Actually, the British Telegraph asks which great book are you ashamed of never having read. That narrows it somewhat. Many have I not read; few are so essential to a cultured life that I would drop my head in shame over not having read them.
The usual suspects are mentioned: War and Peace, Ulysses, Shakespeare (though why one should be embarrassed at not having read Shakespeare is beyond me), and Dante's Divine Comedy.
No one admitted shame over omitting Boswell's Life of Johnson, Nabokov's Lolita, or Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited from their to-read list. Or how about something a little less predictable? Have you read Stoker's Dracula? Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday? Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim?
If not, please make haste to do so! Meanwhile, I'll try to slog through Ulysses. Yes, I know, it's a work of genius.
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