There are, I'm depressed to say, many classics I have not yet read and will probably never get around to, though I will not stop short of hospitalizing myself in the attempt.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There are books all around me... I don't read as much as I used to, but I always have a book or two going.
I went through a whole phase when I was younger of being obsessed with Tolstoy and Kafka and Camus, all those really, beautiful, dark depressing books.
After college, I went on a real big classics kick. Read everything by Faulkner, Hemingway, Woolf, Proust, Dostoevsky. And that classics train dropped me off at 'Dracula.' Halfway through it, I understood I'd never be going back, never 'leaving' the genre again. Since then, I've been on a fairly strict horror diet.
I remember the absolute joy I used to get out of writing. The purity of imagining something and then putting it down on paper - it was such a pleasure. I read whatever I could get my hands on, from 'Great Expectations' to 'The Thorn Birds.'
The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or stylish writing. Some of my favorites are 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy, 'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides, 'The Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri, and 'Blindness' by Jose Saramago.
As a writer, I'm always aware of the fact that there are so many books out there.
I like those stories that capture the brutality of life, but there's still some kind of melancholy romance.
I try not to think about the trope or whether or not my books are like 'Fifty' or 'Crossfire' or any other series.
'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.
I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.