Books I've Forgotten to Read

The statement every English major will inevitably encounter:

You must have read [insert so-called classic here]!

Well, I hate to disappoint you folks, but there is a good chance that I have never read that one for two reasons:

1. Let's do the math. Even though I have a degree in it, my schooling still stopped at 22 (so far). So let's say I read 10 required books per year in middle school and high school. Add to that those I've read in college. I probably took an average of two English classes a semester, averaging about 7 books per class. That's 112. Plus 40 is 152, and I have a feeling that's a generous number. Regardless, there are hundreds upon hundreds of classics I have yet to have the pleasure of enjoying.

2. And now for that word classic. Some classics are undisputed: Shakespeare's works, Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, and so on. But as you get to later time periods, you encounter more and more discord among the (intellectual) masses. Besides, English profs love to make an academic name for themselves by developing some theory on some completely unknown author. They then proceed to teach this author to students, thinking they are teaching something new when half of the time students haven't encountered the old.

That being said, I put together a little list of books I probably should have read (and probably should get around to reading):

- 1984, George Orwell
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
- Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
- Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
- The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
- Ulysses, James Joyce
- Sula, Toni Morrison
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville
- Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut