top five novels i should read, but never will.

I know someone who just got a job at The Strand, and according to him you have to pass a literature test before they’ll hire you. After hearing a few of the questions, I quickly realized that I probably would have failed.

The one question I can remember is, “Who wrote the The Master and the Margarita?” For some reason, I thought the answer was Herman Wouk, the author of my all time favorite historical novel, The Winds of War. Turns out, this is totally, painfully, horrendously incorrect. I was drunk at the time, and this is the only excuse I can offer.

Am I really unqualified to work at The Strand? (When drunk, I’m probably unqualified to work anywhere except a strip club, but that’s beside the point.) Whatever. I'm not ashamed of my obviously less than perfect literary knowledge. And neither are lots of other people, apparently. To prove it I have compiled here, for your reading pleasure, a list of the top five novels I should read, but never, ever will:

1. Ulysses. I know I should want to read it, especially since the Modern Library ranks it as the #1 best book ever in the history of books, or something like that. But I read an excerpt of Ulysses for a class, and all that happened was that the main character trimmed his fingernails. Apparently, this is an incredibly meaningful passage. Suffice it to say, I found it dull. Being rather fond of books with plots, I can't imagine I'll ever get around to starting, much less finishing, Ulysses.

2. David Copperfield. Don't get me started on Dickens. Authors who serialized their work make me miserable. And when the second sentence of your book is: "To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night," how do you expect anyone to get even remotely excited? I just know I won't make it past page 15.

3. Moby Dick. While Melville seems like he was a pretty badass kind of guy, we don’t have a good literary relationship. The monstrous length of Moby Dick frightens me; I barely made it through Bartelby the Scrivener, and that was a short story. A really smart friend of my Mom's told her he re-read Moby Dick every single year, but I’ve discovered that he’s sort of a blowhard, so I'm pretty sure his opinion doesn't count.

4. Gravity's Rainbow. After reading about 20 pages of The Crying of Lot 49 for a class in college, I decided Pynchon is not my cup of tea. I mean, what’s it really all about, Thomas? Are all those suggestive clues really meaningless? I, for one, don’t enjoy being stuck inside the mind of a paranoid recluse.

5. The Scarlet Letter. I know scads of people who read this in high school and no one has ever said they enjoyed it. I consider myself fortunate to never have been assigned it, so why would I waste my valuable time reading it now? (I wasted enough time, thank you very much, watching the movie, which was horrendous.) And Puritans? They kind of freak me out, unless they’re associated with either of these two things: Thanksgiving or the Mayflower Compact. The Scarlet Letter, as far as I know, mentions neither.

Edit: Since a couple smart people apparently do like The Scarlet Letter, it's coming off the list. I'll have to think of something else I really, really don't want to read.