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Reblogged from: londoners
Originally posted on: London Tumblrs
So everyone’s seen that unread books post going around, I take it? Interestingly, a lot of people cut off the introduction where it explains that the list is taken from the “unread” tag on LibraryThing.
It’s not just a random list; it’s a list of books which a lot of people own but haven’t yet got round to reading. Maybe they just don’t have time to read them all. Maybe they’re trying to make their bookshelf look pretentious and uber-smart.
Anyways, it’s been reblogged 25 times at the time of writing, and I took it upon myself to check which books have been most commonly started but not finished. I couldn’t tell on some people’s lists, as they quoted the entire list, which put it all in italics, so I had to go look in the source code. I’m such a trooper.
Out of 106 books in the list, we’ve started 62 of them without finishing them. That’s nearly two-thirds! Most were only begun by one person (38), but almost half of the unfinished books cropped up in more than person’s list.
Moby Dick was the winner, if that’s the right word, defeating 5 different people before they finished it. I’d be interested to know how far they got, as I found it utterly unputdownable. The structure is a bit awkward, admittedly, in a diary-like form interspersed with what seems like academic asides. One of my favourite chapters in this novel was the one about the different kinds of whale blubber and what they’re used for.
Catch-22 stood out for me, with 4 people failing to finish it. I can understand why, as it’s a very convoluted and odd book, but I loved it. I’ve got Closing Time, the sequel of sorts, on my shelf, and should read it but I want to re-read Catch-22 first.
Anna Karenina and Love In The Time Of Cholera also gave rise to 4 failings each. I don’t know the latter, but I loved Anna Karenina. Yes, it’s epic in scale, but within that there is the opportunity to follow a couple of characters very closely indeed, as they begin to break down.
For 3 people, Les Miserables was too much. I’ve only heard bad things about it, with regards to its length and heaviness, but maybe should give it a go. War And Peace also had 3 people fail to finish, possibly for the same reason. That’s sitting on my shelf, staring at me, mocking me for not having read it yet despite buying it about 7 years ago.
Two more modern novels had the same number of unfinishees: The Grapes Of Wrath and On The Road. I’ve not read either, but understand that they are modern American classics. Why did these go unfinished?
On this side of the Atlantic, the first ever great literature in what we would regard as English, The Canterbury Tales had 3 people fail to complete it. Seeing as this is a collection of, erm, tales, and that most people probably read it at school, it’s not hugely surprising that not everyone finished it. The Hobbit, a slightly more modern British book which harks back to medieval times, had the same number.
So, what does all this mean? There’s very few books that I’ve stopped reading halfway through, but I’m generally a half-decent judge of my own tastes and don’t bother even picking something up if I think I won’t like it.
I like that the list is a mix of modern classics and genuine classics. It shows that people of our generation are at least attempting to read the classics, and I’m happy to report that the number of completions was much, much higher than the number of failings.
