Confessions

I'm currently reading I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life, by Anne Bogel, my delightful sister-in-spirit and creator of the blog "Modern Mr. Darcy".  If you read my blog but haven't read hers, then you've made a mistake and you need to head over there immediately.  #lifegoals

One chapter in I'd Rather Be Reading focuses on the books that avid readers are ashamed to admit they haven't read.  That got me thinking: perhaps it's confession time.

The truth is that I haven't purposefully avoided any of these works.  Somehow, despite my high school English classes, college English major courses, and graduate school English major courses, I never encountered them.  In fact, I own many of them...I just haven't picked them up.  Admittedly, there are a few I began but then put down for one reason or another.  Yet there are so many books to read, and only this one life, so when I'm not captivated I'm quick to put the book down and choose another.

In my twenties, I would refuse to "quit" a book.  Haha!  She who thought she had all the time in the world to read!  Now I have two children and I'm nearing forty--my available reading time has quickly diminished!  So I'm a quitter.  But rarely do I intended to walk away from the book, never to return.  I'll come back again and again until I read that book, but in the meantime...

My Shameless List of Books I'm Ashamed I Haven't Read

Grapes of Wrath: Okay, so I've read selections from this one, and I've read almost every other Steinbeck novel.  But the truth is that I've faked having read this book on multiple occasions.  See, I'm already defensive.
Little Women
Persuasion
The Secret Garden
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Oliver Twist
The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
Sherlock Holmes (and I mean...any of it)
The Three Musketeers
Madame Bovary
The Pillars of the Earth
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Roots
Catch 22
1984
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Where the Red Fern Grows: Okay, I admit it.  I lied.  I've avoided this one.
Atlas, Shrugged
Any book in the series other than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Age of Innocence
Lord of the Rings: Caveat--I read the first book and half of the second.  I left off in the middle of a rather long poem, as I recall...

Now that I've unburdened myself, I ask you, dear readers--which shall I read first?