Books We Haven’t Read (But Always Wanted To)

~ Clarissa

An anti-intellectual, anti-scholarship, “research is useless and literary studies should die already” article has appeared in Chronicle of Higher Education. Well, what else is new? you will ask. That’s all CHE does any longer. The first three sentences of this embarrassingly stupid piece, however, are kind of interesting.

Before I get to the minuscule part of the article that makes sense, I want to say that the article’s author, Michael Farber, should have the courage of his opinions and leave his position to those who are not too lazy or too stupid to have a productive research career. It is offensive to see somebody whine so pathetically and wordily about how hard it is for a scholar to make himself read.

Leaving the idiocy of this unintelligent and dishonest fellow aside, his article contains an interesting question (which he didn’t even come up with on his own, of course):

There are books we all know we should have read but we never actually got around to reading them. Is there a book you don’t want to confess not having read?

I think this could be a fun discussion.

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Published by Clarissa

35 thoughts on “Books We Haven’t Read (But Always Wanted To)”

  1. Moby Dick. However, it is next in line to be read. Also, I haven’t read The Scarlet Letter since high school, and I need to read it as an adult. Crime and Punishment (in translation of course).

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  2. Not really a specific book of his, but H.P. Lovecraft’s work in general. His themes and universe are fascinating, and in small doses prose hits that fine balance between description and leaving enough to the reader’s imagination – but all together his purple prose is so head-ache inducing that I’ve only managed to read a few of his short stories. It also doesn’t help that his plotting is awful. A brilliantly inventive and creative man, just not a great writer.

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  4. It used to be that I felt this way about Paradise Lost. So I decided to assign it for a class in order to force myself to read it. It was fantastic, and I’m very much in love with it.

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  5. PS – Assigning books that I’ve never read before in my classes is the only way I ever have time to read anything new (without feeling guilty that I’m neglecting some other duty like research or childrearing).

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      1. I had a great guy who was a pirate who came by my YouTube recently. He offered to help me in all sorts of ways, whilst claiming he was a “renaissance man”.

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  7. I’m reading more and more from this herald of cultural decline book of the early 200s, THE BLANK SLATE. He states that the humanities were mistaken in trying to get people to see that the world was “a weird and dangerous place”. The reason he gives is that the humanities types didn’t know enough science to understand that the perceiver is irrational and their perceptive faculties influence what is being perceived.

    So where does that leave us? Weirdness and danger are taulogical constructs of the mind’s perceptive apparatus, if they exist at all, but if they do not exist (and perhaps Pinker’s is an implicit argument for skepticism of the incapacity to know) then there is no value in pointing out the existence of anything weird or dangerous.

    I really think this book has to be closely read and scrutinised to better understand the horrors that some of us lived through during the past couple of decades. No doubt Pinker’s writing encapsulates a lot of the logic of antihumanities and justification for instinctive animalism that took hold of many — but he also pushed that project forward.

    I also think that Bataille’s philosophical matrix, far more than Nietzsche’s, furnishes the perfect answer to this form of radical right wing antagonism. Bataille, in effect, says, if you fully KNOW the limits of your own being, you will not buy into this sort of stuff — it will have no enticement for you. Furthermore, Bataille’s capacity to see from both high and low perspectives, rather than one or the other, enables one to see how small a picture one embraces when one attaches oneself to this form of evolutionary psychology.

    But it is still, in a way, our cultural hegemony. Most people have been pulled into it to some degree.

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    2. ….which all leads to a very enticiing impasse. To be alone with the weirdness and danger must be a privilege reserved for the few….the ones who have a capacity to do that and enjoy it without being all weirded out and left unable to cope. I call those highly profound few “intelllectual shamans”.

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  8. I must point out that nothing is amiss when I say I haven’t read Martin Amis.

    Your latest escapades in attempting to ring Cuba are reminding me of Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana”, which I have read. I must also point out that I haven’t had the opportunity to consume quite as many little “airplane bottles” of fine liquors as the protagonist did, although in his case it was in order to liberate a little book of secrets …

    “My name is James Wormold — I used to be a spy, until …”

    “We got a burn notice on you — you’re blacklisted.”

    *wicked grin*

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    1. “I must point out that nothing is amiss when I say I haven’t read Martin Amis.”

      – I read him and he was frankly boring. So I don’t think you are missing much.

      “Your latest escapades in attempting to ring Cuba are reminding me of Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana”, which I have read.”

      – There has been a funny development. I thought the Dept of Homeland Security was blocking my calls because they just wouldn’t go through. But then i investigated and discovered that, as usual, my father had added extra figures to the phone number. So I discovered the real number and called through Skype. As you said, it’s crazy expensive ($0,88 per minute) so I managed to croak a few phrases and hung up. But the good news is that calling is possible.

