Books everybody has read except you

[Enya]

I've never read Gone with the Wind, I guess it's because of the movie, it made the story so well known that I just refused to read the book even if I usually read books after seeing the films which are based on them.:innocent:

 

[Wells83]

I've never read Gone with the Wind, I guess it's because of the movie, it made the story so well known that I just refused to read the book even if I usually read books after seeing the films which are based on them.:innocent:

The movie is wonderful but cannot compare to the book.

 

[bookworm fellow]

Today I tlked to a friend about books and she mentioned a few were I thought, that almost everybody I know has read this one or the other one or both - except me.

It got me thinking, I've never read 'Lord Of The Rings', the Harry Potter books or even a James Patterson book. It never occured to me to read 'The Kite Runner' or 'Water For Elephants'. The topics just weren't interesting enough for me and I usually don't expect much of authors who publish more then one book a year.

Sometimes people ask me why I am willingly missing those books and I always tell them that just because a book is on the NYT bestsellerlist it doesn't have to be good. I probably would be crucified to mention the word favoritism.

You're right, Sleepy. And the same can be applied to the classics. I think a book is not good only because it is a classic, just like you say it is not good only because everyone have read it. Actually, I think the chances of a classic book to be taken as good are the same as an ordinary's.

I'm reading The Magic Mountain, a classic of the German literature. I confess I expected more form it. Anyway, this opinion of mine should be taken more as an impression because I haven't read all the book. I'm still in the middle of the reading (page 502). The book is not bothering. But the plot is kind of static, I mean, most of the events in the narrative are not important as I'm used to see in commercial books as The Kite Runner and stuff alike. (I liked this Hosseini's piece).

I'd say the book (Magic Mountain) is good: not great neither bad. But this is not my final judgment. It may change when I reach the end of the second middle. And a recent event in the plot--which is “a little more important”--indicates it will get closer to great.

This is my first experience with German literature.

 

[Sleepy]

This is my first experience with German literature.

See, I'm German and couldn't say I've read a lot of German literature myself. Depending on ones own definition of literature I still think literature is the older stuff like for example "The Magic Mountain". I've read this book in German and lately in english and can only say, that the translation really sucks. I didn't like it at all. So after that I read the German edition again and liked it.
I wouldn't consider Thomas Mann as commercial though. ;-)

It's not the first time I noticed that German books translated in english really suck. (F. e. Frank Scha(e)tzing's The Swarm and especially Death and the Devil)
It just seems that the German language contains much more different words than the english one. I don't know if that's true but that's the impression I've got. Right now I'm waiting to get my fingers on a mystery by Sebastian Fitzek. He's a well know, relatively new (four published books so far) German author and his first translated book Therapy is going to be published in the beginning of August. I've got the German edition here and will compare it to the english edition. Kinda crazy, I know.

 

[bookworm fellow]

I wouldn't consider Thomas Mann as commercial though. ;-)

Sure. I didn't mean Thomas Mann's books are commercial. I may have expressed myself not clearly. He is not commercial, that's for sure.

By reading The Magic Mountain I have the impression that Mann enjoyed the writing. He did it with pleasure. It's interesting to read the philosophical discussions the protagonist have with other characters. Such speeches wouldn't appear in a commercial book because they don't seem to influence directly in the plot.

But this is a plot schedule that I never experimented. Even when reading Balzac I didn't see anything alike. And we can say Balzac wrote for pleasure too. In the beginning of his career he might have written something with financial concerns, but in the end he was so obsessed with the characters he had created that he was not caring much to money anymore. That's what I read in a biography.

I don't speak German so I'm reading the Portuguese translation of The Magic Mountain.

Anyway, as I said, it's impossible to “judge” a book before I finish reading it.

 

[Maryzz]

never read The Lord of the Rings Series. I will one day get around to it.

 

[Gilgamesh]

I read beginning of the Great Gatsby, and the ending, but not the middle. I was reading it for an English class.

I read The Old Man and the Sea for an English class and absolutely hated it. I'm sure Hemingway's novels are fine reading but there are plenty of other books I'd rather read.

And I hated reading Old Man and the Sea in H.S. Then I re-read it about a year ago. It was beautiful with serenity of vast sea surrounding you under the sizzling sun.

I'll probably re-ready the Great Gatsby and hopefully discover something good about it.

 

[jokewriter]

I'm sort of ashamed to say I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird.

Does that make me a bad person?!

 

[Bacherries]

Happy Potter of any kind . . .

 

[abecedarian]

I've not read LOTR either. I managed to struggle through The Hobbit three years ago and lost all drive to mess with Tolkien again. So many popular books just don't appeal for one reason or another, but at the same time, I don't mind reading an Oprah book if it interests me. Being on someone's list doesn't make or break the book for me. I find it amusing to 'discover' some terrific book that was rage 'then', but I was too busy to notice...but then, given the number of books published since Gutenberg invented the printing press, who could possibly keep up anyway:lol:

 

[chuephödli]

Concerning the Da Vinci Code, this thread should be Books everybody has managed to avoid except me.

I read it, and I still cannot believe I actually finished it.

Same about Fahrenheit 451. I read it, I even saw the movie (believe it or not, it is actually even more boring than the book). Why did I do it? I was young, I guess.

I successfully did not read The Kite Runner and Against the Day (I admit, I tried, though - Pynchon used to be one of my favorites).

 

[PeterPanfan]

Long list headed..

Any Jane Austen
Any Bronte Sisters
Any Dan Brown
Any Anne Rice
Any Charlies Dicons
Any William Shakespear
Any Tolstoy
Any Ray Bradbury