2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 1 book toward her goal of 285 books.
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2023 Reading Challenge

2023 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 5 books toward her goal of 265 books.
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Top Ten Lists: Books I Should Read but Just Cannot Finish

Welcome to yet another Book Review Tuesday! Today we are again featuring a combo book review/top ten list – with a twist. I like the twist, have you noticed? (teehee) So here it is – a book review/top ten list that is composed entirely of books that I have not read. You read that right. I have not read a single one of these. I have tried. Multiple times. For each book. But have never been able to get through any of them. This is despite their classic status and despite the fact that I have picked each of them up any number of times.

Now I know I am going to take some grief for many of these. For example, I have already exchanged thoughts with Man of la Book on Don Quixote – he loves it and thinks it is one of the classics that shouldn’t be missed; I love the story/concept and have seen and loved movie/musical versions but have never been able to get into the actual reading. (This is a great blog, by the way, with a ton of very interesting book reviews and insightful comments/thoughts, and worth checking out.) I have more than a few dedicated Shakespeare fan-friends who will be shocked and appalled that Hamlet made it onto the list. While I love that story too (again, with plays and movie versions being high on my list of fun things to watch) I do not enjoy reading plays very often and find Shakespearean English much easier to listen to and translate/understand than to read. An American Tragedy was recommended to me by my best friend years ago; I have never been able to see what she does in it, despite repeated attempts for no other reason than that she recommended it. Dickens is usually one of my favorites; Dickens on lawyers should be doubly appealing. But cheese and rice, this one is virtually incomprehensible to me (which, by the way, is how I’ve always explained Woolf and Vonnegut to anyone that asked).

So here you have it, my list of the ten most significant books that I know I should read but simply cannot get through… If you know if a translation and/or trick to reading any of them, please share – I haven’t given up on them just yet. I continue to hold out hope that one day I will find the right version and be in the right mood and finally be able to cross them off my “to read” list – but that day has yet to come…

Top 10 Books I Should Read but Just Cannot Finish (I have tried, I swear, and multiple times generally)

1. Moby Dick (Oxford World’s Classics) – Herman Melville
2. Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition – Joseph Heller
3. Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel – Kurt Vonnegut
4. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
5. Bleak House (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) – Charles Dickens
6. Holy Bible-Contemporary English Version
7. An American Tragedy (Signet Classics) – Theodore Dreiser
8. Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare) – William Shakespeare
9. Don Quixote de la Mancha (Oxford World’s Classics) – Miguel Cervantes
10. Robinson Crusoe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (B&N Classics) – Daniel Defoe

14 comments to Top Ten Lists: Books I Should Read but Just Cannot Finish

  • Brian Castner

    It is instructive that three books I would consider my most formative and influential (Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5 and Hamlet) you can’t get through. You won’t like much of what I write either!

    • Bah – everyone is formed/informed by different things and styles, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t also able to appreciate others. I have read a number of your columns and find your style quite readable – as will be our Aunt Ruth bestseller… I am looking forward to the comments on this post – I have a feeling you are going to be in pretty good company as far as people who like/love the books I have never been able to finish!

  • Deanna

    Jill, I too can’t finish To the Lighthouse and Moby Dick. I could also add One Hundred Years of Solitude and War and Peace to the list of books I should probably read but just can’t! Here’s my Hamlet tip: try to read it while you LISTEN to Kenneth Branaugh’s(sp?) film version of it (that counts as reading, right?). It’s almost word for word the entire play. Doing that made me fall in love with the language, and now I can read/teach it over and over again and never get bored.

    • Deanna, I never even thought of that – I LOVE Kenneth Branagh and that would definitely help! I should do Henry V that way too – I could listen to him do the St. Crispin’s Day speech forever… And 100 Years (or Love in the Time of Cholera for that matter) is another great book for this list. I like the Russians generally, altho have to be in the right frame of mind to read them, since they take twice as long to read, what with all the annotations and footnotes! Thanks for visiting the site and commenting!!

  • Some would be on my list too – DQ – I actually read part one which is over 450 pages – but when I looked at part two, another 450 pages, I thought, yeah, I like this book but I want a break from it. Too bad I never got back to it. Good post – like the honesty. Many (myself included) might be too proud to create such a list.

    • Thanks KJ – I figure, there are only so many hours in a day and a million books published all the time, so I cut myself slack when I can’t finish one now and again! I checked out your site and am looking forward to reading more about your book and journey to publication (congrats on that, btw!) – here’s hoping I can glean something useful and snag my own publisher one day!!

  • Mel

    Wow lots of those would be on my list as well, except of course, Hamlet. I currently have MacBeth sitting on my shelf, something I have read several times over along with Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Love those!
    I also cannot and will not finish books such as Homer’s Odyssey and the Illiad. I’ve tried lots of times to read those. I’m sure there are lots of other books I would have to put down but can’t think of them at the moment. Great post!

    • Thanks for your comment Mel – I’m going to have to give Hamlet a try again, based on all the feedback I’ve gotten! I’m thinking that reading while listening/watching, as Deanna advised above, may be a good way to start… I actually liked the Iliad & Odyssey – then again, I was a philosophy major and have a resultant bizarre attachment to the Greeks! 🙂

  • I love Hamlet! Did you try to watch it? I think anything by Shakespeare should be watched first then read or maybe right along with it? It always seems to help me when I read Shakespeare to see it since he tends to give all of his characters long speeches that seem to talk about nothing but are meaningful once youf figure it out.

    I have plenty of books that I’ve started but didn’t finish. Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr, any other book by H.G. Wells that isn’t Invisible Man, and The Hollow by Jessica Verday. I really tried my hardest to read the H.G. Wells novels but I couldn’t get past them. I fell asleep in The War of the Worlds then other ones I don’t even remember. Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr just swicthed characters on me so I didn’t like that. The Hollow had kinda a boring set up but loved the setting.
    So I defintely understand trying to read then reread something. It’s worth a shot sometimes.

    • Thanks for your comment Larissa – I have watched several versions of Hamlet and enjoyed them as well as a number of other of Shakespeare’s greatest hits (most notably MacBeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Romeo & Juliet), but just have never been able to get into the reading… As I said above tho, I may have to try revisiting – seems from all the comments like I’m missing out, and I wouldn’t want that, now would I??

      I have also tried several HG Wells and can’t seem to get into them either. I liked Ink Exchange and its sequel; haven’t been able to read the third tho… And I don’t know The Hollow, but am now curious!

  • I’m with you on # 7 and # 5
    I’m following you on google and Networkedblogs

  • Thanks for the comment Lupdilup – and for following!

  • Che

    I read all of 5 pages of To the Lighthouse and then realized that it probably wasn’t the best way to deal with postpartum depression 🙂 I really wanted to read Catch 22 but there just never seems to be a good time to pick it up.

  • Teehee – I hear you Che… I’ve done that a few times, picked up EXACTLY the wrong book at the wrong time! I’m not always smart enough to put it down tho, and have occasionally wound up in a mood spiral as a result – then I have to go to a stand-by book to snap me back!

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