62% Person of lie about having read classic books

[Grip]

Haven't read Crime and Punishment nor Pride and Prejudice, its on my to-do list..

[Sixshells]

Cryptile's Classics:

The Left Hand of Darkness - LeGuin -- Begun but not finished. I read several short stories, notably two of her short stories collections, Four Ways To Forgiveness and The Birthday of the World and Other Stories. I had also begun Tehanu and The Lathe of Heaven but not finished

Ringworld - Niven -- No, on my to read list

Time Enough For Love - Heinlein -- No. Begun Starship Troopers (because of the movie) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (because I wanted to see one of John Varley's inspirations) but in both cases couldn't get into it.

The Space Merchants - Pohl & Kornbluth -- No (tried it but fell right off my hands)

The Demolished Man - Bester -- No

Stormbringer - Moorcock -- No

The Book of the New Sun - Wolfe -- No

Foundation - Asimov -- No (fell off my hands too). I read some of his Azazeal short stories as well as the beginning of his robot series: I, Robot, The Rest of the Robots, The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun

The Martian Chronicles - Bradbury -- Begun, not finished

Dune - Herbert -- Yes, but only the first

Ender's Game - Card -- Yes, and Speaker For the Dead and Xenocide too

Hyperion - Simmons -- God no

LOTR - Tolkien -- Yes

That's a very personal choice for sure I think.

Haha no, it is not. It's a really fun, subtle critique of what it meant to be an upper class woman in 18th century England. It may be a lot of things, but "inane" is not one of them. Austen even declares it on the very first line of the novel, so you have to be quite blind to not see the sarcasm in the statement.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Since women aren't allowed to actually *do* anything useful even though they are described as Lizzy is (i.e. as pretty clever and as a person with integrity), then they are stuck in a bind of having to marry for money and station. This is what the novel is really about, especially since we see the marriages of Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas, and Lydia to Mr Wickham as examples of when this goes really badly wrong. Not to mention Mr and Mrs Bennett themselves. Even if their interactions are hilarious, it is quite obvious their marriage is far from an ideal one.

So to all you P&P haters, stop slagging off this nifty work of early feminist critique.

Austin gives a great depiction of what it means to live in that society, and that depiction is often done with humour and with. It is also deeply cynical and sarcastic at times. But in the end, Austen's novels are by no means radical. They all revolve around the characters learning to be in the place can be made for them in society. While some of the flaws of society are noted and criticised, consideration of alternatives is out of the picture. Often those flaws are features that have to be borne until the reward for good behaviour (finding a good position, by marrying well for example) is obtained. On the contrary, those who failed to manage to find a way to conform to society's expectations are punished while the heroines are rewarded for finally behaving properly, but are mocked while they still are in the process of learning what that is. It's an early version of the Disney Princess really.

There are germs of proto-feminist critique somewhere in there, when considering the history of feminist thought and discourse, but it's still very little and should not be blown out of proportion. On the contrary, her novels also have a very strong conservative streak, and the romance novels they inspired often have as well.

[Jazzer32]

i have personally started all of them, but a lot of classic literature is fucking shit. especially crime and punishment, i know so many people who have started and ditched that book.

I couldn't agree more. I had to read that awful book in my high school. Actually book starts surprisingly interesting (with guy killing an old lady with an axe), but then its 300+ pages of total boredom (him feeling guilt about it). and I dont understand why do people have to lie that they read it? I think they should be proud not to read it. They should shout : "Im not an idiot who spent days and days torturing myself".

[Bearbert Dondarrion]

I couldn't agree more. I had to read that awful book in my high school. Actually book starts surprisingly interesting (with guy killing an old lady with an axe), but then its 300+ pages of total boredom (him feeling guilt about it). and I dont understand why do people have to lie that they read it? I think they should be proud not to read it. They should shout : "Im not an idiot who spent days and days torturing myself".

That book is brilliant.

[Clueless Northman]

Never had any problem with Crime and Punishment - or the Demons.

On the other hand, I freely admit the first third/half of the Brothers Karamazov is tough. Not sure if it's because I have a shitty translation - and weirdly I don't have the same edition for vol. 1 and 2, so the 2nd half is from another translator -, or because the characters are just atrocious, unrelatable to, and highly despicable (pretty much everyone who actually talks). Still, the bottom-line is that I was really rooting for someone, anyone, to just kill the bastard Karamazov father, hopefully in some gruesome and painful way.

