Heresy and Humiliation

I get the feeling that you'd get through QED in about 15 minutes. It's a very tiny book, and a quick read if you already know anything about it. (I didn't at the time, and spent a lot of time trying to link his analogies to the real theory.)

I'd really love to read the three volumes of the Feynman Lectures, but I don't have any time to between university during the year and REUs during the summer. Perhaps once I get tenure?

Ditto with Goldstein - somehow managed to get through undergrad and grad school without formally learning Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics!

I've never read a Dragon magazine too, despite having gamed for 15+ years.

"When they started doing Lensman reissues in the mid-90's, I leafed through a few in the bookstore, and I just couldn't see paying money to read one."

You did better than me. I bought one and then couldn't finish more than a chapter or so.

I've never read Heinlein. Everything about him I've encountered screams "ASSHOLE", and if I want libertarian screeds, I can subject myself to Rand.

Oh, why not.

I've never read any Pratchett. Nor do I even have any desire to do so.

I'm a computer geek, and I've never read the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy. I've also never read the Dune trilogy, and I HATE Star Trek! I'm also not much into Tolkien, and I too have never read a Potter, and have only seen one Potter move, on DVD.

I read one of those Lensman books once--ONCE. Trust me, you are better off avoiding them.

I've gotten the impression that many people get through undergraduate and graduate physics programs without taking classical mechanics at Goldstein's level. Its just not cool. (I'm not cool.)

I think the proper analogous physics parlour game is to say what important book you tried to read but couldn't understand, even though you're supposed to know the material.

Moby Dick.

I also haven't ready Feynman's QED, but I have read The Elegant Universe.

I have never seen The Blues Brothers all the way through. Or Citizen Kane, for that matter.

I have never read 1984. I just read Brave New World a few weeks ago. I have also never read A canticle for Liebowitz or anything by Larry Niven or Joe Haldeman.

I have a bachelor's degree in math and I have never taken a class in differential equations. Apparently, it wasn't a requirement for the degree, and it always conflicted with a chemistry class I needed.

Despite being a libertarian since my teens, my only exposure to Ayn Rand's writing has been reading the first few pages of The Fountainhead several months ago, to which I didn't have a strong reaction one way or the other.

I've never made it through a Terry Pratchett book. I get those recommended to me all time. I've also never read a Harry Potter. I don't even like very much on the fantasy side of the scifi/fantasy section for adults so I can't see being impressed by a kids fantasy book.

I got through graduate school in philosophy without having read Critique of Pure Reason. It continues to be low on my to-read list.

I have never read: Wind in the Willows; any of the Harry Potter stuff; any of the Narnia stuff; any of the Hitchhiker's Guide stuff; 1984. In all cases I've at least picked up one of the books and read a few pages before deciding it's not my cup of tea.

This is in the "Feynman wasn't all that" category: I must've seen half a dozen different recommendations of Magic for Beginners that picked out the title story as the best in the collection (including, IIRC, our host's), but I didn't care for it much at all. My favorites were "The Hortlak", "Stone Animals" and "The Canon". YMMV.

A couple of years or so ago, I had occasion to draw up a list of 18 "classic" papers in my field as recommendations for a journal club. Of the eight papers on that list that were published before 1970, I have read only one--the one that was actually read in journal club that semester. (For the curious, it was the paper which announced the discovery of the radiation belts: J. A. Van Allen et al. (1959), J. Geophys. Res. 64, 271.)

Granted, our library doesn't have MNRAS from all the way back to 1860 (the oldest paper on my list); I've previously had to obtain a 1924 MNRAS paper by interlibrary loan. But I'm pretty sure they have PRL from 1961 (#4), and my officemate was able to obtain Nuovo Cimento from 1962 (#5). Even worse, I know I can borrow the Journal of Geophysical Research from 1963 (#7) whenever I want, without walking even 10 meters outside my office. I don't know about the other three papers.

In the heresy category, I'll step up and claim that Shakespeare ain't all that.

I've read, studied, or seen performed his Hamlet, Othello, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, and one or two others I keep forgetting. And I never saw any of the geeenius that would justify his present position in English language pedagogy.

