Friends, I have a few confessions to make, and I hope you all can still respect me afterward. (Deep breath…)
I have never read anything by a Bronte.
I have not read Grapes of Wrath or Brave New World.
I have not read The Lord of the Rings trilogy or The Hobbit.
I have yet to read The Hunger Games, Eat, Pray, Love, or anything by Zadie Smith.
I probably won’t read many other popular titles that came out in the past ten years.
I definitely won’t read an even larger number of classics.
OK. I feel better now. But only slightly.
I’ve read a LOT of books, but there will always be those certain titles that the collective “they” insist you have to read. I’m part of “they” when people tell me they’ve never read The Catcher in the Rye or 1984. I mean, how could you not have read those??? Right?
With so many works of literature out there, past and present, it would be impossible to attempt to read all of the good ones, let alone great. Which titles are you guilty of not reading? Or are you not guilty about it at all?
Leave your comments and then enjoy these two completely unrelated items to start your weekend off right:
1) The best PSA I’ve ever seen in my entire life – it teaches valuable life lessons, the most important being Read a Book! Disclaimer for those who might watch at work or in front of the kids: Contains Adult Language!
2) Corgis + a peaceful night’s sleep = the best things in life, so I leave you with this combination of the two (!!!) And now your lives are complete 🙂
Sarah LaPolla 
Wonderful! Thanks so much, Mark. Please keep me updated on your query process.
Also, I'm never read Hamlet (speaking of missing many a-Shakespeare)! But, I know enough about it to pretend that I've read it. That counts, right?
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Apropos this post: I've missed many Shakespeares, Defoe, failed the second half of Anna Karenina, no Pushkin at all, no Grapes of Wrath (but other Steinbeck), only Zadie Smith's essay on Pnin. Still, I have John Hawkes, most Pynchon, Eco, Kundera, Amis, TC Boyle, McCarthy, Nabokov (sympathetic of Zadie), Borges, GG Marquez, and a range of charmingly lesser tripe, so I think I'm OK.
Thanks for the great work on reviewing my manuscript, Sarah. I just completed a review of your detailed comments, overall review, and critique of my agent query. Pretty much everything is useful and will influence revisions.
Mark
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this kind of blog always useful for blog readers, it helps people during research. your post is one of the same for blog readers.
Thesis Papers Writing
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Funny, I was about to go read a book when I clicked on your PSA. The urge passed.
I agree with Anonymous, most of those books are required reading. They're the classics.
Jane Austin escaped me, somehow, in text or on the screen.
Mary Jo in Gretna
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Anon, this is a safe place! You don't have to be ashamed 🙂 To be honest, if I hadn't taken a class on Jane in college, I probably would have only watched the Colin Firth P&P and called it a day.
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Here's a confession (anon, of course lol)… I write historical romance set in Jane Austen's era…and I can't get into her books. I've tried, but never finished a single one. I think that's worse. LOL
A number of those books you mentioned were required reading way back when in high school, but not sure I'd try them again for fun this time around.
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