In my last post, I talked about the books I hadn’t read either because it was difficult to get hold of them or because they were not available in a language I can readily read. There used to be a dinner party game – it may well still exist – where you had to name a famous book that you had not read. People would trot out Ulysses, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, all the usual suspects. Many people are actually quite proud that they have not read any of these. I have to admit that I have read all of these and, as far as I can tell, all the standard 19th century novels in the Western Canon and beyond. I have a list on my site of the ones I like. I must admit that I have not read all the novels in Harold Bloom‘s list (Anatole France!) but I have read most of them, though I don’t think that I would agree with his list. However, were I to attend one of these dinner parties, there is only one omission I can think of that I would admit to and that is To Kill a Mockingbird. It is both popular and considered a classic but I have not read it. I have seen the film and while, it is not a bad film, it is the film that put me off reading the book. It seems so earnest and self-righteous, really not my kind of book. But I will probably read it one day. Of course, talking about books you have not read has now been sanctified.
As the world now knows, Mo Yan won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. I have to admit that I have not read anything by Mo Yan, though I do own a few of his books and will get round to reading him sometime. I do often find that the Nobel Prize winner is announced and I find that I have not read any of the winner’s works. I had read much of Naipaul, Doris Lessing and Vargas Llosa but I only read Coetzee, Jelinek, Le Clézio and Pamuk after they won and I still haven’t read any Herta Müller (but I will do).
One of the many problems in trying to do an all-encompassing literary website is that friends do make suggestions. I do welcome these but there are occasions when I think to myself that either I had not thought about including that writer (but should have done) or had thought about the writer but did not think him/her appropriate to include. Various female friends have made suggestions about women writers I really should read and they are quite right, as the number of women writers on my site is pitifully low (subject of a future blog post). (If you are wondering who the writers are in the photo, they are, top row, Kathy Acker and Virginia Woolf, second row, Chiew-Siah Tei and Fausta Cialente, third row, Anita Desai and Joyce Carol Oates).
The problem is that I have a huge list – and I mean a huge list – of books I haven’t read and really ought to read. These include all the obvious ones (and, by obvious ones, I mean that while they may not be obvious to British or US readers, they are obvious to readers of other countries) but also the obscurities that I think should get some exposure and, of course, those from lesser-known countries (coming up in the not too distant future, novels from Moldova, Timor-Leste, Azerbaijan and Kosovo). Of course, I browse through the web every day, looking at blogs, websites, online magazines and the like and every day I found something else I really ought to read. I moved three years ago and, at the (firm) request of my significant other (as the new house was much smaller) I got rid of around 7000 books, about half of my stock. I was left with around 7000, most of which are fiction. Since then, of course, I have added many more (far too many), not helped by the fact that I have acquired a Kindle and added ebooks as well. Determining whether I should read (or re-read) that great French novelist before that great Bolivian one is not always an easy decision. Every time I look at my library (or the database I have of all my books), I groan at the books I haven’t read and really should read but know I won’t get round to for a while, if ever. I have a sweatshirt that reads So Many Books, So Little Time (mine is blue). How true! Even writing this post is distressing and I dare not, once again, check my books to determine the hundreds, possibly thousands of books I really should now be reading. So I am now going to return to reading my fascinating Spanish novel and then I will read either the new (in English translation) Pamuk or an Argentinian novel and then… Do others have this problem?
The answer to your first caption question is “yes”.
The dinner party game (“Humiliations”) features in an episode in a David Lodge novel. I wonder how often it was played before that novel came out. Maybe Lodge made it up.
Your last question seems like an inevitable result of mortality and the nature of time.
Tom,
Thanks. As a regular visitor to your blog, I should have guessed you might read Anatole France. I am glad someone does. I read the Ile des Pingouins at school and found it dull. As it is in print (and free for the Kindle in both English and French), obviously someone does. Thanks for letting me know about the origin of the dinner party game. It may well have existed well before. As for mortality, like many, I want to try and deny it.
Hi Tom,
Just discovered your blog, congratulations.
I’ve just started my own reading-round-the-world challenge (and will start a blog soon – I’ll let you know).
After scouring every bookshop I passed in Romania not a single one could offer me a novel translated into English. I finally ended up with Herta Müller’s “Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet” in German which apparently HAS been translated as The Appointment. It was a great journey into the spooky, surreal world of Ceausescu’s Romania.