Maria challenges me to a blog post on ‘books I will never read’, as suggested by this Guardian article. Hers is there. Here’s mine:

The Fault in our Stars. It started out as a book I just didn’t make time to read, and then slowly evolved into a weird personal challenge to myself that I would simply never read this book, no matter how vociferous the claims that I really should. No particular reasons other than a vague sense of teenage rebelliousness.

The Luminaries. I always try to read all Booker-winners. But ain’t nobody got time for that flipping mahoosive book. UNLESS she wins the Nobel at some point.

Faulkner. Can’t. Sorry. I’ve tried. It’s just – argh!

Hemingway and Steinbeck, been there, NO.

Piers Plowman and The Faerie Queene, but I don’t think anyone’s actually read those. The Pilgrim’s Progress? ha, no.

Anything labelled New Adult. I did try. Most commercial YA (oh God, I’m going to get lynched). Fifty Shades and copycats.

Authors whose books I won’t read because they said idiotic things: Martin Amis, who thinks you have to have a ‘brain injury’ to write for children, and VS Naipaul, who thinks women can’t write. Yeah I know, no author’s perfect. But there you go, I just can’t be bothered with those two bigots.

Like Masha, I’ll probably never read the sequels to:

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

The Hunger Games

The Knife of Never Letting Go

Eragon

A Wrinkle in Time

(and many more I’m forgetting)

Some of those I actually enjoyed, but I feel one is enough. Same with The Giver and Holes, which are two of my favourite books in the world, but I somehow don’t want to read the sequels.

Like Masha, I won’t read any more Balzac, George Sand, Dan Brown, and I certainly won’t bother either with any more Sade. Paulo Coelho is also out of the question.

I’m not sure why, but I feel I’m unlikely to ever read Atlas Shrugged, Catch-22, The Leopard, Suite Française, The Road, On the Road.

And I’m not sure I’ll ever manage to finish Ulysses.