poliphilo

1. Middlemarch. I've read it twice, so I can't be accused of not giving it a fair go. I'll concede its greatness, but Eliot is just too high-minded for me- and if she has a sense of humour I don't remember stumbling across it.

2. Brave New World. I couldn't finish it. Firstly I thought it was very badly written and secondly I just didn't buy what Huxley was trying to sell me. Apart from BNW I quite like Huxley- and I've read his non-fiction with profit and enjoyment. I may be one of the few people to have read Island- which is a sort of a sequel to BNW. It's just as badly written but quite good fun. I think Huxley understood all sorts of things but the human race wasn't one of them

3. 1984: Orwell was consumed by self-loathing-and extended his loathing to the world at large and I just can't stomach him in sizeable doses. Also he was wrong about Kipling.

4. Almost anything by D.H.Lawrence: Like most of my generation I swallowed the hype about Lady Chatterley, read it and found I detested it- and have avoided Lawrence ever since. He was a fascist and that's all I've got to say on the subject. I say "almost anything" because I do rather like his poem "The Ship of Death".....