Friday, March 15, 2013

The Friday Five

Five classics I have not read and never will.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (or any of her other books). Everyone, well, women mostly, seem to rave about Jane Austen. I'd never read any of her works so I thought I'd give it a try with a download of a free e-book. I barely got through a dozen or so pages before I had to give up. Talking heads is just not for me.

2. Moby Dick by Herman Mellville. I had to read this novel in college for a philosophy class. The final exam was a blue book essay on whether the white whale was evil incarnate or was he just being a whale. I made it halfway through the book before I couldn't take it anymore. Fortunately for me, a week or two before the final, the 1956 movie starring Gregory Peck and Richard Basehart was on. I watched the movie and passed the final. This is definitely a case where the movie is way better than the book.

3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy makes an excellent doorstop or paperweight.

4. War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. I really wanted to like this book. My dad had told me he had listened to Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radio production Halloween 1938 that caused a panic. (Dad was 19 years old) The 1953 movie with Gene Barry is one of my favorite go to movies. Books are usually so much better than the movie, but the pace of this book was so slow, I didn't get very far.

5. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien.  I really wanted to love this book. I loved The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Read that through 3 times (long before the movies). But The Silmarillion?  One word: boring.

Have you read these novels? Did you like them? What did I miss?

2 comments:

  1. I hang my head in shame as I admit I haven’t read them either (and have no intention of doing so.) I don’t know what we’ve missed but I suspect not a whole lot!

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  2. Reading any book should always be a pleasure, never a chore. I decided the books I would never read, or finish were simply there for other people to enjoy and I need not worry about their content! Life's too short to read about stuffing mushrooms ;)

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