I wouldn't go so far as to claim that he's no good -- serious attention over hundreds of years is worth some respect -- but I suspect he is just a talented artist with a posse rather than a real genius.

I've never read Macbeth(started once). I'm actually a bit of a Shakespeare fan and have read quite a few, including some of the less known (As You Like It, for instance). But I never got around to Macbeth, which is funny since that seems to be the one that everyone has to read in high school.

Also, I think Feynman is overrated.

Hersies: Clapton's rock and roll work is a million times better than his pedestrian blues. James Ellroy's books are mannered and unbelievable. I didn't like Chappell's sketch show, but loved his standup act.

Embarrassing Omissions: To Kill a Mockingbird, Selfish Gene, everything by Jim Thompson.

Even though I recommend it to other people, I've never used Kittel's Intro to Solid State Physics. I have, however, flipped through some pages of his Thermal Physics. Does anybody else do that? Recommend something they've never used?

I've also never read Harry Potter, but as someone in their 30's, I don't feel that's bad. I did read every Encylopedia Brown book when I was a kid though.

In terms of real literature, my biggest gap is Moby Dick. In high school, the only Melville we read was Billy Budd, Sailor, and I vowed to never move beyond that.
I regret never reading any James Joyce, but I don't know. Nor do I intend to fix that problem any time soon.

There is a lot of classic literature I've never read. I can't think of many titles off the top of my head that "everyone has read" (or should have). I didn't read Wuthering Heights or Othello for 12th grade English. Primarily because I moved over the summer and wasn't told about the summer reading until I picked up my schedule five days before school started, despite the school having my address and having been enrolled since the spring. This didn't hurt my grade; we watched the movies and read parts of Othello out loud. I still did better than most of my classmates. I think, they are the only Cliff Notes I own, except for Calculus (bought as a refresher, not Cliff Notes brand).

In terms of classes, I got my BS and MS completely avoiding Geochemistry! Chemistry was OK but lines formed at the geochem prof's door the first week of classes and never let up. I unfortunately also never took a seismic processing class because of course conflicts.

Out of curiosity - what all is covered in an undergrad Optics course? I started out a secondary Ed major and the suggested Physics elective was Optics. I took Intro to Modern Physics because I had reflection and refraction under control.

#16: "Also, I think Feynman is overrated."

Insert pretentious namedropping anecdote here as Chad expects me to do, but which I hereby outsource.

I read almost everything by Shakespeare, but never ever started the Henry VI trilogy, or Henry VIII, or the scenes that he allegedly ghost-wrote for Fletcher and Beuamont or whomever.

I literally could not get byond the first sentence of The Da Vinci Code. Unbearable sentence. Threw book aside. Movie kind of fun. Middle-brow pretending to be High Brow.

Although I read every line of Russell & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica in the eternal summer between High School and Caltech, I've never been able to get through more than one page of Newton's Principia Mathematica. I just can't get into the mindset of everything being geometric ratios, in the archaic Euclid-style presentation. Nor could I get through more than a page of any of Newton's weird Alchemy or Theology, which exceeds his Physics by an order of magnitude, and will soon all be online in searchable color PDFs. But novels ABOUT Newton are great fun.

Tried and failed with the sequel to Don Quixote, except for the recursive metafiction part where Don Quixote encounters a character who claims to be Cervantes.

They tell me he wrote it to stop the fan fiction.

The least-read 30-page Nobel-prize-winning PhD diisertation is the one by John Forbes Nash, Jr. In one conference paper presentation after another, about Nash equilibria, my coauthor and I ask people who actually read the Nash to raise their hands. Sometimes one person out of 30 raises a hand.

Can't get through any book by Toni Morrison. So shoot me. I'm not sexist or racist, but it just drives me up a wall.

Can't get through most Science Fiction pretending to be Mainstream or Literary by Big Name Writers of Mundania who believe that they have invented the wheels I grew up on.

Never survived through these Great Books, among many:

Sophocles --
* Ajax
* Electra
* Philoctetes

Aristophanes --
except for Lysistrata and his space-war scene in Cloudcookooland.

