Okay, so I'll do the book guilt meme too.

Name three classics mouldering on your shelves:
1. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. I'm just not hungry for allegory anymore.
2. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. A gift, which increases my feelings of guilt.
3. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. I bought this thinking I would read it right away, since I love Austen. Why haven't I?


Name three works of modern literature you managed to avoid:
1. Ulysses by James Joyce. Have handled signed first editions of it, which is much more interesting than reading it. See my James Joyce Rant of 10 December.
2. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. I've heard she's a good author, but if a book manages to get a reputation for increasing the pall of depression in King Lear, I'm staying away.
3. Entire syllabi's worth of Beckett, Pynchon, Vidal, and Naipaul. I don't have anything against these men, I just don't want to read Modern Litt-rat-ture.

Addendum: I managed to avoid The Red Badge of Courage in high school, but -- d'oh! -- had to teach it as a student teacher of a 10th-grade English class. So then I had to read it, and couldn't explain to my class why they had to. It was bad on so many levels. If I had it to do over again, I'd teach it differently, but I'm glad I don't have it to do over again, since it would involve rereading the book.

Name three novels you read but wish you hadn't:
1. The Man Without a Face by Isabelle Holland.
2. The Paperboy by Pete Dexter.
3. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. The common denominator to all three of these is that they end with the main characters absolutely spiritually dispossessed, and some of them are even happy about it in a sick sort of way. I've stayed away from Hardy ever since: especially when a coworker at one of my library floating jobs once gushed to me, "I just love Thomas Hardy. The way he writes, is just the way life is." My God, I hope not!

Name three books you skimmed your way through or never finished:
1. Paradise Lost by John Milton. I loved his "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," but have never been able to get over the fact that a number of men have used our Great English Epic to Explain Womanhood, to women (which is arrogance personified) and to men (which is worse). I was also told to read it as a help to becoming more submissive. I mentioned this to my professor, Dr. Engle, who said I should read it with a somewhat more feminist person such as himself. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to take his Milton class.
2. Shardik by Richard Adams. I so loved Watership Down at the age of 13 that I attempted to tackle Adams's other huge novel. After slogging through a hundred pages, even I could recognize that this story of a bumbling man who ends up gettting worshiped was written partly as a glancing smack at Christianity. I wasn't able to deal with it then, and even though I could handle it intellectually now, I'd just rather not. As I recall, it was pretty heavy-handed as a story anyway.
3. I haven't finished The Silmarillion either, but it hasn't been for lack of trying. There are any number of texts I didn't finish from my syllabi in graduate school, but I'll mention one I never finished but actually liked in many places: Don Juan by Lord Byron. Minus the sex and money, I feel more kinship with Byron personality-wise than any other author. ("Hail Muse! etc.")


Name three famous fanfics you've always meant to read:
1. Cassandra Claire's Draco Malfoy series -- I've always been morbidly curious about the leather pants trope.
2. Natasha's fanfics. I haven't got round to them yet.
3. Umm...I'm such a lurker I can't think of any other famous fanfics right now.