# Books you have on your shelf, taunting you to be read

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-have-on-your-shelf-taunting-you-to-be-read/624419>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [June 7, 2012, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-have-on-your-shelf-taunting-you-to-be-read/624419 "2012-06-07T19:38:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-have-on-your-shelf-taunting-you-to-be-read/624419/41 "2012-06-08T19:51:48Z")

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> [@yellowval](#):
>
> Another one that has been on my shelf and to-read list for a couple of years is The Terror by Dan Simmons. I am working on finally clearing out some long-standing members of my to-read list on Goodreads, and that is one that I hope to get read this year.

I loved _The Terror_, it was my favorite read of last year.

I loved it so much that I went out and bought a copy of his novel _Drood_, and now that one has been staring at me from the shelf. I’m hesitating over it because I haven’t actually read much Dickens and I’d never even heard of Wilkie Collins.

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**Author:** ![Syme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@Syme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syme)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2012, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-have-on-your-shelf-taunting-you-to-be-read/624419/42 "2012-06-12T05:09:10Z")

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> [@Politzania](#):
>
> According to my GoodReads account - I have 155 books on my MountToBeRead shelf - notable items/longest languishing include:
> 
> \*Infinite Jest \* - have heard many good things, but it’s such a brick of a book!
> 
> \*How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading \* Mortimer J. Adler … maybe if I read this, I’ll be better at whittling down Mount TBR…
> 
> \*Collected Fictions \* Jorge Luis Borges - I love his stuff, but this keeps getting overlooked…
> 
> \*A Short History of Nearly Everything \* - Bill Bryson - the mixed reviews keep me from picking this up, I think.

I am reading “Infinite Jest” about a third in. Anything by David Foster Wallace is a pleasure to read, and I mean anything: fiction or not, for instance those articles he wrote for Harpers Magazine are hilarious, insightful and .. depressing.

Jorge Luis Borges ? have read everything by him, in Spanish of course, but his poems. Actually I have read some of his poems and are quite good IMHO

There is always an excuse to put off what we really don’t want to do, but we think we ought to. Just don’t do it. Simple.

Moby Dick? a great book, read the Penguin edtion. Good footnotes and introduction. As all masterpieces, flawed. But some chapters are brilliant. Melville was ahead of his time, a precusor of modernists such as James Joyce.

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