this year - "Light in August" as an audiobook. I highly recommend the audio format for Faulkner. I actually combined both and found the audio much more accessible.

[Esther]

I feel I ought to read more newly published books. The newest books I read tend to be 1-2 years old.
I would also like to read more classics. I read quite a few English classics but would like to get a few more Russians and Americans on my read list.

[Kate]

I hate the "ought to have read" thing and yet suffer from it badly. The Russians are the biggie for me. I've read one Bulgakov and that's it. I completely agree with the girl on The Book Show that one lifetime just isn't enough.

[pam]

personally, i'm loving simon's "read like it is the end of the world" mode right now. it's so liberating. in fact, i just might join in for life. i have suffered guilt for years over never having read dickens, austen, etc. but i'm getting over it now. i absolutely adore the russians, and read everything by tolstoy and dostoevsky plus many more while in my 20s. lolita and crime and punishment are a couple of my favourites that i will occasionally re-read.

i find my "classic reads" guilt crops up when, in conversation, there is a reference to a situation or character in a classic book that i don't get (but feel everyone else does). that's what prompted me to take a course during my undergraduate years on the bible. i hadn't learned it as a child, and am not religious as an adult. however, phrases crop up often in our everyday language that refer to bible stories, so i thought i should at least know what everyone was going on about (e.g., the suffering of job, thomas the doubter, etc.). sometimes that happens with classic literature as well, and sometimes it will spur me to add the text to my TBR - but only if it promises to be a good story as well.

[Becky]

pam wrote: "personally, i'm loving simon's "read like it is the end of the world" mode right now. it's so liberating. in fact, i just might join in for life. i have suffered guilt for years over never having..."

I liked your comments Pam re: guilt and this idea of being able to "keep up" when people refer to classic books. I recently read this amazing book on memory and decision making called "Thinking Fast and Slow". It talks about memory re: vacations and says, "What if you were going on a vacation and knew that at the end, your memory of the vacation would be totally erased. You would have no photos and remember nothing, how would that change what you did on the vacation?" This idea that you have a "remembering self" and an "Experiencing self".

It would be interesting to apply that to reading. To read a book as your "experiencing self", imagining that you'll remember nothing of the book when it's over. How would that change what you chose to read? It's similar in some ways to Simon's end of the world reading, but a little different.

How much do we read to either remember it or bring it up later in conversation vs. enjoying it during the moment of reading?

[Tasha]

Becky, an interesting take in that idea! For me, when I read a book with a buddy or a group, I definitely pay more conscious attention to what i'm reading (my remembering self) because I'm additionally thinking of what I want to talk more about. Luckily, I've had good book picks to read so I've enjoyed the books on an experiencing level as well. But my own reading definitely is more freer, just moving along with the story. I often choose books that will give me more of an emotional experience anyway. As I think about this, for me, it all just depends on the story. Talking about it with others definitely helps to solidify it in my brain, but an emotional (experiencing self) read, whether read to be discussed or read for myself, definitely has the greatest impact on me over a remembering self. My memory sucks but my emotions hold onto experiences much better.

Case in point, school: studied and read. I could remember details for tests but unless these details emotionally impacted me, they were much harder to remember. In fact, i've probably forgotten much of what i've ever technically learned. So I guess, maybe what I'm saying, is that unless something brings an emotional experience, it will be less likely to stay in my memory for long term.

But I'm not sure I'm answering the question. How would just experiencing a book (and then not remembering it) change the way I choose books? Honestly, I don't think it would. I think I'd continue reading what I've always read. :) I like the experience while I'm reading and then move on to the next read before I can blink. It's an obsession and needs to constantly be fed! ;) I don't worry about the remembering, if I remember a story that's a bonus. If I don't, I'm already distracted onto the next read.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE a good book and always hope to remember it's impact on me, regardless of how fast I move on to the next read.

[pam]

becky - thank you SO MUCH for that! you've done a fab job of conceptualising what i was muttering on about. the good thing is that we don't have to choose one or the other (experiencing versus remembering). there are so many good books out there - we can shift back and forth between these as desire. i developed a studious approach to reading at university (i am a scientist) that i am still trying to break, and this likely underlies my reading guilt. yet another reason simon's reading freedom (or your concept of enjoying a vacation in the moment, even though you know it will be wiped from your memory when you are done) feels so wanton and illicit. love it!

[Tasha]

feels so wanton and illicit. love it

You go girl! After years of studying, especially the sciences, you probably deserve some reading vacation time! :)

[Elizabeth☮]

i think when i read, i read for the pleasure of reading. like tasha, i devour a book and then move on to the next one. if i make an emotional connection with a character, i'm more likely to remember the details of the book, but not always. there are times i love a book, and i couldn't tell you a character in it.

