Xara
Since everybody is giving you reading lists, I thought I might try the opposite - a subjective view of alleged 'must reads' that have disappointed me.
Milton - Paradise Lost Almost unreadable. Dr Johnson (in his Lives of the poets) succinctly says that the poem is one you are glad to have read, but also glad never to have to read again.
Joyce - Ulysses andFinnegan's Wake Literary masturbation. Sorry, but that's all it is. His earlier works are much more readable.
Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury American Joyce; literally, and literarily, signifying nothing...
European 'bestsellers': Patrick Susskind's Perfume, Hoeg's (sp?) Miss Smilla's feeling for snow - overlong, overhyped, and anti-climactic. And it's not just a translation problem - Sophie's World works marvellously in English.
Bronte - Wuthering Heights Perhaps my least favourite book ever. (I said this was subjective! At least I thoroughly enjoy her sister's Jane Eyre.)
Eugene O'Neill - Mourning becomes Electra Unsubtle, uninteresting, overlong...
Whitman - Leaves of Grass He may celebrate himself, but I find myself unable to do so - through falling asleep every few lines. (And let's not even mention Wordworth's long works - the Prologue etc...zzzzzzzzz)
There you go. Perhaps the fans of these works will descend en masse upon me and rend me limb from limb...
Anyone...?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
