After finishing VALIS and The Wordy Shipmates, I have decided to commit to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Huck Finn is yet another in a long list of books I'm playing twenty years of catchup with. I was supposed to read it in high school (and college) but didn't. Time to make like Dr. Sam Beckett and put right what once went wrong.
Maybe I need to write up a list for the blog of everything that qualifies for my little project here.
Just finished (for the first time) in the last few years
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming*
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?*
The Man in the High Castle*
On the shelf, waiting to be read
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Sea Wolf by Jack London
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon
*Was never actually assigned to me in high school or college, but it did sit on my shelf for 20+ years.
I would include the following as well, but I had a lousy college professor whose style of teaching ruined these for me:
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsen
I think the only books (or plays) I was assigned to read in high school that I actually read were Oedipus Rex, Animal Farm and Julius Caesar. Those all have something in common. Hint: they aren't exactly epics.
Yeah, I'm a fraud.
But I'm doing my best to make up for it.
I would criticize you for not reading half of our assigned works, because some of those were quite good, but I am reminded of the fact that I blew off Oliver Twist out of protest. (She replaced Wuthering Heights with it, and for some reason that irked me.)
ReplyDeleteI still got an A+ on the test.
Keep in mind, though, that I am still well read. I just didn't read that which was assigned. I think of it as a misguided attempt at teenage rebellion.
ReplyDeleteI read what was assigned and everything else that I could get my hands on in HS and college. Most teachers didn't like my interpretations of what I wrote or how badly I spelled but f**k'em if they can't take a joke.
ReplyDeleteI have only read about 1/2 the books on your lists. I will need to borrow a few after i finish the mountain of paperbacks by my bed and on my desk.
My library is always open to you, QD.
ReplyDelete