Skipping ahead a few centuries, in reverse Chronological Order:

John Maynard Keynes --
* Economic Consequences of Peace

Thomas Mann --
Loved Death in Venice, hated Loulou

Most of Henry James. As I read his novels, I am amazed by the artistry, the sheer command of language, the profound social and psychological nuance, and the glaring sense that there is no genuine passion and nothing ever happens.

Friedrich Engels --
* Manifesto of Communist Party
I've tried, especially at a grad school with a famous Communist economics department. But I could not get past the fact that this dude owned a factory, and didn't believe that automation would increase productivity and wealth.

Hegel --
* Philosophy of Right
* Philosophy of History

Leibnitz --
* Monadology
Absolute genius. Absolutely nuts.

John Milton --
Loved Paradise Lost. Found Areopagitica relevant to the internet wars. Couldn't get into:
* Comus
* Il Penseroso
* L'allegro
* Lycidas

Chaucer --
Loved
* Troilus and Cressida
* Canterbury Tales
Could not even get started with:
* Knight's Tale
* Book of the Duchess
* House of Fame
* Parliament of Fowls
* Legend of Good Women
* Truth
* Gentilesse
* Against Women Unconstant

St Thomas Aquinas --
* Summa Theologica
* Summa Contra Gentiles
Genius. makes my brain ache. So send me to Hell.

Picasso sucks.

I confess to not having read comment #20 all the way through.

Didn't care much for The Watchmen. Have read a number of Pratchett books, but don't think he's absolutely hilarious and brilliant. Prefer Regatta De Blanc to Zenyatta Mondatta. Have seen, in total, maybe three minutes of anime in my entire life.

Never read Harry Potter or LOTR, never seen any of the movies based thereon. Never read 1984 or Brave New World.

Prefer Regatta De Blanc to Zenyatta Mondatta.

That just means you have good taste.

Prefer Regatta De Blanc to Zenyatta Mondatta.

That just means you have good taste.

In the SF genre, not only have I not read E.E. "Doc" Smith, but I have not read most of Heinlein's work, not have I read much Clarke. I think I cannot call myself a fan (or is it slan?)

Brad@24: If you haven't read Doc Smith yet, give Galactic Patrol a try. And keep in mind that it's basically a crypto-homosexual love-affair between Kinnison and vanBuskirk, sort of a Brokeback Mountain in space. Here's a quote:

"Clamp a leg-lock around my waist, Kim," he directed, the flashing thought in no whit interfering with his prodigious axe-play, "and as soon as I get a chance, before the real tussle comes, I'll couple us together with all the belt-snaps I can reach--wherever we're going we're going together! Wonder why they haven't ganged up on me, too, and what that lizard is doing? Been too busy to look, but thought he'd've been on my back before this."

For Heresy, I'd offer:

1. Lord of the Rings isn't that good a book. Not a bad book, but maybe the most overrated book in bookstores today. Clearly better than many of the other fantasy books, but that's damning with very faint praise (I say this as an enthusiastic reader of fantasy). It's still better than the movies, though.

2. All of the Star Wars films are bad.

For Humiliating Omission, I haven't read I, Robot. I also haven't read The Elegant Universe (it came out after I'd maxed out on popular science, in which period I did read QED).

To Chad and a few others: The only part of Goldstein you really need to look at is the section on the use of the Poisson bracket in Hamilton's formalism. (Also his introduction of p and q, since this is where our notation for momentum in undergrad mechanics comes from.)

To Mike #1: I strongly recommend that you read the first chapter of Feynman volume 3 before taking a QM class (including "modern physics", but its probably too late for that). He does a great job of telling you how everything you know from classical mechanics is wrong, and the next few chapters are a great introduction to the way a graduate course looks at QM. The bulk of the textbook is good mainly for his examples once you have a firm grounding in basic physics.

Suggestion: re-learn E+M from the Berkeley volume 2 prior to taking a graduate course out of Jackson. Tells you most of what you need to know other than solving a PDE.

