I can feel Infinite Jest staring at me every time I walk past the bookshelf. I will read it… one day…

I keep putting off reading the Sanderson Secret Project books. I’m super excited, but I haven’t opened any of the three yet.

I’ve started and stopped Ulysses 3 times now. I think it’s a retirement project at this point.

Btw, I found War and Peace much more readable than Karenina.

For me it’s American Gods by Terry Pratchett

but for me it’s classic Russian literature- War and Peace, Crime and Punishment and the like.

Same here! And I’ll bet we’re not the only ones.

Joyce’s Ulysses is one. I’d started Finnegan’s Wake years ago but unfortunately never got past the first 20ish pages. Not that I couldn’t go forward, like you with Anna Karenina or me with Moby Dick (“Sorry, your honor, I just couldn’t finish it!”). I think I was distracted by something else at that point in my life.

Camus’ The Plague is another. There’re certainly hundreds of others that just don’t come to mind at the moment.

Wow…this post is making feel like a philistine!

I got halfway through the third book in The Expanse series last year and then started watching Star Trek for the first time. In hindsight, that was a mistake. lol

I was struggling trying to get into dostoevsky, trying to read brothers Karamazov and was just not feeling it. Switched to crime and punishment and found it way more interesting for me. I think maybe the heavy theology from brothers was just not as interesting. Maybe I’m crazy but I did crime and punishment on audio book instead of reading and found that more engaging too.

I’ve been slowly working my way through the Mabinogion. The tales in it are interesting, but the writing is so disjointed, confusing, and unengaging. The medieval translation doesn’t help…

I’ve been working my way through Perdido Street Station after a friend recommended it to me. It’s a fictional story set in a fictional industrial revolution era setting.

The world building is top notch, the prose is excellent, and I’m enjoying the story. But there is just SO much body horror. Some of it is minor, like a main character whose race has human bodies but beetle-like heads.

Others are not so minor, like a wealthy man whose body is formed from many other species limbs attached to him like Picasso’s worst nightmare. Also the draconian magistrates of this city/society punish people by turning them into a race called “Remade”. People who have their bodies altered/deformed by integrating materials (like metal) or body parts (same species or otherwise) as a form of legal punishment.

It really is a fantastic read but the pronouncement of the aforementioned theme means I have to take breaks.

Books.

For real though, I’ve been meaning to read Red Rising and East of Eden. It’s been too long since I’ve read a book lol

… okay, off-topic, but I have to say that if you didn’t like Anna Karenina, there are a lot of “classic” novels you might not like. If it’s just Levin, and you liked other aspects, that’s reasonable, since part of the point of the book is how widely people’s perspectives vary, and how that contributes to unhappy families. The variation means that everyone is going to find at least one of the characters unsympathetic. I had a love-hate relationship with most of the characters, but I enjoy that experience, and I know not everyone does. I recommend doing the first page (or first chapter) test on Russian literature: if you finish the first page (or chapter), and have no desire to flip to the next one, don’t. The world is full of amazing books, and you don’t owe it to anyone to read anything specific.

On topic, for me, choosing what to read is complicated by not always being able to read a book with my eyeballs (health issues), and not being able to enjoy certain books as audiobooks. So I spend a lot of time going, “is this book worth a possible migraine?” or trying something as an audiobook, and finding I don’t like it that way. Then I might leave something on the shelf or in my queue with the vague idea that I’ll give it another try when I have more patience, but I am not patient with books. I eventually get around to stuff people have recommended, but I have realized that it doesn’t actually make me a better person to read the things I am expected to read (YMMV), so I just… don’t, and try to be honest with myself about what I should have on my “to read” list. There’s no point in having it on the list if I know, deep down, that I am not interested.