[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: I had considered myself well-read until.....

[Aberforth's Goat]

Catherine wrote,

> OK - I'm upping the ante with 52 (but I was am an English
graduate
> and did a lot of 20th Century literature), but some of this
really is
> stupid, as To Kill a Mockingbird is in there three times.

Stupid perhaps - but very kind in my case! If I hadn't been lucky
enough to have read Mockingbird, Brideshead, Pooh and Heart of
Darkness (all of which had multiple entries) I'd be a lot worse
off than my meager 35!

Some oddities:

Catherine's right - where are the women?? (And which women would
you all suggest adding? I'm stuck.)

The name "Baggins" seems so far to have escaped the ponderings of
whatever Dark Lord put this list together. Nor did he catch any
of the people in Byatt [Possession, anyway], Murdoch, Golding,
Lawrence or Henry James' 20th century creations. And I suppose
Douglas Adams' folk or James Herriot aren't cute enough to count
as classic kiddy lit - and are too low brow to count as meat and
beer for grown men.

Not that I miss Heny James. His late stuff bores me to tears.

But he's not as bad as Ulysses, which is everywhere - and which I
did force myself to spend a long time staring at. (I'm giving
myself full points for that staring, even it *wasn't* exactly
what I'd normally call "reading," since I had no idea what I was
staring at ... )

James isn't as bad as Kafka, either. I started The Castle three
times, Metamorphosis once and never finished the first chapter of
either. Perhaps I ought to try it in translation. I have a
greater tolerance for masochism in English.

I also started one of Updike's Rabbit books once - and didn't
like it well enough to read more than the first ten pages. There
was something so brittle, clever and ironic about it that I
almost got a sick stomach. Should I have begun with the first?

Also: Why'd they pick Italo Calvino over Uberto Eco? I've read
one Calvino (not the one on the list), but I should think Eco's
characters - in Pendlum or Name of the Rose - should have had
dibs on a list of this kind.

BTW, there were quite a few of my personal naggs in that list -
authors I think I might like but have never managed to try:
Proust, Camus, Salinger, Kerouac, Faulkner, Amis and Naipaul. Who
should I start with? (Yoo-hoo .. Catherine?) (And is Proust good
or another of the illegible classics?)

And finally, I'm glad Kazuo Ishiguro made the list. I've only
read Floating World - found it lying about in a Swiss second-hand
hand furniture shop - but it had something about it that tells me
I want to read more.

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray)
_______________________

"Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, so that
may not have been bravery...."