Actually took me a 2nd attempt to finish the book; 1st time, 5 years earlier, I stopped after 40% of it - though in fact that was also because I went on vacation and bought a small uninspiring book of some pityful sub-genre, called Game of Thrones, and basically went on to read the rest of the series when I came back from vacation, and it was kind of hard to go back right in the middle of the Karamzov Bros. more than 3 months later.

[mankytoes]

I'm not alone then on that book, different times though I'd still not have read it.

I've read 1984 twice, not the greatest read as the protagonist being middle class is a severe weakness but Orwell says himself there is hope in the proletariat, if we ditch the class rubbish there's hope in the freeborn. It's an interesting book as some people who think they've understood it that "we're fine" that it is merely an attack on oppressive communist regimes hasn't understood what the book is criticizing: oppressive communism that defines 'modern civilization' one example being a conservative twat I heard tell someone once "But he's your prime minister like it or not" Like it or not! that bollockhead! lol. Don't tell me who is my anything, don't delude yourself that you actually own anything, all your arrogance brings about war as it always does as you abuse people to attempt to grandiose the object that you make yourself and have the arrogance to extend that control freakery towards others. Where once I'd have believed in freewill for all people, maybe they are object type people.

Lord of the Rings: started will almost certainly read all the way through one day.

Passage to India: own unread.

It's interesting you say we should "ditch the class rubbish", but the protagonist can't be middle class. The British socialist tradition is pretty middle class.

Do many people see it as just about communism? Animal Farm is a pretty dead on critique of Stalin, which hampers its relevance. 1984 is a much more broad point about totalitarianism.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Do many people see it as just about communism? Animal Farm is a pretty dead on critique of Stalin, which hampers its relevance. 1984 is a much more broad point about totalitarianism.

The ideology of the Party is to stay in power, nothing more. As such, it couldn't care less about socialism/capitalism/economics, but is instead focussed entirely on managing the way the people think. Hence Orwell's analysis of the power of language.

[Plessiez]

No Mervyn Peake or Arthur C. Clarke? Heathen!

My first attempt at a list of "classic" SF has both those authors (but still seems a bit science fiction heavy...).

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

Use Of Weapons (Ian M. Banks)

The Demolished Man (Alfred Bester)

Rendezvous With Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)

Neuromancer (William Gibson)

The Forever War (Joe Haldeman)

Dune (Frank Herbert)

The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)

A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller Jr)

Gormenghast (Mervyn Peake)

The Child Garden (Geoff Ryman)

Book of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe)

(And at least I've managed to read all of these..)

I've read 1984 twice, not the greatest read as the protagonist being middle class is a severe weakness but Orwell says himself there is hope in the proletariat, if we ditch the class rubbish there's hope in the freeborn.

But Orwell himself doesn't say that. Winston Smith says "if there is hope, it lies in the proles", but ... well, there isn't much hope in 1984. (Although some people have argued that the fact the afterword about Newspeak is written in the past tense is a clue that the Ingsoc regime doesn't last. Or even that, based on the text, it's quite possible Ingsoc only rules "Airstrip One" and is just lying about the outside world. Don't think there's much evidence for either position though.)

Orwell himself was solidly middle-class (certainly much more so than Winston Smith is), and was a ILP member who hoped the Labour Party would soon win a general election. I don't think he seriously thought proletkult was the solution to Stalinism.

On the other hand, I freely admit the first third/half of the Brothers Karamazov is tough. Not sure if it's because I have a shitty translation - and weirdly I don't have the same edition for vol. 1 and 2, so the 2nd half is from another translator

Do you know which translation(s) you have? (I remember finding Brothers Karamazov difficult to read myself, but it might not have helped that I read most of it during my first year of university while sitting in a laundrette early in the morning...)

It's weird that tho that when it comes to the classics, people have such different relationships to the novels. Personally I find it odd that people can't see the humour in works like Catch 22, Pride & Prejudice and Candide, for instance (all three novels I love because I find them humorous) but then I am absolutely certain there are novels other people find similarly amazing, and I just can't see it.

The "classic" novel I've always struggled with is Moby-Dick. I've owned a copy since 2007, I've started it multiple times, and yet I don't think I've ever managed to get more than a third of the way through. (There are only so many digressions to the effect that blue whales are almost certainly fictional or that, while whales might technically be mammals, they're really better thought of as a type of big fish, that I can take from one book.)

(I've also singularly failed to finish Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook on two occasions, but I've "only" owned a copy of that for a couple of years.)

