I saw a comment earlier that mentioned being a English Lit major and taking a lot of advanced classes in school but never having read a specific well known book. It got me thinking about how sometimes professors and teachers assume that the well known works are too obvious for advanced classes or had been already covered. So, they teach less celebrated works by the same author.
For instance, I was assigned pretty much everything D.H. Lawrence ever wrote, except Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Same with Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Yellow Wallpaper. Tons of Dickens, but never A Tale of Two Cities.
What are your examples of “I’ve read a ton of this author’s work except the most obvious book” and how do you feel about that? Did you go on to read the famous work?
by Relax007
8 Comments
I took a whole class on Dostoyevsky but we skipped Crime and Punishment, not because the professor thought it was obvious, just because he thought Fyodr’s other works were more interesting. I did eventually read it, and agree.
My best example would be Isaac Asimov. I own 7-8 short story collections by him and at this point I have read hundreds and hundreds of pages worth of his writing, but I haven’t read anything in the ‘Foundation’ and ‘I, Robot’ series. To be honest, I really enjoy his short-form fiction and until now, I haven’t considered getting his novels. At some point in the future, I would like to read those too, but for now I’ll let myself enjoy the short stories
I’ve read a bunch of King, but haven’t read The Stand, yet.
I was obsessed with Meg Cabot growing up, notably the Mediator series and Airhead trilogy, but I never read The Princess Diaries lol
I’ve read probably a majority of the books by Jack Higgins, which is somewhere around 40 novels that I’ve read of his, buy I’ve yet to pick up The Eagle Has Landed which put him on the map.
I’ve watched the movie and even have read the sequel
Kafka. I’ve read all his books but never got to Metamorphosis. Not deliberately, it’s just worked out that way. I FEEL like I’ve read it, the premise is so well known, referenced, referred to.
I think The Castle did for me, ended my desire to read Kafka. It was both a delight and a slog to wade through. Bureaucracy taken to it’s insane, and perhaps logical, limits. His works are there to remind me that I’m an insignificant cog in a machine that no-one knows how to run. That’s fine and even true but I have to get up tomorrow and go to work.
I’ve read all of Theodor Fontaine in English.
When I was in high school I read loads of Steinbeck, just not The Grapes of Wrath because of its reputation as being long, sad, and boring. That being said, I could see someone characterizing East of Eden in the same way and I loved that book. Now you have me wondering if I should make space for it in my TBR list.