(no subject)

[fajrdrako]

From Booking Through Thursday:

1. How many unread books do you have in your house, right now? Clearly, an estimate will do.

Hundreds. Not many hundreds. Maybe 200 or 300?

To the best of your recollection, what is the OLDEST unread book in your collection? How long has it been waiting?

The Epic of Gilgamesh. It's been waiting almost 5,000 years. But I have read the Iliad after it's been waiting about 3,000 years so I think I'm ahead of the game.

Do your TBR books (that's "To Be Read," if you didn't know) haunt you, make you feel guilty that you haven't read them yet?

Not usually. I don't read for the sake of duty, and I'm always reading something, and anyway, who really cares but me? Guilt would be silly. But sometimes... I feel a vague sense of responsibilty to the impulse that led me to acquire a book in the first place. Sometimes I simply lose or forget whatever that impulse was, and give away the book. But that is fairly rare.

Comments

[wanderinunicorn.livejournal.com]

I have about thirty volumes which I've got from my mother about six years ago - all the Nobel price winner for literary works. I haven't read anyone of them (exept a couple I've read in my teens).I feel guilty not to read them yet but I have still another interests.

The Epic of Gilgamesh - it's the oldest Epic at all,isn't it? I wanted to study archeology (as well as history) so I've read once about it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't even know whether the Nobel prize winners for literature would be interesting or not, or which ones I've read. I should look up the list. Didn't Knut Hamsen win once, or am I making that up?

The Epic of Gilgamesh - it's the oldest Epic at all,isn't it?

So they say! I've owned it for a while but have still only read a few bits and pieces of it.

[wanderinunicorn.livejournal.com]

Didn't Knut Hamsen win once, or am I making that up?

I haven't found him, I had to climb on the ladder to search. Maybe are my Nobel prize winner not complete.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I looked him up on wikipedia: "Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952) was a leading Norwegian author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1920." Somehow he sticks in my mind as being "Nobel prize winner I've read" though I haven't actually read the novel that he won for, Growth of the Soil. I don't even know how easy it is to find the translations of his novels now - not very, I would guess.

The wikipedia list of Nobel Prize winners for literature is here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_for_Literature). I am embarrassed how very few of them I have read. Maybe half a dozen out of almost a hundred? Now, wait, I misjudge myself: now I count more carefully I see I've read at least something by 26 of the names on the list, though I'm not sure about Pearl S. Buck or Luigi Pirandello. (It may just be that I've read so much about them, I thought I'd read them?) I'm pleased and a little surprised to see Rabindranath Tagore on the list, and there's Henryk Sienkiewicz - whom I have not read, but not for lack of trying. I didn't know Saul Bellow counted as Canadian - ?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_Hamsun)

[wanderinunicorn.livejournal.com]

am embarrassed how very few of them I have read

Me too, only a few.

I didn't know Saul Bellow counted as Canadian - ?

I've never heard of him before. What a shame! Now I see my volumes aren't complete. My mother died 1999 - so I haven't the later winner. There is for example austrian author Elfriede Jellinek who won recently - I've also never read her work. The Austrian hate her because her work has a very critical atitude towards this nation and this land... Elias Canetti was actually an Austrian he won for his novel "Die Blendung" which I've read and it's a gorgeous work. I see also an another polish author Wladyslaw Reymot - I've read his work in the school. I've also read a few novels by Thomas Mann - a German writer - I think he write "The Death in Venice"....o my God I'm not a cultivate person.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I read a Saul Bellow novel once. I didn't dislike it but I don't recall its title. (Blush.)

The Austrian hate her because her work has a very critical atitude towards this nation and this land...

That's probably a sign of honesty and insight. Is there any nation that can't be criticised?

"The Death in Venice"....o my God I'm not a cultivate person.

Me too! Hee. But I confess: I read the book after I saw the movie.