Confessions of a Bibliophibian
This is where the word bibliophibian comes from.
We define bibliophibian as an organism that can live in the real world and in books but confuses the two.
* * * * *
Remember, it’s not them, it’s us.
1. We don’t love the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Like everyone else, we read One Hundred Years of Solitude in college and admired it then, mostly because people kept telling us how great it was.
There is no photo because we don’t know where our copy is, or even if we still have it.
2. We’ve never finished a novel by Javier Marias, and not from lack of trying.
3. We’ve never finished Moby Dick, but we got halfway through by downloading the Big Read featuring Tilda Swinton, Benedict Cumberbatch and others reading the chapers.
4. We’ve never finished a book by Haruki Murakami, and not for lack of trying.
5. We like the stories of Vladimir Nabokov, but we read Lolita out of a sense of obligation.
6. We’ve never gotten past page 100 of In Search of Lost Time, but we still think we’ll get around to it.
Funny glasses, about Php70 each, from the Halloween costume section of National Bookstore.
Confess and be absolved!
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 14th, 2014 at 11:53
Middlemarch for me. Despite finding it surprisingly modern in sensibility (for a novel set in Victorian rural England) and despite thinking that the central character Dorothea and Elizabeth Bennet (whom I love) are kindred spirits, I couldn’t get past page 144. Also skipped the poetry bits in A.S. Byatt’s Possession.
October 14th, 2014 at 12:38
I <3 the eyeglasses!
October 14th, 2014 at 17:11
1. We’ve never read Graham Greene. We have The Power and the Glory, and The Heart of the Matter but for some reason, we keep delaying them.
2. We’ve never finished Ulysses. We created a support group. Everyone in the group (composed of two) didn’t reach the halfway mark.
3. We are miserable because we cannot finish Les Miserables. We created a support group. Everyone in the group finished it, except me.
4. We don’t want to read Haruki Murakami because of his immense popularity.
5. We don’t understand William Faulkner half of the time but we think we like him.
6. We feel annoyed for not thoroughly enjoying J.M. Coetzee and Edith Wharton.
7. We don’t like James Joyce and Henry Miller.
October 14th, 2014 at 20:34
1. I love Proust because I love reading about his life, but I couldn’t get past 2/3 of Swann’s Way translated by Lydia Davis. I am still trying.
2. I wanted to read Gravity’s Rainbow and even downloaded a reading guide, but couldn’t get past page 50.
3. I haven’t read anything by Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.
4. I love Kierkegaard and Nietzsche but only because I’ve read simplified/ summarized/explained versions of their texts. I find their actual works difficult.
5. I am not too crazy about the novels of Garcia Marquez, either, though I’ve read One Hundred Years of Solitude twice to actually get what it’s about. What I do love is the Erendira story; I’ve read it so many times and I think it’s his best work.
6. I’m not a fan of Nobel Prize winners although I enjoyed Beloved by Toni Morrisson, Augie March by Saul Bellow and Lord of the Flies by Golding.
October 14th, 2014 at 22:37
I have only read one Filipino novel aside from Noli and Fili. (They don’t count because they’re required reading.) It’s one of the Cubao books by Tony Perez.
October 14th, 2014 at 23:15
Despite being a geek, the only Tolkien I have ever read was The Hobbit. I have never read The Lord of the Rings, or even seen the films.
I have also had a copy of A Game of Thrones sitting on my bookshelf for years and years but have never started reading it.
October 15th, 2014 at 10:44
1. I can’t bring myself to like Henry James. Or Maya Angelou.
2. I wish I understood John Donne more. And Jorge Luis Borges: I liked Labyrinths but it doesn’t mean I grasped everything.
3. I haven’t read Samuel Butler and JMG Le Clezio and I feel I should for some unknown reason (to appear learnèd and scholarly and intelligent perhaps).
4. I can’t finish an Anthony Trollope and I feel I should because see #3.
5. I actually liked The House of Spirits. But nothing else by Allende.
6. There’s this author I started to read only in college because the classmate I had loathed in high school loved her work. I regretted this decision (following such a silly principle made me miss out on a lot of things): I could’ve enjoyed and appreciated her work earlier if not for this stupid prejudice. So I compensated for it and ended up completing her series of books and following her columns and this blog.
You can kill me now.
October 15th, 2014 at 10:59
P.S. I don’t think Loathèd Classmate still reads Said Author. Anyway, I don’t loathe Classmate anymore but have stopped caring altogether. Found out indifference and detachment can actually free you immensely. (Yup, just felt like explaining myself further there.)
October 15th, 2014 at 11:44
I collect Pulitzer Prize winning novels but had hard time reading most of it and had to reread them. Reading The Goldfinch now
October 15th, 2014 at 17:05
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road: Finished only 1/3 or 1/4 of the book; just couldn’t care much for the characters. (Though I really love that long “mad ones” quote.)
October 15th, 2014 at 19:15
I started reading Anna Karenina when a guy I met for the first time said it was his favorite book. More than a year later and I’m still not halfway through. I’m reading it from an Ipad though, I think I’ll get through it quicker if I just buy a paperback version. (yes, excuses excuses)
October 16th, 2014 at 10:24
Here are the books I struggled with. So difficult to finish!
Gravity’s Rainbow. The Executioner’s Song. Moby Dick. Absalom, Absalom! Les Miserables. Remembrance of Things Past.
I can brag that I have read all the major novels of Henry James!
October 16th, 2014 at 17:39
I don’t really like James Salter. I think I’ll appreciate it more if he wrote, in complete sentences, about people who don’t have sex all the time.
Angus: Totally agree with you on Faulkner. Notable example: Light in August. A hard read for me, with the slang and all. “Set down.” “Sho.” I think I’m being pretentious when I say I really enjoyed it. (But I think I did!)
Ofaj: I read Gravity’s Rainbow, cover to cover, but I didn’t know what the story was all about. People who think they understand it are probably pretending.
Balquis: Borges reminds me to take up Latin sometime. It adds to one’s sophistication.
This is a really interesting thread, Miss JZ.
October 17th, 2014 at 10:42
1. Read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead in college. Pretended I was Dominique and the guy I was seeing then was Roark.
2. Slogged through Infinite Jest. Will probably not read anything by David Foster Wallace, bless his soul, in the foreseeable future.
3. I can’t stand Hemingway.
October 19th, 2014 at 08:56
I read GGM’s 100 Years… Every year. I love it. I also love Erendira, but his other works, not so much.
Murakami’s 1Q84: Nagpumilit magmakapal. HM’s short stories are weird and I like most of them. His novels mostly are eh. I bought a hardbound copy of his latest novel because it was designed by Kidd.
I attempted to read Salter last year but the intro written by another writer deterred me.
I was blown away by Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair and By Benjamin Tammuz’s Minotaur. I read Minotaur twice in the month I bought it. I plan to memorize it in its entirety to keep me company during idle moments.
For ofaj who loves Erendira: http://eruannecalie.tumblr.com/post/100081884219/a-study-in-progress-i-missed-ink-im-allergic