Gaps in Your Reading

So given your usual reading taste, what author or book have you not read, that feel you should have?

Are you a SciFi fan who has never read Asimov?
A golden age mystery Fan who has not read Bentley?
American lit geek but have avoided Faulkner?

I love big fat novels and realized that it was odd that I have never read anything by James Michener.
I also love British mystery have not read Ian Rankin.
I have read lots of Russian Classics including Crime and punishment and other things by Dostoevsky, but not the Brothers Karamazov

I have been working on filling in those gaps. I had been: A sci-fi fan who never read Heinlein, a pulp detective fan who hadn't read Dashiell Hammett (I still haven't read my Mickey Spillanes!) and I'm still an american lit fan who hasn't read Faulkner or Mark Twain (aside from some short stories)

My biggest gap is historical reading. I love watching the history channel, and researching history online, but only lately have I begun to read historical fiction and non-fiction.

I haven't read as much Hemingway or Twain as I'd like, and I've never read any Dickens (except for holiday repackagings of A Christmas Carol...

American literature & the "Classics" from any tradition. Trying to remedy the Classics thing, but American literature holds so little appeal for me, honestly.

I have a huge gap in my reading-I real lots of feminist writings, but I haven't read any of the second wave stuff. All the things I read are either first wave (suffregettes) or third wave (my generation-things like Female Chauvanist Pigs, though that is NOT the best of the lot). But there's a huge gap in all of the writings from the 50's, 60's, and 70's writers. I also have gaps in that I used to read a TON of books on biology, but I haven't in a long time. Working in a lab just burned me out on the topic, but now that I'm away from that field, I feel like dipping back into the writings.

>6 kaelirenee:
I took a "Women in Latin American History" class my senior year in college, I could see if I can find any of the authors we read then, there were some interesting early feminist works if you're interested.

Thank you for the offer. It's not a lack in knowing names-our HQ section is overflowing with great feminist writing and rhetoric, one of the profs here specializes in feminist rhetoric. It's just intellectual laziness on my part. And sometimes it's hard for me to read the anger and reactionary statements made in those books are keep everything in a proper context. It's easier to read the statements made by suffregettes because the statements are so far removed and I don't know anyone who was alive then. Quite a few of the women in my family were active in the ERA times, though.

Oh, these aren't the angry and reactionary-types of things. These are 'feminist' writings like 17th and 18th centuries in Latin America. I can't handle the angry anti-man feminist writings and I was fairly hesitant about the course, but the readings ended up being very interesting.

That being said, you are under no obligation to want to read them. I'm not 100% sure I can find the titles anyway.

I am trying to incorporate more classics like Austen , Eliot and Shaw in my reading list this year . Also I'm going to start adding more fantasy novels like Mists Of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley too .

I would say I have gaps everywhere but I comfort myself in the fact that I have decades ahead of me fill and patch those gaps.

Never read hardly any fantasy- so trying to find some here and there based on recommendations of the "classics."

I tried Sci Fi but, well... not for me I guess.

#11: "I have decades ahead of me" -- and just how did you become privy to that info? ;)

Not to be morbid, but you never know, so read as much as you can as fast as you can, and don't finish books you don't like...

Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde and George Shaw are a couple of authors on my 'I need to read these guys!' list.

I've promised myself that this year I'll read Toni Morrison (Beloved) and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita and/or Invitation to a Beheading). I read a lot of contemporary literature and modern classics, but I haven't done these two.

I have major gaps in my reading. I haven't read Hemingway's famous novels, just A Moveable Feast. Gave up a chapter into Faulkner and even less on Joyce. I'll give them both another chance eventually. I'd also never even heard of the Narnia books until I was an adult so haven't read those.

I want to read Arnold Toynbee, the historian who tried to give a big overview of civilizations through the centuries, at least in the two volume abbreviated form.

I did read the Narnia Chronicles as an adult, an enjoyed them.

I have a ton of gaps. So many that, even if I fill those, new ones will inevitably form. However, I have always felt guilty I had not read Wuthering Heights and love Victorian literature. So, I finally did it, and I absolutely hated it. I had thought W.H. was going to be another true-friend kind of a book; I feel very let down. :(

The gaps that worry me are the ones I don't know about. What great literature am I missing? What pivotal historical events have I missed learning about?

Oh my, I feel gaps across being well-read, not necessarily within a genre. What is scary is that in my daily life (running with an well-educated pack) I seem to be better read than many. However, LT gives me a reality check so my "never read" gaps include Stendahl, Proust, James Joyce, William Thackery...and those are only the authors that jump to mind. By title, my unreads include The History of Western Civilization- Durant, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, An American Tragedy, Catch 22, and on and on.

So many books and so little time. I read mostly non-fiction and have great gaps on the literature side. Two years ago I finally read War and Peace and it was a great book. Then I bought Anna Karenina and it has sat there for a year.
Even in history, which I consider my topic, I am just getting to Herodotus. The gaps mean I always have something good to read and that is a plus.

JLC-I might look in to those. I hadn't even considered my big gaps-I've only been thinking of American feminist writings! Thanks for the suggestion. If you ever find the titles, I'd appreciate knowing them. If not, I can look them up.

I have enjoyed every page of James Joyce's work I have read, and I have read every page he published--except for Finnegans Wake. The book seems like a career, and as delightful as that career would undoubtedly be I haven't felt ready to commit myself to it yet.

Maybe when I retire.

(Touchstones has never heard of James Joyce.)

I am hesitant to even allow myself to think of the gaps. Might put me right over the TBR edge. The pile is tippy enough as it is!

I'm closing one of my gaps by reading Lord of the Rings right now, which I would consider not only a classic of Fantasy, but a classic of literature in general.

I'm not great on American classics--I have basically no interest in reading more of many 'classic' American authors.