# Books Purchased but Never Read **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 11, 2001, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518 "2001-01-11T14:55:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/21 "2001-01-12T06:45:14Z")
_The Emperor’s New Mind_, by Roger Penrose _Dubliners_, by James Joyce _Gravity’s Rainbow_, by Thomas Pynchon _Lectures on Physics_ (v.2-3, read v.1), by Richard Feynmann I have, however, read _The Island of the Day Before_. I feel like such an outcast. –sublight. ---
**Author:** ![hazel-rah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hazel-rah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hazel-rah)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/22 "2001-01-12T07:53:33Z")
> [@](#): > > Another one here for Island of the Day Before … what is it with this book? I like Eco but I can’t seem to even pick this up (and I raced out and bought it hardcover when it came out, too). _raises hand_ the very book that came into my head when i saw the subject of the thread! if we keep it up, somebody should send umberto some kind of award- i’m sure he’d get a kick out of it. i read foucault’s pendulum two or three times a year, but island of the day before? can’t even hit the tenth page. also, le ton beau de marot by douglas hofstadter… i _should_ love this, but i can’t read it because i know his wife dies in the middle and for some reason that fills me with infinite sadness. i always end up going back to metamagical themas. -fh ---
**Author:** ![little\_me](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@little\_me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/little_me)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/23 "2001-01-12T08:30:39Z")
The Illustrated History of Africa ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/24 "2001-01-12T16:51:49Z")
Oh, I had a _plan_ for James Joyce. I got myself a set in (cheap) paperback, decided I’d start with _Dubliners_, then work up via _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ and _Ulysses_ until I was sufficiently into Joyce to tackle _Finnegans Wake_. Unfortunately, although _Dubliners_ is a great collection, it’s also a very depressing one… by the time I’d finished it, I didn’t have the heart to carry on. I’ve also got a copy of _War and Peace_. Every evening I come home and see that one standing unread on the bookshelf. Taunting me. Mocking me. I swear, I can hear it sniggering. ---
**Author:** ![scratch1300](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dfb087/32.png) [@scratch1300](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scratch1300)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/25 "2001-01-12T17:20:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by delphica \* > **Another one here for Island of the Day Before … what is it with this book? I like Eco but I can’t seem to even pick this up (and I raced out and bought it hardcover when it came out, too). Can anyone offer some motivation to get going on this?** The motivation is, Eco’s newest novel [_Baudolino_](http://www.TheModernWord.com/eco/eco_news.html#baudolino) is already out in Italy, and should see its English translation by the end of the year. For what it’s worth, I thought _The Island of the Day Before_ was great (I love Eco), but not his best. You know how it’s said that a book should have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Well, _Island_ had two out of three. Which isn’t bad (according to a song I heard), but I still rank _Foucault’s Pendulum_ as Eco’s best. I’ve been trying to read Butler’s _Analogy_. It was enormously influential in the nineteenth century, but to my modern sensibility it is as dry as dust. I haven’t even made it to the end of the first chapter. ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/26 "2001-01-12T17:23:14Z")
I picked up a version of The Cantebury Tales at a used book store for a quid. It turned out that spelling was all Old English which made it far too much work to enjoy. Also had a book on cosmology that I gave up on and sold. I thought it was one of the ‘popular science’ types, but it turned out to be a graduate level text. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/27 "2001-01-12T17:32:45Z")
“About Time” by Paul Davies. “The Demon-Haunted World” By Carl Sagan (On reccomendation by Uncle Cecil himself I might add. I’ll read it one day but i just cant get into it right now.) “The Lord of the Rings” (It’s one book in three parts, not a trilogy as commonly believed. Regardless, I loved the Hobbit but i couldnt get into this.) Too many more to list. ---
**Author:** ![tulip\_baroo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@tulip\_baroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tulip_baroo)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/28 "2001-01-12T19:28:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by bashere \* > \*\* > _The Satanic Verses_. I tried. I got at least 100 pages into the hardcover version. I know some one has read this book, but I don’t know who. > \*\* I’ve read it. But I didn’t like it as much as Midnight’s Children or The Moor’s Last Sigh. The Rushdie novel currently gathering dust on my bookshelf is The Ground Beneath Her Feet. I love his stuff, but I couldn’t get in to this one. I’ll have to try again some other time. Other books (just to name a few) I’ve either never started, or started and never finished: War and Peace Truth–Emile Zola Gargantua and Pantagruel–Rabelais Bleak House–Dickens Swann’s Way–Proust Focault’s Pendulum–Eco (Loved The Name of the Rose, can’t make a dent in this one. Tried–and failed–to read The Island of the Day Before, too) Rabbit, Run–Updike The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath–Lovecraft. Also a book of short stories by the same. The Late Mr. Shakespeare–Robert Nye The Bible ---
**Author:** ![sorrel554](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/91b2a8/32.png) [@sorrel554](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sorrel554)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2001, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/29 "2001-01-12T22:17:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by eponymous \* > \*\* > Infinite Jest by David (?) Wallace > \*\* Me too. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Asbestos\_Mango](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@The\_Asbestos\_Mango](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Asbestos_Mango)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2001, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/30 "2001-01-13T00:02:26Z")
_The City of God_ St. Augustine _The Zen Teachings of Jesus_ Kenneth S. Leong _The History of the Church_ Eusebius _The Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life_ The Theological-Historical Commission for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 _The Koran_ _The Thousand and One Nights, volume 1_ Then there are a couple of books that were given to me that I haven’t gotten around to yet. I tend to buy books three or four at a time, then go and buy another book or two before I’m finished with the ones I have. On the upside, being the voracious reader that I am, but not always having the money to buy books, I still have a small library of unread books to get me through the financial lean times. I was talking to my catechist, who is also always buying books that he doesn’t have time to read, and he told me, “You bought it for a reason. Who knows, someday you’ll need to read something that’s in one of those books that’s sitting on your shelf.” A sales clerk at my local Borders told me that buying more books than you have time to read is the sign of a true book lover. ---
**Author:** ![tisiphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tisiphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tisiphone)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2001, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518/31 "2001-01-13T00:53:14Z")
The only one I really feel guilty about is **The Mists of Avalon**. I like MZB a lot, and have been ashamed, especially since just about everybody else I know read it and loved it. But I just can’t get past the fourth or fifth chapter. I’ve started it five or six times, I get a few chapters in, and then I put it down in favor of something else. I wonder if I’m just burnt out on Arthurian stuff? Tisiphone [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-purchased-but-never-read/49518.md?page=1)