A blog post from Guardian has caused
some discussion on Facebook, and I have challenged my young colleague to list –
and justify – a hundred books we will never read.
To be fair, I must say
that I never read chick lit, true crime and all kinds of stuff too
numerous to mention. So this will be things I ought to read, for
various reasons, but won't.
The easiest thing is
sequels to books I disliked, such as
Twilight
Lightning Thief
Divergent
Uglies
Maze runner
Ender's game
To make sure I am not a
snob, I will add:
The portrait of a lady,
volume 2
Then sequels to books I
like and therefore don't want to read a sequel, particularly if
written by someone else
Oz sequels. I have
read a couple, and they were all rubbish
Books by writers whose
books I have read and didn't like. This, however, can be tricky. I
didn't like the first two books by John Green, and then Julia made me
read The Fault in Our Stars, and it is one of the best books
ever. It made me read yet another book by John Green, and I put it
aside after five pages. But, nothing by
Balzac
Zola
George Sand
Flaubert (hmm, I seem to
have a bias against French literature)
Paulo Coelho
P. G. Woodhouse
Shel Silverstein
Dan Brown
Books that we were
supposed to read in school
Theodor Dreiser
(ironically, they are now banned in Russia as unsuitable for young
readers)
Upton Sinclair
Books I don't want to read
for no obvious reasons
Game of Thrones
Paradise Lost
The Bell Jar
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Atlas Shrugged
The Naked and the Dead
The Awakening
The Illiad
Quo Vadis
Color Purple
Beloved (started
severla times and could not finish)
Stephen King
Thoreau
E.M. Foster (but I love
his criticism)
Emerson
Marquis de Sade
Not sure whether I am up
to a hundred yet, but could easily go on.
My list of books I want to
read is much shorter.
No comments:
Post a Comment