Comments Lounge
Damn! I'd really like to borrow some of those books. Except the MacKinnon book. That one is sitting on my shelf too, collecting dust, half-read.
I have a self-help book on how to overcome perfectionism. I bought it and started it about 5 years ago. I live and breath under the weight of the burden of guilt, because I never finished reading it. (It wasn't very good. But still, one should always finish what she starts, you know?)
please take wide sargasso sea off the shelf and read over the holidays. it is a quick read and it is AMAZING. also, i'm pretty sure that if you don't read it you will go to hell. you don't want to go to hell, do you?
Ulysses is sort of funny, but you have to be patient.
You really ought to read "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul". Douglas Adams should never be ignored 
Read name of the rose flea - its a good engrossing holiday read.
Or watch the movie, which has a naked early-twenties Christian Slater.
Did I say that out loud?
I second Douglas Adams, and American Gods. Not much work to read, and worth it (especially Tea Time).
I also devoured Les Miserables, but the secret to that one is strategically skipping fifty pages here and there. You don't need to know about Waterloo, or the sewers of Paris.
Neuromancer is a must read
Anything by Neil Gaiman should take precedence
The library. It's a beautiful thing.
Hey on several of these you could just watch the movies instead!! Though I'd toss Stiff just 'cuz the author is named "Roach".
Very few books remain on my shelves long - even those that have been read. Thanks to proximity to Powell's City of New & Used books, I see my bookshelves as a fairly liquid source of income during hard times. Recouping 50% of list in cold hard cash is remarkably good incentive.
The library is a beautiful thing if you don't have children and don't work 60 hours a week and can actually finish a book 1) in one week and 2) get it back to the library on time. Otherwise, it becomes stressful.
The really, really sad thing is, I seriously plan to read ALL of these books. At some point. I don't want to go to hell.
You'll read them, flea. When the kids are about twenty-five or so...
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In the meantime, why not send them over to me? I'd take tender care of them and not drop them in the bathtub or let the dogs sit or them. I only have those things happening to library books. Which reminds me that I have to go to the library to pay for two books that fell in the tub. They were really good books, too.
Echidne
One week? No shit? Yikes. I get my books for a month at a time, with the option of renewing them for another month if there's not a request on them.
But I wouldn't go, either, if they only gave them to me for a week.
Nope. One week. I am on the waiting list for Al Franken's book, because I don't want to pay for something I know I'll only read once, so I'll make an exception every now and then. Plus I think it's probably a very quick read.
Echnide, if you want to borrow anything on that list, we could work something out. Be aware that I get cranky and territorial about my books not coming back, though.
Read "Difference and Dominance" in Feminism Unmodified. It's quick, gives you the essential MacKinnon, and lets you put off the rest of the book for a good long time.
Wide Sargasso Sea is excellent, though.
Don't bother with Atlas Shrugged, unless you like umpteen pages of a character just speechifying about Objectivism and have absolutely nothing to read -- cardboard characters, and a lovely neoconservative teen fantasy with completely fucked up women (also a hallmark of The Fountainhead). It does make a handy paperweight though.
On The Road is another book I found completely not worth finishing because it just about his egocentric ass wandering around the country and taking drugs, and it's a boring account.
Stiff is an amusing, factual read, though don't read it while eating or before if you have a vivid imagination or a sensitive stomach. I liked it though.
Neuromancer isn't very interesting except as an historical artifact. It's where the term "cyberspace" was first coined. Otherwise I found it forgettable and the whole woman = port thing offensive.
I haven't read Princes in the Tower, though I can say that Alison Weir's writing is very readable and vivi
Did you notice that Rushdie is both in your last year's list and your ten years' list? When you buy it TWICE and don't read it, that's really bad.
Oh, and I hated Wide Sargasso Sea, so there you go.
Harlan Ellison ranted at a panel a few years ago about how half his library is books that he's never read, and he fully expects to die with books still left to read. Having finished all the books in the house, according to him (and me) is a sign of failure.
Haha... you know, now I don't feel so bad. I too buy McSweeney's and don't bother to read it. I did try with the "Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales", but everything I read in it was a depressing horror story. I haven't bought an issue in a while, but the ones I have sit pristinely on my shelf, being unread.
Some other people have made some good suggestions - do take the trouble to read Neuromancer and Name of the Rose. The movie didn't feature an "early twenties" Christian Slater - nope, he was a bopper! a teen! I don't recall his exact age.
Finally... I don't think "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" has been out for twenty years, so you probably have fifteen, tops, on that one. It came out in the late 80s, IIRC. (I read it in 1988 or 89.)
If I had the choise between those books and sex. I'd choose sex.
Yeah, the poster Downwood and I discussed LDTTOTS in a later post and figured out it was published in '88. I don't want to start a 15 year category for it, so it's going to stay where it is.
You can sell "Lost", it's boring as hell. Just sell it.
And scapegoat has been sitting unread on my shelves for at least 5 years, but I'm sure I'll read it eventually.
Good list!
Don't know how I stumbled upon your site, but happy I did.
I've read a good number of the books on your "unread" shelves, and I have to commend you in your decisions. You've saved yourself a lot of time that would offer only modest return.
Two exceptions, however. "The Crossing" is a fine book -- one that might still be read 200 years from now.
"Hard Times" is wonderful, too. I read it for insight into the industrial revolution, and it didn't disappoint. The humor is great.
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