[Tasha]

there are times i love a book, and i couldn't tell you a character in it.

Haha, I know that feeling! :D

[Rita]

Eric wrote: "Some more classics I have loved:

Anna Karenina (quite the potboiler)
War and Peace (Pierre and Natasha are two of the most endearing characters in fiction)
Don Quixote (made me laugh out loud nume..."

Eric, I've owned Anna Karenina longer than I care to admit. And for some reason haven't read it. After hearing your 3 word description I may start it as soon as I get home.

[Rich]

* For the longest time, I feel as though I ought to have read Moby Dick, and I've actually gave it several tries, but for the life of me, I just can't get into it.
* My wife has been pestering me to read Wuthering Heights for forever now.
* This one is a bit silly... but back when it was all the fad, I resisted all the hoopla surrounding The Da Vinci Code, but ever since then- in the back of my mind- I've felt as if I ought to crack it open & see what all the hoopla was actually about.

[Jason]

I've been thin king about this one for a while and finally decided this was the definitive 3:
1. Middlemarch
2. Don Quixote
3. Dante's Inferno.

And no sooner had I decided than I changed my mind and came up with;
1. Anna Karenina
2. To Kill a Mocking Bird
3. Crime and Punishment

I'll probably have a different list completely next time I think about it.

[Ruthiella]

And no sooner had I decided than I changed my mind a..."

Read "To Kill a Mocking Bird" post-haste and then you can take cross it off. Unlike some of the other books on your list, it will not take a long time. It really is worth it.

[Jason]

Ruthiella wrote: "And no sooner had I decided than I changed my mind a..."

Read "To Kill a Mocking Bird" post-haste and then you can take cross it off. Unlike some of the other books on your list, it will not take ..."

Well you can see why I haven't got round to some of those, especially as being one of those people who has to finish every book I start (special dispensation for Finegans Wake which I suggest nobody has ever really read) the idea of them is quite daunting.

[Ruthiella]

Jason wrote: "Ruthiella wrote: "And no sooner had I decided than I changed my mind a..."

Read "To Kill a Mocking Bird" post-haste and then you can take cross it off. Unlike some of the other books on your list,..."

Finegans Wake!?!? I did read Ulysses, but did not enjoy it. That is what I am saying. "To Kill a Mocking Bird" may or may not live up to your expectations, but is actually "readable", just a plain, good story.

[Michael]

I really want to read Finnegans Wake but I'm scared

[Jana]

Michael wrote: "I really want to read Finnegans Wake but I'm scared"

Be afraid.
(I'm not helping am I?)

[Michael]

LOL, not at all

[Frankie]

I don't really have classics guilt, so much as classics insecurity. I really, really love getting references to things and when I realize that there's an allusion going on that I don't get, it bums me out. Plus, I do think there's something to the idea that you need a grounding in the basics to be able build into a deeper enjoyment of non-classics. It's like the Beatles- you kind of gotta know what they were about to get what was happening with rock music around/after their time.
That being said, I won't force myself to read a "great" book if it's not working for me. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was enough for me to know that I will never, ever read another novel-length Joyce (just say no, Michael!):)

[Jason]

Jason wrote: "Ruthiella wrote: "And no sooner had I decided than I changed my mind a..."

Read "To Kill a Mocking Bird" post-haste and then you can take cross it off. Unlike some of the other books on your list,..."

OK so I should probably at try to at least spell Finnegans Wake correctly but Joyce could learn to spell too from what I've seen. I think Nora Joyce put it best when she said "why don't you write books people can read?"

Michael, don't be scared - be baffled, be very baffled.

[Paula]

Hello! I'm a new listener and catching up on old podcasts -- loving it --thanks! Though having graduated with an English literature major, I'm often amazed with what I haven't read. Dickens is one I've been in short supply of. So a few years back I decided I would try to read one Dickens per winter. (I found myself somewhat bored by 'A Tale of Two Cities,' until it emotionally surprised me around the last quarter of it. I loved 'Nicholas Nickleby.') Also, I know you've mentioned Forster. Perhaps this comes from an American education, but I had never read him. So this has been my year of Forster. I've read so far some lectures, one short story, and three novels. I loved 'Howards End' soooo much that I think it will be on my list of favorite novels ever. And I know this is off topic, but.... you've mentioned your love of Daphne DuMaurier. I really enjoyed 'Rebecca,' but that all I've read of hers and you've convinced me that I absolutely must read 'My Cousin Rachel.' Have you read Justine Picardie's fictional account of her in 'Daphne?'