Books You Can't Quite Get Round To Reading

[AB Editor]

I have had the girl with the dragon tattoo on the "to read" pile since it was first published here, well before any of the hype of (last?) summer.

I still haven't read it. I just can't bring myself to. I don't know why particularly, many people who I trust recommend it.

What book do you seem to be completely unable to pick up and read?

[woofgang]

Ab Editor at least he wasn't such a pompous fool as CS Lewis.

[AB Editor]

"...at least he wasn't such a pompous fool as CS Lewis."

Why do you make that comparison particularly? I feel I should know, but am feeling a bit thick today...

I quite like a pompus fool, I like Ezra Pound very much. And T.S. Eliot - if not necessarily for their politics.

[boxtops]

I have a large pile of books beside my bed waiting to be read - not got round to, just still working on the current one. Amazon's just delivered another one... :-)

[woofgang]

Ab Editor "Why do you make that comparison particularly? I feel I should know, but am feeling a bit thick today... "

They were both Inklings, up at Oxford at the same time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inklings

I quite like the Narnia series, although reading them as an adult, the allegory is a bit like being continually hit over the head with a lumpy pillow; but I can't get past CS Lewis' statement

"Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him."
I mean What The Funicular????
http://www.episcopalnet.org/TRACTS/priestesses.html

and his science fiction is strange even for a strange genre at a strange time in its development...but the Screwtape Letters are pretty funny and worth a read I think.

Yes i like Ezra Pound and TS Elliot.
http://poetry.rapgenius.com/Ezra-pound-salutation-the-second-lyrics

[jno]

LOTR is probably more about WW1, in which Tolkein actually fought. He didn't want it read as an allegory but it must have been in the back of his own mind; that's how authors work.

Catch 22 had me from the first page. Captain Correlli's Mandolin put me off from the first page, and so did the last Le Carre I tried reading (I think it was The Honourable Schoolboy).

I did read Ulysses when I was young and had years ahead of me; War and Peace too.

[ummmm]

Gone with the wind.

[jno]

Popeye's Dairy, Steve.5? That'd leave me all at sea.

Tilly, don't believe the hype but don't disbelieve it either. I nearly didn't read Catch-22 because everyone told me I should, but they were right.

[woofgang]

Le Carre's books are so sad I enjoy his writing but can't bear the sadness, its so real. I can't do Stephen King either. He is another person who can write brilliantly but i find him too gruesome. I have read Gone with the Wind but not sure why I bothered.
Yes jno, I am sure that he did write (Tolkien) out of his own experience...I mean what else has any writer got? But I don't think it was deliberate or intended.

[woofgang]

tangentially again, Alec Guinness so nailed George Smiley IMO.

[AB Editor]

I wondered if it was that sort of stuff Woof.

I hope you've listened to Pound read his work at Pennsound? http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Pound.php

I really liked The Cantos - it's kind of everything, all at once.

You're probably right Jno, as usual :)

[yogasun]

Ab Editor Same as you . Also keep looking at Dragon..Tattoo but can't bring myself to read it. Ditto The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Rosetta I am reading Gift of Rain, OK but a bit slow I'm finding.
Also reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

[AB Editor]

"Ab Editor Same as you . Also keep looking at Dragon..Tattoo but can't bring myself to read it. Ditto The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath"

Oh, the Bell Jar is really good.

Nearly as tragic as her own life.

[yogasun]

OK Ed will give it a go then.

[woofgang]

Ab Editor "I really liked The Cantos - it's kind of everything, all at once."

best description I ever heard :)

[PhantomX]

Although I avidly bought each of the Iain M Banks books as they appeared, I have never got round to any of his other works, having read The Wasp Factory when it first came out, and not liking it very much.

[Arksided]

Well I'm not big on the 'classics' But about ten years ago when I moved Home I was halfway through Brave new world - Aldous Huxley, when it was boxed up. Everytime I threaten to re-read it from the beginning I end up picking something else.

[BAKERS DOZEN]

Just read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry whilst on holiday and loved it. I also read The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year and thought it was hilarious. The description of her husband trying to organise Christmas made me laugh out loud. Mr BD owns every single book by Terry Pratchett and loves them but as yet I have not tried even one of them. Got Vanity Fair as a book prize at school and have tried many times to read it but just cannot get into it.

[trapcistcarth]

In my case, it's the Bible, well, the collection of books called the Bible. Reading a book (or listening to) is a very personal experience. Someone earlier, mention age was a factor, which is very true. In my dotage I am re-reading children's books and enjoying it!

[islasmum]

I just can't get into the "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" or the rest of those books at all, and I can't read any of the Tom Sharpe "Wilt" books, despite family, OH and friends telling me how funny they were - they just left me cold. I've never been attracted to any Dickens novels, some of my favourite reads are the LOTR trilogy and have recently discovered Ian McEwan, I've just started "Atonement".