Ruminations

A couple of weeks ago (yes I am very behind), the BBC published the results of a survey they conducted, on those books people commonly begin but never manage to finish.

The books?

1 Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
2 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
3 Ulysses, James Joyce
4 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis De Bernieres
5 Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
6 The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
7 The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
8 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
9 The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
10 Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’m embarrassed to say that of the whole list, I’ve only read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And in terms of books I’ve started but not begun, only the last three books in the list fit the bill: War and Peace, The God of Small Things, and Crime and Punishment.

I don’t really know why I didn’t manage The God of Small Things, because I found it very readable both times I tried to read it, but for some reason I didn’t manage to sustain the interest. As for War and Peace and Crime and Punishment, both fall into the I-should-read-this category, which tends to have a demotivating effect on me.

Of the other books in the list, I can’t say I’ve wanted to read them, or even tried. We used to play a game with Ulysses, of opening that mighty tome up on any page, reading the first (or last) sentence on the page, and trying to interpret any deeper meaning to it. I’m not sure that’s classified as reading, though.

I’m interested in reading Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, but The Satanic Verses has never appealed. Controversy, notoriety, or popularity doesn’t necessarily appeal to me. Thinking about it, I can’t really say what appeals to me, although I can say what doesn’t - as a rule, “chick lit”, romances, and anything that falls in the category of fanfic.

As for non-fiction, I’m hopeless when it comes to finishing these. If I finished even a tenth of the non-fiction books I pick up, I’m sure I’d be a better, if not better informed, person!