11 Classic Books I Refuse to Read!

Time Stamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:15 The Iliad by Homer
01:00 The Histories by Herodotus
01:35 The Republic by Plato
02:02 The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
02:58 The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
04:00 The Decameron by Boccacio
04:47 The Divine Comedy by Dante
05:37 Don Quixote by Cervantes
06:30 The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
07:18 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
08:30 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

[joniheisenberg]

I read “War and Peace” last year. I am so glad I did. I believe reading the book made me want to be a better person. How can you resist that selling point? 😁
It made a huge impact, particularly the character Pierre. I recommend the Briggs translation (Penguin Clothbound Classics).

[hesterdunlop]

Do take heed of your tiny flame of enthusiasm for Don Quixote ...it's an easy read, funny, entertaining and simply rolled along, keeping me company for a chunk of last year.... .it's also very easy to pick up again if you have a few weeks off. Inferno and Purgatorio are really really good but Paradiso has a lot of theology and I didn't connect with it ....Tom LA Books got me through ....

[scallydandlingaboutthebooks]

Gosh well where to start? Several of these are things I have found hugely rewarding, including The Decameron, Divine Comedy and Din Quixote. I am currently doing a long slow read of The Canterbury Tales, one tale a month. But I don't believe in persuading people to read long books they might not enjoy. I know I am much happier to take a risk with a short work myself. I don't like not finishing things and ploughing through hundreds of pages that are not that exciting is purgatory. So I will narrow my focus. Yes don't touch Mill on the Floss as it is not her best. Give serious thought to War and Peace as I think you might enjoy it. It is such a rich reading experience. The history is fascinating. The bits people find boring are often the war sections but I didn't and I don't think you would. Anytime Tolstoy starts sounding off about something you can skim a bit if necessary. But the story and characters are hugely engaging and some of his philosophical diversions are about things that will interest you like the nature of history for example. Finally it is in four parts so you can read it one part at a time like a series.

[lizh]

War and Peace has sat on my shelf for about 15 and I’m finally reading it! I watched a great video by Benjamin McAvoy which gave me the push to go down the chapter a day/read it over a year route. That way I still get to enjoy all the other books and there’s not too much pressure to hurry up and finish it. I’m liking it so far.

[kinczyta]

My husband started Decameron and said he'd hate this party, he'd rather be entertained by silence hahah I've read War and Peace and while it's quite good, I don't think it justifies the page count. As for the rest, I'm only interested in Don Quixote because people really seem to enjoy it

[niles]

I'm 72 and was mostly a non-fiction reader. I started Shakespeare's works in Jan of 2020. Finished at the end of the year, mixing in some light reading along the way. For help I watched or listened to each play as I read it. Then I started reading some of the Greek classics and was blown away. I kept seeing todays politics in them and have to admit it was a little depressing to realize that the human ego hasn't changed in over 2000 years. Wanting to know more about Shakespeare's sources, I added Ovid's The Metamorphoses and The Decameron. Since my mind wanders, always has, I listened to recordings of many of these works as I read them. That helped me progress more easily and gave me an idea of the emotion I might have missed in the texts. The greatest thing as I moved through the centuries was seeing all the allusions to the ancient works in whatever I was reading at the time. So, you've got to be motivated to read a particular work and sometimes hesitancy to do that comes from not knowing what to expect. YouTube lectures (minus spoilers) were a huge help to me. If something doesn't trip your trigger, pass it by, but never is a long time and you don't necessarily know what will interest you in the future.

[haroldniver]

I understand where you’re coming from on most of these, but I think you’re missing out on something great if you refuse to read The Iliad. Of Homer’s two great epics, I much prefer The Iliad to The Odyssey. I’ll just say that translations differ greatly. Some are very boring but both the Fagles and Lattimore translations really bring the story to life.

[dqan]

I'm at the point where I need to start prioritizing the books I do want to read before I croak. I'll run out of time long before I finish that list. There aren't any classics I refuse to read, but there are many I just won't get to. Looking forward to whatever is next for you. Happy reading!

[jennywarren]

The Canturbury Tales are one of those books that I'll just pick up sporadically to read excerpts because the anecdotes are cute but I doubt if I will ever sit down and read them straight through. Also in the prologue of that book it says, "good luck understanding this lol". I have been trying to use the library more but often with longer books they don't give me enough time.

