*Idea borrowed from Short Stack, the book blog from Washington Post.
Some books on my shelf that I have bought, but never read.
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
This is my list. What’s yours?
I got to read Anna Karenina and Catch 22 but cant remember much of Catch 22 anymore. Did you read Satanic Verses? I got to understand why the Moslems were mad at Rushdie for that book.
My embarassment may be worse than yours. Here goes:
1. Things Fall apart by Chinua Achebe (Though i read No Longer at Ease)
2. To Kill a Mocking Bird. (Was on my list for ever, yet was there at school – GHS)
3. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Embarassing because it was given to me as a present and i lost it before i could read it).
4. The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiongo (Lit book yet i never got to it).
5. Far from the Madding Crowd
U guys make me feel stupid. Like a mop.
get the gun, get the gun!….you told me you had read “to kill a mocking bird” and nearly got me to buy a copy…
hmm.
My book of embarrassment is Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’. I really liked ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. My list is loooonger but I can’t think right now
ok…my turn to confess..
.1 king leopold’s ghost – i started but…its gathering dust
.2 in the grip of grace – i read a page every 3months
.3 pickwick papers – bought it to find out what men do when they go on adventure..i now have a vague idea
.4 man in the mirror (Patrick Morley)
.5 The Principia (now you will confirm i am @#$!)
first i will ‘OMG!’ at your confession. whatwhatwhat? like you say.
Anna Karenina was lovely. To Kill A Mockingbird was splendid! I’d read those books again, and again. Catch 22 i read because of my father but will have to read it again because it just didn’t move me and i fear i missed the point.
hmmm… now my list.
1: Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
2: Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H.Lawrence
3: Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
4: Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
5: The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
amazingly am not embarassed about not reading many books except for not completing Lord of the rings , and not reading maya angelou’s heart of a woman, oh nd there is the art of war… that i wont bother with… how could i forget sidney’s doomsday conspiracy. aya, but ugandans, i was talking books with some one and tey had the guts to call sidney sheldon a ’she who writes really well’ and danielle steele ‘a he who writes like a woman!”
Banange it’s good to be back on the internets so I can comment on your blog.
I don’t have a list of books I own and haven’t read. I have a list of books I want to read but I don’t own yet. That includes all the books on your list. May I raid your bookshelf?
Gosh, books I am embarrased to say I have and never read???
1. A suitable boy ( my friend will kill me since I borrowed it 8 months ago)
2. The great railway bazaar (paul theroux)
3. The isles of oceana (paul theroux)
4. A bend in the river (VS.Naipul)
Books I keep saying I will go out and buy:
1. Asterix, the entire set ( Yes I had a geat childhood)
2. British Gulag
3. Long walk to freedom
4. A house for Mr. Biswas
@Dmx, stay away from The Great Railway Bazaar. Stay away. You won’t miss a thing. It’s like Dark Star Safari; you’ll love it if you are a colonial sympathizer, you hate it if you are african.
@dmx: you have alot of Paul Theroux books. A few pages of his Dark Star Safari were enough to put me off him. Its hard to read him as an african. Tumwi’s right.
I loved, loved, LOVED To Kill a Mockingbird, loathed Heart of Darkness, and couldn’t get past the first few pages of Midnight’s Children.
The following are on my bookshelf (some for YEARS) and I seriously doubt that I’ll ever read them:
Pride and Prejudice (I’ve read the first page about 25 times), King Leopold’s Ghost (I get annoyed in advance and can’t go to page 2); British Gulag (ditto), and some stupid book called Maasai Dreaming, a gift from Christmas 1994. I will never read it.
@punchO, get the abridged version of Pickwick Papers for your children and read it with them. They’ll love it. If first read a copy at the Nakasero Primary School library. Good stuff.
@Jaz, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a bore! I finished reading it because I saw the BBC series at my video library and wanted to read the book before being distracted by Sean Bean getting it on with some random actress on DVD.
@Lulu, Sydney Sheldon … I never liked those books.
@KC, Masaai Dreaming is like White Masaai and Out of Africa and Swahili for the Broken Hearted. The only way you can enjoy thoe books is if you have a thick skin and are willing to take the condensending attitudes towards Africa and the “oh, the good old days of colonialism and tea at the Ngong race course and puke puke.” Right now I am STRUGGLING through Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo for the same reason.
Too many! Dicken’s Great Expectations, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, Sons and Lovers, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of D’Ubervilles, Steinbeck’s The Long Valley, The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, etc. I don’t have a copy of Anna Karenina but I’ve read War and Peace.
Ditto to:
a) Anne Karenina
b) Heart of Darkness
c) Catch 22 [Is that not mine?]
Interestingly, I am investing in audio books right now so that the long commute to and from work is much more intelligent like …