Novels Novelists Have Skipped

J.D. McClatchy
Hardly a day goes by that I don't see somewhere in print an impassioned reference to some classic I haven't read. Why, having read so many over so many years, am I still embarrassed to be caught short? Am I certain that Oblomov will change my life the way Middlemarch once did? That Luis Vaz de Camões could rival Hart Crane? The fact is, at the age of 62, I know I don't have enough time left to read all the books I wish to or should. So, I've shrugged, and narrowed my regrets. And though I'd most like to spend my time now properly rereading classics I encountered at too young an age to fathom, I am also determined to make my way through a few (I will confess only a little of my shame) not yet read: The Tale of Genji, the notebooks of Paul Valéry, and dozens of Balzac novels.

Slate: The Great Books We Haven't Read, October 30, 2007
Art: Reading in Night, 2005, Li Jin

Picture: Paris, 2004, George Pervov
See also: Moscow House of Photography: The Russian Vision on Europe