I have never read Gravitation, but it makes a great bookend on an office shelf. However, I bought it used from someone who had never read it for a class, so its not like I wasted much money on it.

Given that I'm only a physics groupie and not a physicist, I haven't read most of the physics stuff cited above. Though I have read Feynman's autobiography and saw Alan Alda in QED. I was a lit major and am an sf fan so I've read pretty much all the literature cited above. Embarrassing admissions: haven't read any Russian literature at all except some Chekov short stories. No War and Peace, no Dostoevsky.

Heresy: I've read Moby Dick and it's both dumb and boring. You guys don't bother. Also, I like late Heinlein novels. A position which I ably defended on a panel at a recent sf convention.

MKK

I never used Jackson as either an undergrad or a grad student.

Like many other authors, "Doc" Smith has a time when he's best read. In his case, the proper time is when you're around eleven years old. That is, fortunately, exactly when I read the Lensman books, and I've basically never picked them up again. I enjoyed them then; I wouldn't now.

In the SF and fantasy canons, I've never read Tolkien at all, just to pick one, and I have a number of gaps in my reading of the traditional classics. I've never read more than a few sentences of Hemingway, for example, and the same goes for Henry James.

As for Johan Larson's comment #15: while this is a view that does crop up from time to time, I think it's very likely wrong. As far as I can tell, Shakespeare really is a genius - although, as Martin Amis said, the fact that the greatest master of the English language turned out to be a playwright is definitely one of God's best jokes.

in particular, I've never read anything by E.E. "Doc" Smith

You are missing something, you poor, deprived, sad person.

If nothing else, it's fun to go through them and see:

a) Which of his lovely toys have since made it into the modern arcana of weapons, sensors and other military tools, and

b) Which of the more impossible things have since been incorporated into the devices we modern sci-fi fans take for granted.

You might be surprised how many are in (a). As for (b), Arthur C. Clarke once claimed that Smith "holds all the original Star Wars" patents, and I don't think he is far wrong.

Smith is the great granddaddy of all grandiose military science fiction technology. He is worth a read just to see where it all came from.

I also argue that there is much to appreciate in "Doc" Smith. I guiltily admit that I never read any of his day-job publications as a Food Chemist whose biggest project was how to better allow sugar to stick to donuts.

Books we have never read
Adrian Tahourdin
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25341-2647599,00.html
Pierre Bayard
COMMENT PARLER DES LIVRES QUE L'ON N'A PAS LUS?
162pp. Minuit. 15euros.
978 2 7073 1982 1

Pierre Bayard's elegant and witty essay on "How to discuss books that one hasn't read" (published in a series called "Paradoxe") addresses a subject that may interest readers of, as well as contributors to, the TLS: after all, can there be many reviewers who haven't at some point pronounced on books they have merely skimmed, or alluded to works that they are largely unfamiliar with?

*
Bayard's project is a serious one. He tells us, in his "Prologue", that he was born into a family who read little, that he himself has almost no appetite for reading and that, anyway, he cannot find the time for it. As a (fifty-two-year-old) professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII (and a practising psychoanalyst), he often finds himself obliged to comment on books he hasn't looked at. And yet "non-reading" is a taboo subject in the circles in which he moves. He lists three constraints that we all feel as readers: "The first of these constraints could be called the obligation to read. We live in a society . . . in which reading still remains the object of a form of sacralization", particularly where certain "canonical texts" are concerned: it is practically forbidden not to have read these. The second constraint "could be called the obligation to read a book in its entirety. If non-reading is frowned on, speed-reading and skimming are viewed in as poor a light". For example, "it would be almost unthinkable for professors of literature to admit - what is after all true for most of them - that they have merely skimmed Proust's work". Can this really be the case? If so, it's a dismaying thought - presumably Bayard has had some explaining to do to his colleagues since his book was published in France earlier this year. The third constraint, and the one which most of us would take as given, is the need to have read a book in order to be able to talk about it: according to Bayard, it is perfectly possible to have a fruitful discussion about a book one hasn't read, even with someone who hasn't read it either....