[citachot]

Nine out of eleven of these books I haven't read for similar reasons and the only one I'm probably gonna read is War and Peace. However, the two on the list that I have read are The Republic and Don Quixote and they are simply outstanding.

[oelarnes]

I think I have a different point of view on long books as someone coming from being a fantasy reader. For a fantasy reader there’s nothing better than settling into a long series. You feel like you never have to leave your favorite characters and your favorite settings. I’ve read and reread 4000 pages of ASoIaF, so there’s no reason to be intimidated by War and Peace. I’m 300 pages in and loving it.

[StephanieJCohen]

Haha. I don’t think I could change your mind, though I love most of these. :). I think it comes down to finding the right translation for some. I wouldn’t try to get you to read Plato’s Republic (though I have many times), but the Apology is very short and it’s Socrates defense of himself on trial, and if you’re ever forced to read one work by Plato, I would say that one. As for the Iliad, I absolutely love it, much more than the Odyssey. I found it very powerful and moving in lots of ways and it’s much more “human” as it were in ways it dealt with the people on both sides. Yes there are a few tedious sections to get through (like the long lists of names of people fighting on both sides, although there is an importance to this that gives heft and weight if you sit and ponder it), but there are truly beautiful scenes and I would even argue a recognition of the horrors of war in certain ways. Some day maybe I can convince you to do a buddy read of the Caroline Alexander translation and we can walk through it. Also, Elizabeth Vandiver’s Great Courses Lecture Series on The Iliad might do the trick. :). We shall have to discuss further. 😉

[BrandonsBookshelf]

lol so i was so ready to come in and change your mind, but honestly, I get why on each and every one of these. I have read almost all of these, some just out of a sense of wanting to knock off important works. I do dearly love The Republic, so that would be the one I'd fight for the most, but again, I get it. Great video.

[JentheLibrarianreads]

There’s a great poetry collection by Patience Agbabi called Telling Tales which is a modern reimagining of the Canterbury Tales, also worth a read is Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones which is informative and also funny whilst being mildly academic…both of these are more fun than actually reading Chaucer 😂

[the_broken_spine]

Okay so several on this list I get why you refuse to read them. However, I died a little inside when you said no to The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron. The Canterbury Tales can be a slog if you don’t have the right translation and The Decameron is basically 100 short stories, so you can pick it up whenever. I used it as pallet cleanser from all the heavy, dark and depressing books I was reading. It’s funny and full of debauchery. One of my favorite tales is when a handyman goes to a nunnery and we’ll things happen.

[ianp]

Totally sensible approach! As a slow reader I might manage 50-60 books a year so there are millions of books I will never get to.
I have read Don Quixote - it took 7 weeks and was ok 🙄. I dnf’d Mill on the Floss as I found it tedious and Eliot keeps lecturing the reader - no guilt in avoiding that one!
My list might have to include most of Hardy, Henry James and unfortunately also Proust - I have all of the latter on my shelf but there is always something more enticing than Swann’s Way!

[adbeelgarcia]

I can understand skipping much of that list. But Don Quixote would be worth it. It was actually the book that made me enjoy reading long books. The second half of Don Quixote is actually much better than the first. The first part is very intertextual and more limited in its scope, the characters a bit flatter. But the second part is where most of the genius is: the characters are more complex, Quixote becomes Panzonian, Panza becomes Quixotic, the comedy is deeper, it's very metafictional, and overall just a very smart book. You will see how many books are indebted to this masterpiece.

[sandeesandwich]

I read War and Peace in my youth, as well as Les Miserables. I wouldn't read them now, though I did enjoy them then, because I just don't have the patience for very long books any more. I had all the time in the world in my teens, but less so as every decade has passed. I feel like I should read Don Quixote, but it's not at the top of my queue. A classic book I have but I think I won't ever read is Ulysses by James Joyce.

[wardm]

Les Miserables is one of my favorite novels of all time. It is so well put together with the absurd number of plots and characterization and thematic overlap and contrast. The weird thing is that I don't think there's much more to get from the book than the various movie adaptations. It's a plot driven novel, and the adaptations really cover most it.

[myreadinglife]

No desire to read most of these myself. I have read War and Peace, Don Quixote, and The Canterbury Tales. I’m glad I read them for the most part, mostly so I can understand the references to them.