Five Things I Haven't Read

And over at Kevin Drum's blog I see this new meme, in which I list five books I'm vaguely embarrassed to admit to having never read. OK then....

1. Tom Sawyer. This is perpetually on my "to read soon" list, and yet, somehow I never read it. Maybe I'll read it...soon. (A true story from my educational youth that I never tire of repeating is that I was in the so-called "advanced class" in English in tenth grade, which meant that while the "normal" classes were being required to read Mark Twain, I was required to read Ordinary People. I've always believed that my teacher that year should have had her license revoked on that basis alone.)

2. Dracula by Bram Stoker. I actually started reading this once, and I was enjoying it, but my reading was interrupted somehow -- I think I went on a trip and forgot to take it with me, or something like that. And I never finished it. Since I love horror and since it's one of my writing genres, it seems that I really should have read this one by now.

3. The Brothers Karamazov. I swear, this thing sits on my shelf, taunting me: "I ain't goin' anywhere, bitch!" Someday this book and I are going out into the wilderness, and one of us is coming back alive.

4. The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz. Another book that is eternally on my "read it soon, dumb-ass" list. That I haven't read the autobiography of my own favorite composer strikes me as a major failing of character.

5. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. When I get back from the wilderness after slaying Brothers K, this one's next.