Top Ten Tuesday: Books I HAD To Buy That I Still Haven’t Read

I buy books like some people buy drugs. It is an addiction, and no, I can’t stop whenever I want.

Case in point: I sometimes buy books and never read them. They just sit there, taking up space and gathering dust, and I pass over them every time I need a new book to read. Why do I do this? Because I have a problem, people.

I have no excuse, so here, have a zombie shrug.

Here are some random books that I have purchased and never read:

The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis

I have read a lot of Lewis, but sometimes I feel snobby and pretentious with my little collection. I think that’s why I still have The Problem of Pain on my shelf. And every time I think about reading it, the title deters me.

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

I dislike Dickens, unless I’m reading/watching A Christmas Carol. But this past summer I saw The Dark Knight Rises, which director Christopher Nolan admitted was influenced by A Tale of Two Cities. Then this past Christmas I saw Les Miserables. I knew I’d never find the time to read Les Mis again, but for some reason buying Cities appeased me.

But it’s Dickens. Dickens!

Dubliners, James Joyce

I’ve read parts of it.

The Journals of Lewis & Clark

Sentimental, silly purchase I made while on a road trip across America after college. With my grandparents.

The Last Station, Jay Parini

The movie was good.

Merlin, Stephen R. Lawhead

I bought this, started reading it, and I’m 50% certain that I’ve read it before. Either that, or I’ve read another book that’s exactly like it about some other mythological character.

Several books on writing

I also have three books that I read for school and liked so much I decided that I had to own them, and then promptly never read them again:

Crime & Punishment, Fyoder Dostoevsky

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

Paradise Lost, John Milton

I need help, guys.

Do any of you have books that you just HAD to buy but have never read?

Week Ten – The End Is Here

Week 10: Books that I would bring if the world was going to be destroyed by aliens/cylons and we had to restart civilization as we know it. (ie: the basis of human knowledge and thought and civilization.)

Ah, what a way to end this meme. (Has it really been ten weeks of this?)

So, the world is going to be destroyed, is it? By aliens or cylons or a meteor crashing into us? Well, if the earth is destroyed, I’m going to assume that we’ll be heading out to space, and if so, then there is a book I would definitely be taking with me.

Plus, I could write for it. Oh, look at that — world’s destroyed, but I can still have job security.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

– Introduction

Thanks to the Guide, I’ll be well read on such subjects as the Babel fish; the dangers of Vogon poetry; the many uses of the towel; important slang; and the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

However, there are other books that I’ll have to pack to help in contributing to the rebuilding of civilization.

Books to Pack:

Religious
– The Holy Bible

Jubilare’s bringing Mere Christianity, so I’ll just find her when I need that.

Mythology:

– John Milton’s Paradise Lost
– C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia, and ‘Till We Have Faces
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince
– Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are

Politics:

Melpomene has this area covered, so I will not bother taking up space in my bag. However, I’m tempted to bring along The Communist Manifesto just to mix things up a bit.

Reference:

– Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
– Gray’s Anatomy, 40th edition

I’m no doctor, but I’d feel a lot better knowing this book would still be in existence.

– Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting

Just good sense to have this around.

– The Oxford English Dictionary

Books for the Moral Compass:

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
– Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
– Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
– Arthur Miller’s The Crucible
– The Diary of Anne Frank

I’m going to need a bigger bag.

Surely someone else will bring along Shakespeare, Homer, and Rowling, correct? And if anyone dares to try and save Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey, we’ll leave them to the Vogons.

Of course, if they like that filth, they might be immune to Vogon poetry. What a horrifying thought.

Well, that’s it then for this meme. Thanks a heap, bloggers, it’s been fun. We should do this again. Maybe we can grab some lunch at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.