More lists

In the Times this week, a list of books not to read before you die. Which inevitably overlap with those you should.

Briefly summarised:

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. The Iliad
3. War and Peace
4. The Beauty Myth
5. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
6. The Dice Man
7. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu
8. For Whom the Bell Tolls
9. Lord of the Rings
10. Ulysses

I have started, or made reasonable progress with, six of them, and have ruled none of them out (though I don't like the sound of The Dice Man).

Enough of lists, I think, and the endless judgement of what should be.

More books

Following on from yesterday’s post, there is of course a variation on the game: Bookershame. Or, how many of the Booker Prize longlist have you read?

I’ve read none of this year’s and, looking back, have read a mere thirteen of all nominees:

Zadie Smith, On Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
Barbara Trapido, Frankie & Stankie
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
André Brink, Rumours of Rain
Molly Keane, Good Behaviour
J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun
Keri Hulme, The Bone People
Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
A. S. Byatt, Possession
David Malouf, Remembering Babylon
Zoe Heller, Notes on a Scandal

Bookershame indeed. As ever, if I count the books I own, it all looks rather more respectable …

While generally sceptical of prizes, it is pleasing to note the Booker’s enduring recognition of South African writing. Not just the usual Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, but also Dan Jacobson, André Brink, Christopher Hope, Justin Cartwright, Damon Galgut and Achmat Dangor. More, counting Doris Lessing, and Barbara Trapido’s nomination for the superb Frankie & Stankie.

Bookshame

An article in the Telegraph on a literary game - the books that you haven't read.

Not an entirely new idea, as there was a rash of articles on the topic when Pierre Bayard's somewhat ironical book How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read was published, but the idea was clearly reignited at the Ways With Words festival in Dartington.

The Telegraph calls it Humiliation. I prefer Bookshame, and know the game well.

Despite having an English degree from a reasonably respectable university, I have what Sylvia Plath termed, on her arrival in Cambridge, 'whistling gaps' in my knowledge. No Proust, no more than a few pages of Stendhal; no Vanity Fair, no Pride and Prejudice. I once read somewhere that women didn't read Walden. So, powered by the nuclear fission of Dead Poets Society and sophomoric feminism, I bought a second-hand copy. Which, eleven years later, I'm still to read.

But then, I was encouraged to question the canon, to be suspicious of the fact that the books that lie shamefully unread are largely by dead white guys or spinsters in poke bonnets. So I may or may not read Our Mutual Friend (even if I told my tutor I had, and managed a convincing dissection of its central theme. English degrees are good for learning how to do this), but it doesn't matter either way. Sometimes, they're only books.