Big Read Poll

[altariel]

In a variation on the Big Read meme that's been going round, I thought I would do a poll. I've listed all the books which I have not read/completed, but which I have around the house. Your task is to indicate which one I should try to read/complete. Please tell me why in comments!

Obviously if you pick The Complete Works of Shakespeare I'll have to hunt you down.

[Poll #1215792]

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

*runs and hides*

[altariel.livejournal.com]

LOL!

THERE'S NOWHERE TO RUN!

[megthelegend.livejournal.com]

Dear God, woman, read something FUN instead!

::stares, horrified::

::goes back to rereading Trek: Catalyst of Sorrows::

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I went for The Color Purple because I remember enjoying it and suspect you might too, but also because if you don't it's not horrendously long and guilt inducing, and you won't have wasted too much of your life. Also, as far as I remember it has a happy endi--- but I must say no more!

I was tempted to say Cloud Atlas in the hope that you might tell me whether it was worth my reading it, but that would be an abuse.

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

Catch-22, just because I grew up with Milo Minderbinder, Major ___ de Coverley, ex-PFC Wintergreen et al as an indelible part of my mental furniture. Also it's a lot funnier than The Grapes of Wrath.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

It's owering how many of these I haven't read.

It's even more lowering how many I know I've read but can't recall a word of.

OTOH, I did rather enjoy Vanity Fair :)

[inamac.livejournal.com]

These are all on my 'not read' list too (except Shakespeare - and I'm working through the BBC collection in lieu of reading plays (if Shakespeare why not Wilde, Shaw, Pinter (now there's a quick read!) or Stoppard?). And most of them are on my 'never intend to read' list as well! If you must, I'd go for 'short' and 'funny' - hence Vanity Fair.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

I recommend Gone With the Wind, but if you don't have time to read the whole think, I can summarise it neatly for you:

Scarlett: I'm so popular and pretty!
Ashley: I'm so full of man-pain!
Rhett: I'm a rake!
*Everything gets blown up by WAR*
Scarlett: I'm so poor and hungry!
Ashley: I'm still full of man-pain, and now war-trauma also.
Rhett: I'm still a rake!
*Scarlett has two bad marriages
Scarlett: Shit! I love Rhett!
Ashley: Shit! My man-pain has robbed me of a happy life!
Rhett: Fuck this, I'm going back to Charleston.
Scarlett: Oh well, tomorrow is another day!

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I've read some Shakespeare at school, but other than that of the books on your list I've only read "Moby Dick" and "Vanity Fair", in both cases when I was a child and I suspect much too young to appreciate them. I suspect that I might like "Grapes of Wrath", but that's only a guess.

I support the person who suggested that you should read something that's fun rather than something that's worthy.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I've read, or tried to read, most of these. I'd go with Gone With the Wind. I found it enjoyable, though the dialect-ridden dialogue of the black characters made me grit my teeth.

Of the others:

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

I've read it. It bored me. It's a satire, but I didn't find it funny, nor was it startling that the army had all kinds of contradictory and ridiculous regulations. I'd give it a C. It's not bad, it's just not fun reading.

Complete Works of Shakespeare

Shakespeare is enjoyable (especially if you have a version with a lot of footnotese to translate what he's saying), but a little goes a long way. Don't try reading all of him at once. Read a play here, a few sonnets there. Grade: A.

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I got to the end of Book 2)

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

I never got deeply into either one, and I've tried multiple times. Go with his short stories. They're enjoyable and the stories are shorter.

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I like Dostoyevsky. However, you get SERIOUSLY emo characters with him. And his atheists are the ones who are the most obsessed with morality and Christianity. I don't know if you like that or not.

Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

Let's put it this way. I picked up the book, read a page, and went to sleep. I got up the next morning, read the first page over again plus a second page, and put it down. I picked it up again at lunch time and still couldn't remember what I'd written. The whole book is like that. After trying seven or eight times, I gave up.

On The Road - Jack Kerouac

The writer seems very proud of his knowledge of 1950s slang (which was current when he wrote this) as well as his drug use. He mentions drugs and uses slang on all occasions possible. As I'm not impressed by drug use and didn't speak the slanguage he was using, I quickly came to the conclusion that the book was overrated.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

If you want to read this, go here: the_white_whale. The whole book is posted in little manageable bites, along with discussion from the readers.

Ulysses - James Joyce (I read exactly one-seventh of this last year)

I had to read bits of this for an Irish Literature class. (We also had to read stories from Dubliners and all of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.) The class was as good as an inoculation against James Joyce.

Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Try reading it here:

ftp://opensource.nchc.org.tw/gutenberg/etext96/vfair12.txt

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

I just got this one out of the library. I'm not sure yet.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

Watch the movie first, then read the book. You'll have a better sense of the story.

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Good. Slow-paced at the beginning but it picks up. You won't like the eponymous Emma Bovary but you'll certainly understand why she cheats on her husband. However, it's really not light summer reading.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

LOL! I love that answer! (Although all I ever do is read things that are fun!)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Fabulous! (I feel as if can strike that one now!) I have seen the film, and I wonder, given the way I skim-read, whether I should challenge myself to get through the book in less time than it takes to watch the film.

[megthelegend.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm so glad you do. :) I read worthy things now and then but mostly I just wanna read FUN!

[tyellas.livejournal.com]

Then kill two birds with one stone and read Vanity Fair! It's one of my all-time favorites, as well as being one of the first novels to revel in deliberately awful characters.

But save several hours of your life and don't read The Grapes of Wrath. I couldn't finish it. I've walked out of one movie in my life, and put down two books. Grapes of Wrath was one of them, and Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban was the other.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, I adore Riddley Walker! What made you put it down?

(And what was the movie? My sole movie walkout was Daredevil.)

[kerravonsen]

Not the complete works, but reading some of the Bard's works would be good.
And if you hunt me down, that means you have to visit me first! 8-)

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

It can't be done. There's too much man-pain to wade through in the book.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I've skim-read an awful lot of fanfiction, though. That might count as training.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of them! Vanity Fair is doing pretty well.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Catch 22 because it's so blackly and surreally funny and I've read it three times since I bought it at 15.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Vanity Fair is indeed excellent. I might have gone for that, if it hadn't been for the length.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Those are really thoughtful reasons for picking it, thank you! I have it collected with her short stories in a single volume.

communicator, who is a good judge of these things, loves Cloud Atlas. I think it looks brilliant, but I've put off reading it because I'm afraid it's so technically brilliant I'll end up thinking, "Oh, there's just no point even trying..."

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Catch-22 is the perfect mix of funny and sad, a savage joke that builds and builds until it is quite heartbreaking.

[trixieleitz]

Yeah, just skip all the bits with Ashley in ;)

[gfk88.livejournal.com]

Grapes of Wrath (though I think East of Eden is better).

Or maybe Vanity Fair.

Cloud Atlas is kind of interesting but too modern - it's not a proper story like they wrote in the olden times.

Don't bother with War & Peace - it's as dull as ditchwater IMO