I'm fairly sure that there are hundreds of books I 'ought' to have read, but for one reason or another never have. Lots of the "classics" that I can't get on with, often because the language in them is too archaic or whatever. I've read almost nothing by Virginia Woolf or Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence or James Joyce. I've read nothing (other than what I had to for my Latin O level) by any of the Roman or Greek authors (ooh, except Tacitus writing about ancient Britain), and hardly anything by French greats such as Camus, Sartre, Voltaire, Baudelaire etc.

I should also have read stuff by Mrs Gaskell, seeing as my Mum wrote a book about her, but I can't get on with all that 19th Century chick-lit (including Austen and the Brontes).

Ulysses. I think I ought to try reading it a page a day, but even that might prove too much. The thing to do would be to set up a blog www.ulyssesapagedaily.blogspot.com and enlighten the world with one's impressions every 24 hours. "Page 219: Erm, still not getting it. I'll try and sleep on it and get back to you tomorrow."

The list is way too long. Like almost all the stuff Boris mentions. And almost everything else pre-1920, too.

My list is a lot like Boris' - no Joyce or Lawrence - and I have read a few things by Camus and one thing by Satre (Nausea) but not much. I've never finished [i]Moby Dick[i]. I couldn't get through Catch 22 and haven't read much of more recent literary greats - nothing by Roth or Mailer or Delillo (is that his name?). I'm a failure as a human being, really.

Another one who occurs to me, who everyone seems to be raving about but who I've yet to grapple with, is Primo Levi. I'm sure I will get round to reading something by him sooner or later, but he's always been off my radar when looking for new material to read.