(ETA: Winston Smith, even. The protagonist of 1984 probably never played for West Ham ...)

[The Marquis de Leech]

Do many people see it as just about communism? Animal Farm is a pretty dead on critique of Stalin, which hampers its relevance. 1984 is a much more broad point about totalitarianism.

Incidentally, as Orwell himself was radical left (far to the left of any modern mainstream politician), I do wonder whether the fact that his work has been used to straw-man socialist ideology for over half a century (i.e. socialism = communism) would have irritated him,

[Plessiez]

Hence Orwell's analysis of the power of language.

It's probably because I've read too much Language Log over the past few years (this piece or this piece, for instance), but it's really hard to take Orwell's analysis of language that seriously. Even if it could be established as the official language (which I doubt), Newspeak simply wouldn't work as O'Brien claims it would. Big Brother would stay in power because of the persistent surveillance state and the lack of any surviving social basis for organised internal resistance to it; not because people lacked the grammar to say something like "Ingsoc doubleplusungood".

As a warning about totalitarianism in general (and Stalinism in particular) 1984 deserves to be a classic. As a science fiction story about language, it's pretty badly dated.

I do wonder whether the fact that his work has been used to straw-man socialist ideology for over half a century (i.e. socialism = communism) would have irritated him,

The fact that "Orwellian" is used to mean "similar to things Orwell really hated" would presumably be pretty irritating too. (Although he'd be in good company with Dickens, I suppose.)

[Pallantides]

1984 by George Orwell - Yes, I enjoyed it immensely. I've also read Animal Farm.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - Yes, but only because I had to. I wish I hadn't.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - No, although I did read the Cliff Notes.

Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger - Yes. It wasn't that bad either.

A Passage to India by E M Forster - Never even heard of it, but I'll probably make an attempt now that I know about it. Seems interesting at least.

Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien - Yes, multiple times. Probably my favourite out of everything on this list.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee - Yes, multiple times. Really enjoyed it.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Nope. Would like to read it one day though.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - No, although I've read Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - Yes, and while initially I wasn't keen on it, it grew on me and now I find it to be quite good.

[Shryke]

Austin gives a great depiction of what it means to live in that society, and that depiction is often done with humour and with. It is also deeply cynical and sarcastic at times. But in the end, Austen's novels are by no means radical. They all revolve around the characters learning to be in the place can be made for them in society. While some of the flaws of society are noted and criticised, consideration of alternatives is out of the picture. Often those flaws are features that have to be borne until the reward for good behaviour (finding a good position, by marrying well for example) is obtained. On the contrary, those who failed to manage to find a way to conform to society's expectations are punished while the heroines are rewarded for finally behaving properly, but are mocked while they still are in the process of learning what that is. It's an early version of the Disney Princess really.

There are germs of proto-feminist critique somewhere in there, when considering the history of feminist thought and discourse, but it's still very little and should not be blown out of proportion. On the contrary, her novels also have a very strong conservative streak, and the romance novels they inspired often have as well.

I find that a really strange description. P&P at least seemed to not at all revolve around "conform and you will get a nice husband".

[mankytoes]

Incidentally, as Orwell himself was radical left (far to the left of any modern mainstream politician), I do wonder whether the fact that his work has been used to straw-man socialist ideology for over half a century (i.e. socialism = communism) would have irritated him,

I'm sure it would have, it's always amusing/irritating, depending on my mood, when people use words or phrases from 1984 to bash socialism. Not that I'm a socialist, but still, if you want to reference things at least find out what they are.

[Weeping Sore]

Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (USSR 1921) covers a lot of the same ground as 1984 (UK 1949), but has the added merit of having a direct observation of the early Soviet experiment and eerie prescience on what was to come later.

It is also shorter and more fun than 1984, with descriptions of Flash-Gordon-esque costumes and settings. Anyway, a 20th century dystopian sci-fi reading list should start there.

[Summah]

I find that a really strange description. P&P at least seemed to not at all revolve around "conform and you will get a nice husband".

Right. Darcy fell in love in with Elizabeth Bennet because she did not conform to the upper classes ideas of how a woman should behave. She was witty and not afraid to give her opinion. Jane Bennet on the other hand did conform to the ideals and she wasn't able to snag Bingley until much later in the book. Charlotte Lucas conformed and ended up married to a fool. Wickham's poor behavior was rewarded by a commission in the army and financial assistance from Darcy and Mr Bennet, of course he also was forced to be married to Lydia Bennet and vice versa, which likely punished both of them.

