Regallag, you’re too kind to the man. I had to read most of Walden in my junior year of high school, and it was torturous. He rambles for 200 pages. Okay, he makes some decent points about society. So, write those down and forget about the rest. The whole book could have been written in a 5 page essay and spared countless high school students the pain of reading it. If, for some strange reason, you find yourself reading 1977 issues of Glyph, look for Walter Benn Michaels’ article “Walden’s False Bottoms.” In it is a concise summary of why Walden sucks, plus quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson – Thoreau’s close friend – explaining that (paraphrasing here) that Thoreau has a knack for using just the wrong word, and that reading his writing made him sick.
My family and I decided to do pretty much the same thing, except we compiled a list of 100 books and are reading through them, book-club format, 2 every 6 weeks.
We just read Dorian Gray recently and all liked it. Same for Great Expectations - I can’t wait to read more Dickens. Dumas rocks, but I found The Last of the Mohicans to be a bad adventure story - THAT one was longwinded.
The rest are, I think, on our list but not yet read.
As mentioned above, different strokes for different folks. I like some of the list, but certainly not all. Silas Marner and The Scarlet Letter are on the don’t care for side.
You don’t have to care for them, but don’t say “toss them out,” to a potential reader. Let him decide for himself.
Answer in your pit thread.
He can decide for himself. It’s a suggestion, not a command.
Regarding Dorian Gray, I was somewhat surprised (and creeped out) by the fact that the title character was only about 38. The various film adaptations always seemed to assume he was closer to 150.
Read Atlas Shrugged but go for coffee when you reach the “This is John Galt Speaking” section.
One thing I’ve noticed, my tastes change over time. I’ve hated some books with such burning passion, I’m surprised the pages weren’t singed around the edges when I was through. Others I’ve loved so much it broke my heart to read the last page. I adored Anne of Green Gables and read every book in the series at least twice, and I wasn’t a kid when I read them either. A few years later, it’s like somebody else read and loved those books. They’re nice little books, but I could never enjoy them half as much now, if I could even be persuaded to try them.
Sometimes classics are classics because they were the first of their kind, innovative or daring or some such and now fall flat for many readers. The Scarlett Letter is perhaps one of those. In high school I read it and thought ‘big whoop, it’s not as though you don’t see something like this every other night of the week on Lifetime.’ A little more education and a lot more reading and I can see that there was more to the story than I first grasped and it was pretty darned fierce for it’s time, as well. Some books you can’t appreciate until you realize what had or hadn’t, come before it.
Since books don’t exactly spoil with age, I say give a book a try and come back to it in a year or so if it doesn’t engage you upon your first attempt. If I’d just tossed out Innocents Abroad, I’d have missed out on some sly fun. Sometimes audio books help a lot.
I hated Great Expectations, and the second time I went in with the preconceived notion of hating it, knew what was coming around every bend, and hated it even more. The third time I was required to read it, however, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I’ve also read Sherlock Holmes from that list.
…other than that, I’ve got nothing. I’ll admit to giving most of those a pass because they were written in the 19th century. Most 19th-C. literature drives me up a wall, because often the characters are constrained by social norms which I would violate in a heartbeat for
(a) True Love
(b) Saving someone’s Honor
(c) Revealing a rich person to be a Total Prick
(d) Five Hundred Pounds a year.
Maybe I need to give them another shot, though. Anyhow, if you find that several of these don’t ring your bell, I urge you to keep trying new ones, and also intersperse them with 20th-C. literature.
Except for Burroughs’ Naked Lunch which was drug-addled stream-of-consciousness crap. How many times can you throw a man out a window with his neck in a noose while he’s masturbating? Unless you’re dying to know, throw that one out. 
It’s not on your list, but check out Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh. I’ve read it several times over the years and gotten more out of it each time. But I had a friend who had to read it in high school and she loathed it.
Read in high school: Moby Dick – some good stuff but one hell of a slog. Walden – hated it, the whole class hated it, we thought he was a pretentious prick. I forget which of Dickens’ novels we had to read, but he at least could tell a story.
I’ve rarely–maybe never–been sorry I read a book, even if I had to drag myself through it letter-by-letter. This is even true of Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie) although talk about a slog–I sure wish he’d been a better writer.
