Lit majors and lit scholars, what's a classic "canon" work that you've never read?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Middlemarch

This one is worth a read.

[Anonymous]

Ulysses. I tried. I can’t do it.

I haven’t read as much of the Russians as I’d like. Keep meaning to correct that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never read Gatsby. Doubt I missed much. So many other books and so little time.

I find this one enjoyable. I’m excited to my high schooler to read it. Sort of messed up story too, but good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Emma

This one is a must. Put it on your list for 2025.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never read Gatsby. Doubt I missed much. So many other books and so little time.

I find this one enjoyable. I’m excited to my high schooler to read it. Sort of messed up story too, but good.

+1. Gatsby basically a novella. It could be read in an afternoon. Very clever and often funny too.

[Anonymous]

Haven't read Gatsby yet but having just read The Power Broker (where Caro talks about the Long Island capitalist barons) I'm thinking of reading it soon.

[Anonymous]

I got a good one .. I finally read The Outsiders this year.
It was never assigned to me through my years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got a good one .. I finally read The Outsiders this year.
It was never assigned to me through my years.

Ooh same poster. I also read A Wrinkle in Time this year. Also never assigned as homework.

[Anonymous]

I have an MFA in creative writing -- as a 3 year degree it was actually more lit than writing.

I haven't read Ulysses. I've tried twice, and can't get past the very beginning. There was a Joyce class when I was in grad school, and I wish I'd taken it, because that was the only way I would have gotten through it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Moby Dick. Somehow I’ve avoided it, but I keep thinking I should read it.

I have started this book three times, including for two different classes, but I just could not get into it!!

Same thing happened to me, I tried it like 3x, and it was such a slog I couldn't do it.

Then I finally had to read it for grad school and getting through it was one of the best reading experiences of my life. I'm so glad I finally read it. It's brilliant and there is nothing else like it. But I never would have if I hadn't been forced to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer.

Huck Finn is significantly better than Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain wrote some really bizarre stuff that was very different from these books -- like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Emma

This one is a must. Put it on your list for 2025.

+1

Jane Austen is second only to Shakespeare.

[Anonymous]

It's really not that difficult to get an English degree these days and not ever be required to read Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Dickens or Melville. Many if not most people who graduated with lit degrees in the last 30 years probably read very little canonical texts while in college.

[Anonymous]

I actually studied sections of Ulysses in detail, alongside The Dead but I never read U in it's entirety.

also never read War & Peace

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's really not that difficult to get an English degree these days and not ever be required to read Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Dickens or Melville. Many if not most people who graduated with lit degrees in the last 30 years probably read very little canonical texts while in college.

Defining a set Canon ends up getting messy anyway. I read George Eliot but not actually Dickens in class, for instance. But then even then, do you read Middlemarch or Silas Marner or Daniel Deronda.

It's not possible to study every classic for class and my personal experience is you end up more focusing on your concentration area than becoming a generalist.

My personal reading hole is very Russian Literature shaped. I never finished Brothers Karamazov or Anna Karenina, let alone War and Peace.