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  9. This was a party game when I was a student (I was the token STEM student at a lot of arts-humanities type parties) – the nerdy kids’ version of ‘never have I ever’.

    Never have I ever read an entire Dickens novel, but I’m not embarrassed by that; it was a ‘life’s too short’ type deliberate choice. Hmmm, one that bothers me… I only read Gilgamesh last year after Fie blogged about teaching it. not having read that felt like an embarrassment. And Tolstoy, I’ve read very little Tolstoy and THAT feels embarrassing.

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    1. “And Tolstoy, I’ve read very little Tolstoy and THAT feels embarrassing.”

      – Tolstoy did nothing but diligently copy French novelists and, later in life, peddle an ultra-religion, patriarchal, anti-modern and woman-hating creed of his own making. The only feeling women ever provoked in him was lecherous disgust.

      I hope you don’t feel embarrassed by foregoing the work of this untalented creep any longer.

      I hate Tolstoy. 🙂

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      1. I loved Kitty’s love story in “Anna Karenina.” It was long ago, but I remember how her newly-wed husband was frightened and surprised to discover that getting used to each other may take some time, and felt in a quarrel that by hurting her he was hurting himself. Found that beautiful. 🙂

        I could never read Dostoyevsky. Tried “Brothers Karamazov” iirc, but just couldn’t. Ditto about “Crime and Punishment,” but it was long ago. May be I should try again one day.

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        1. “Tolstoy hated Shakespeare. That says a lot about him.”

          – Exactly. I didn’t know this but I’m not surprised.

          If one wants a good Russian writer, I recommend Chekhov.

          Also, Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog is PHENOMENAL. Although somewhat anti-semitic, but what else is new?

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      3. Well, I’ve read quite a lot of Checkov in translation, and some Dostoevsky, so I shall take your word for it that I’ve encountered at least one great Russian writer, and feel less embarassed about my neglect of Tolstoy (my Russian is at the level of translating metro signs and saying hello, goodbye, thank you, I work at the university of blah, where is the toilet, I am vegetarian (and for some reason “I work with hedgehogs” – I did a short intensive course in Russian-for-conference-attendees when I was a grad student)

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  10. Jane – That’s cool that you read Gilgamesh after reading about it on my blog! I hope you liked it! It’s loads of fun to teach.

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    1. Oh yeah, it was excellent (even in the free Kindle download edition)! Thanks!

      I had already read PL, Donne and Milton being my favourite leisure reading after I ran out of Shakespeare plays in my late teens/early twenties when I had more brain room for their riches, though you’re making me feel a great urge to reread…

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  13. I loved this article:

    На Первом канале вышел фильм Катерины Гордеевой «Голоса», составленный из воспоминаний уцелевших жителей блокадного Ленинграда. Алексей Мунипов поговорил с ней о цене Победы, блокадных мифах и о том, как говорить о войне с современными детьми.
    http://vozduh.afisha.ru/cinema/v-odnoy-ruke-isaakievskiy-sobor-v-drugoy-sleza-rebenka-i-chto-vybrat/

    Not sure if you will be interested:
    Чем академия напоминает наркокартель?
    http://wolf-kitses.livejournal.com/392681.html#cutid1

    I was surprised by:

    Название раздела «Почему наркоторговцы до сих пор живут с родителями» отсылает к открытию, что распределение доходов внутри банд сильно смещено в пользу верхушки, тогда как рядовые уличные торговцы получают даже меньше, чем работники на легальных низкоквалифицированных работах – например, в «Макдональдсе». Было подсчитано, что их почасовая ставка составляет 3.30 доллара , что значительно ниже прожиточного минимума (вот почему они до сих пор живут со своими мамами).

    Crime really doesn’t pay. 🙂

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  14. I’ve been meaning to read Candide, Don Quixote, and the Canterbury Tales for the last couple of years. I’ve even got (really old) copies of all of them. I just haven’t picked any of them up yet. I’m kind of scared to even touch my copy of Candide, though. It’s from the 1850’s and desperately needs to see a bookbinder. Are there still bookbinders in the US?

    Also, I forgot to ask the bookstore person to date my copy of Don Quixote. This is unbelievably embarrassing, because even if I know who translated it, I couldn’t say when it was translated. This bothers me almost more than not having picked it up and read it already. 😦

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    1. One of my hobbies as a child was book-binding. My great-grandfather gave me a book-binder’s kit and I loved playing with it.

      I never read Candide either, and I also have had a copy forever. 🙂

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      1. I almost had to read it, because it’s usually on the syllabus for a gen ed called Western Humanities II. But I took the course over the summer, so the professor cut it out of the syllabus for the sake of time.

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