I would suggest to the OP, if you cannot force yourself through the book now, why give yourself a time limit? Maybe try Dorian Gray five years down the road.
You might want to skip Moby Dick if you object to homoeroticism and self-indulgence…
Huh. I just started reading The Fountainhead today and I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit. Not that it’s good writing or anything but because it’s every bit as swoony as the movie.
Disagree that the book’s not worth reading, but agree that the Hatfield/Sanders version is superb. I always thought that a remake with Jude Law would have been a natural but Jude’s getting a little old now. There’s a version in the works with the almost-but-not-quite talent-free Ryan Phillipe in the works. The CGI on the painting might be interesting.
They don’t do much with Dorian’s picture, but this version is good for a laugh if you catch it on cable some rainy afternoon (and it features a BtVS alum).
I just tried (and failed) to listen to The Count of Monte Cristo as an audiobook. I’ll spoiler my reasons in case you want to try it yourself:
Either I kept missing the transitions, or they just weren’t there. I’d be listening to the story, under the impression that he’d been in jail for about a month, then he’d say something that made me suddenly realize he’s been in there for years. Another time, I thought he’d just been released from jail, and he mentioned that he’d had a particular servant for ten years. The jail time was also told so quickly that I got no real sense of great time passing.
I’m also supposed to believe that while he was in jail, he moved freely about through this secret passage without even coming close to getting caught. Never in all this long period did the jailer show up unscheduled.
Then he gets out. As a result of his “education” by his fellow prisoner, he is now almost completely omniscient. He’s also unbelievably wealthy, thanks to the same guy. And he wants to seek revenge! Seems to me going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Then he goes through this moronically convoluted plan to reward the guy who tried to get him out of jail. The guy was literally seconds away from blowing his head off by the time the money came through. Gee, it’s a good thing there were no unexpected delays!
Another annoyance was that everyone’s name changed in the middle of the book. Okay, this guy’s name used to be so-and-so, but he got rich while you were in jail and now he calls himself such-and-such.
The story itself held my interest, but eventually too many things piled up and I just couldn’t suspend the weight of disbelief anymore.
If you don’t like TPoDG because you don’t think it’s getting to the point fast enough, then scratch off any Charles Dickens novel. Oh and don’t read Moby Dick unless you just skip the endless chapters on sail mending and such.
How far into TPoDG are you? Has Dorian started seeing that woman?
You mean the actress? Yeah, well past that. He’s just hidden the picture in his attic because he’s seen the changes.
BTW, it’s not the homoeroticism that bothers me. Knowing Wilde’s inclination, it’s not surprising in the least. But the long winded heart on his sleeve confessions of the artist for his muse… ugh… I just don’t have the strength to keep reading these angst riddled unrequinted obsessions.
I must admit, there are gems sprinkled sparsely throughout the book. Mostly they come from Henry, the cynical manipulative bastard. Actually, he’s the only likeable character in the book so far. However they are few and far between and typically contained in the briefest and most to the point sentences.
Off to Cafe Society.
I will second this statement. For myself, I realized that given how fast I read and what books I like to read I will probably only read another 500 books in my lifetime. tops. Some of those readings will be repeats of books I found important or enjoyable… So why waste your precious reading time with crap.
Crap like Dorian Gray. That book is fucking dull. Last night I was trying to read Francis Schaeffer’s Escape From Reason. I got about 20 pages in and realized that I was the title character and stopped. Which, is similiar to my “The Idiot” experience.
I think you’ll find that Treasure Island is an excellent book. I enjoyed it emmensely and as I read it to my 12 year old step son he said it was as good as Lord of The Rings.
Sherlock Holmes should be required for all humans, I re-read those stories at least once per year.
I loved Picture of Dorian Gray. I still can remember the day I picked it up and first read it, at the High Street Hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland, in early May, 1996. Very few books come into my life that can trigger such a strong emotional memory in me. I’ve always loved this quote:
“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
Why, Jurph, don’t you realize that if it became known that you had accepted your manservant’s invitation to his wedding and were thus seen imbibing and (gasp) laughing in the presence of the lower classes, your Gentleman’s Club would have no choice but to regretfully blackball you from their annual twelfth night wassailing & foxhunt social? If you had even a shred of honour, the very idea would make you instantly die of shame!
Only thing I would add is Bullfinch’s Mythology…