Mindful Content: The Greatest Books I’ve Never Read

By Marcus Coates @homeinriyadh, 26th November 2020

Blog No. 9

Mendar Bouchali - Unsplash

“Call me Marcus. Some months ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would blog a little and experience the social media world.”

A Fishy Tale

Moby Dick has one of the greatest opening lines in literature. And one of my greatest achievements of last year was reading Herman Melville’s fishy tale.

I’d heard the famous opening line ‘They call me Ishmael’ so many times, along with hearing one-legged Captain Ahab’s sperm whale obsessions referenced so often that curiosity got the better of me and I decided to plunge into classic literary waters.

Now, putting aside Melville’s underlying theme of how revenge can consume you and all those around you, there are two other remarkable features of the novel.

The first is that Moby Dick is packed so full of incidental information on routines, equipment and whaling techniques used onboard the Pequod that I feel that if I ever gave up teaching, I could quite easily find employment on an 1800s whaling vessel with ease. I could really blag the interview with my accumulated knowledge of harpoons and reef knots.

The second, and the scariest feature of Melville’s masterpiece, is that it’s a whopper of a book; so much so, that one time I put my back out just lifting it off my bookshelf and had to lie down on a hard floor for a week and curse my obsession with the written word. This might seem a facetious reason to admire a book – but ask yourself this question … “When did I last fully engage with a whopper?”

Getting Your Hands Around a Whopper!

Jasmine Coro - Unsplash

I ask you this question because I’ve tried and failed over the years to read some of the heavyweight tomes on the classics list. True, I managed Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina when I was an energetic young man and got through George Elliot’s Middlemarch when I wasn't a father and had far too much time on my hands, but I gave War and Peace a wide berth (I'm far too ambivalent) and as for Joyce’s Ulysses, well, I’ve had several attempts at it over the years but have never made it past the first third of the novel in the company of Stephen Dedalus or Leopold Bloom as they wander around Dublin and let us know every detail of their day in a stream of consciousness: I mean, I haven’t got a clue what either of them got up to after midday (why did it get banned, where's all the sex?).

Now, I also love Charles Dickens and his quirky Victorian characters in such books as Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and Our Mutual Friend - who can forget Fagin, Bill Sikes, Miss Havisham or Mortimer Lightwood? - but ever since I delved into the world of Esther Summerson in Bleak House and followed her journey through the law courts of London and discovered – much to my dismay - that every other chapter was a tangled subplot, I’ve had to conclude Charles D was just doing it for the money to fill up 20 serialized episodes for his publisher.

My late review: Bleak House is bleak reading (and very, very long). I’d go so far as to say that if Dickens was alive today he wouldn’t be a novelist, he’d be a TV screenwriter, working for NBC or Fox on shows like Law & Order or Family Guy.

On my bookshelf, I possess a couple of other heavy tomes under the category of literary theory. These are both whoppers. One of them is Christopher Nolan’s The Seven Basic Plots. I always find it amusing that Nolan takes 738 pages of eight-point font text to explain how all stories can be simplified to seven basic plots … now that’s a lot of justification. Surely he could have summarised seven archetypes on seven pages? In fairness to Nolan, he does mention in his preface that he took thirty-two years to write the book … so he probably won’t mind if it takes me thirty-two years to read it!

And then there’s my copy of Literary Terms and Literary Theory by J. A. Cuddons that explains everything you’d ever want to know about, well, literary terms and literary theory, along with a couple of thousand extra items that you’ll never use (unless you’re a Cambridge Don, like Cuddons).

I keep promising myself I’ll read them both cover to cover one day; but really, I keep them on my shelf for self-defence purposes: if an intruder breaks into my apartment I’ll chuck Nolan and Cuddons at them and knock the intruder stone-cold with literature.

Help, My Attention Span is Shrinking!

Is it just me though, or do big books give you the willies, as well? Have I become superficial by choosing my reading matter these days - not by its literary pedigree - but on skinniness? Am I doomed to slender volumes, novellas, short stories, blogs, Blinkist summaries, tweets, TikTok clips, text message … will I end up reading lists of abbreviations only?

Jon Del Rivero - Unsplash

You see, that’s why we need the big tomes and the heavyweight writers who are willing to spend thirty-two years writing a single book. Reading a heavyweight is the bibliophile equivalent of taking part in an ironman triathlon. Anyone can manage a page-turner where some awesome SAS hero kills fifty or so enemies before having an epiphany that it’s family that really counts and heads off to Thailand to open an orphanage … but to enter the world of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus takes mental strength and resilience as you spend ten pages learning about their thoughts on breakfast ingredients. Embrace the big book folks, that’s what I say!

A Fishy Adaptation

Incidentally, for full disclosure, I didn’t read Moby Dick, I listened to it on audible during forty commuter journeys to and from my place of work. And by the way; in my adapted version of Moby Dick that I’m planning, I’d arrange for the Captain and the crew to take yoga and meditation sessions whilst at sea and call them ‘Pequod Yoga for the Revenge-Obsessed’ and I’d also give away a free yoga mat and box of chamomile tea with every crewmember signup. The climax of the novel - seven pages later - would be to call Captain Ahab up on to the deck, where the crew would present him with a lovely new leg fashioned from biodegradable plastic and a lime-scented candle for his cabin. We’d all convince him to forget about Moby Dick ... and the last line would be Ahab saying “Come on, crewmates, let’s head home to see our families.” And I’d say “You go ahead Captain Ahab, Ishmael and I are going fishing for a whopper.” THE END

And just for extra information (because I hate to finish a blog), the novels I’ve mentioned don’t even make it on to the top ten longest books written in English. Here’s the top three according to Listverse (click the link for the rest):

3. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (969,000 words - I read that one in 'Introduction to the Novel, Winter Term, 2011)

2. Sironia, Texas by Madison Cooper (1,100,000 - never read it)

1. Mission Earth by Ron Hubbard (1.2 million words! - maybe I'll try it on audio during a 1,000 commuter trips)

More blogs and recipes at: www.mc-mindful-content.com 😁✏️

"What's the longest book you’ve ever read?"

"How long did it take you to read it?"

"Were you exhilarated, fatigued, enlightened or unimpressed?"

"What's the book you've read the most times?"

"What's on the list?"