In Persuasion Anne Elliot does the prudent thing and breaks off her engagement with Fredrick Wentworth who is considered below her. They're both miserable for 8 years, after his return she even toys with the idea of marrying her father's heir, but she chooses Wentworth, who is far above William Elliot in character, but far below in eventual stature and wealth (since William Elliot will inherit Kellynch Hall and the baronetcy).

[Reposado]

1984 by George Orwell – 26%

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – 19%

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – 18%

Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger – 15%

A Passage to India by E M Forster – 12%

Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkein – 11%

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee – 10%

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky – 8%

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – 8%

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – 5%

i would never lie about what books ive read. i might say that something is on my to read list, but.....i feel like people that would lie are people that have not read much at all.

anyways, of the specific books ive read

war and peace - multiple times

1984 - twice i think

jane eyre - just the once

crime and punishment - twice, im a fan

lord of the rings - multiple times

catcher in the rye - didnt love, didnt hate

passage to india and to kill a mockingbird, i'll get to at some point

pride and prejudice and great expectations are not on my to-read list

[Freshwater Spartan]

1984 by George Orwell – 26% Yes

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – 19% Yes One of my favorites

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – 18% On to read list

Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger – 15% Yes

A Passage to India by E M Forster – 12% On to read list

Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkein – 11% Yes

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee – 10% Yes

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky – 8% Yes

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – 8% Just finished a month ago

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – 5% No.

19th century books are the best but you have to keep in mind a couple of things. First, read them for fun. If you have to read it for a class, you will not enjoy them.

Second, read them slowly. These are not like devouring A Game of thrones in 5 days. These books are real reading (No offense to Martin). They were written for a slower paced time, read them accordingly. 50 pages in one sitting is a lot.

Of course I aware that not all of the above books are 19th century but the ones that were seem to get the most abuse.

[Theda Baratheon]

1984 by George Orwell – Ya

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – No

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – No

Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger – No

A Passage to India by E M Forster – No

Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkein – partly

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee – Ya

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky – No

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen –Ya

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – Ya

i dont feel bad or guilty tho ive read a lot of cool stuff that ive enjoyed a lot thats all that matters really

[maarsen]

I went through a phase of reading the classics, and not just the ones on the list. It was rather hit and miss depending on what showed up at book giveaways and yard sales.

Read the Odyssey, but not the Iliad.

Read the Aneid.

Read The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and will never read another book by Mr. Hugo.

Lots of Shakespeare but not Hamlet.

Have not read Don Quixote.

Just about all of Mark Twain

Read The Scarlet Letter

Read Brave New World and Animal Farm

The Three Musketeers, The Count Of Monte Cristo, The Prisoner of Zenda, Kidnapped, Ivanhoe. Read them all and more but I can't remember them now. Just remembered that I just finished Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, and have read Julius Caesar's The Conquest of Gaul.

[YellowDogJen]

As Reposado said above, I wouldn't lie about whether or not I'd read a book. Maybe people are embarrassed because they know they should have read some of these "classics" (aka "literature", I think) but they just haven't. I have heard some folks don't enjoy reading. Can you imagine?

1984 by George Orwell – Yes, several times.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – No. I had an abridged version when I was a kid, but I never got into it.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – Yes. I've read quite a bit of Dickens; I like him.

Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger – Yes. Meh. I don't really get it.

A Passage to India by E M Forster – I hadn't heard of it until this thread.

Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkein – Yes. A million zillion times. I first read it 47 years ago. I had a cat named Gandalf back in '74. I haven't read it in a long time, though; it might be time for a re-read. I don't think I've watched the movies in their entirety, though.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee – Oh, yes! I love it. I've read it several times.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - No.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – No, but it should go on my to read list.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – Yes, at least twice, but I think three times. It's a creepy, dark book.

I don't think I read any of them for school. We got assigned some real gems, like Silas Marner. I remember tedious dreck.

I didn't do nearly as well at Cryptile's Classics. Of Heinlein, I've only read Stranger in a Strange Land. I didn't like it much - not enough to seek out more Heinlein. LeGuin - only Wizard of Earthsea.

On the rest of the list, only Dune and The Martian Chronicles. I love both books. I tried to read more of the Dune series, but I thought they sucked. I think I read the second; I for sure gave up on the third book. Dune is really good, though.

The Martian Chronicles is a great book! It's been a long time, but I have vivid memories of many of the stories. Bradbury really evokes some strong imagery, and the stories are scary and weird. Love!