Of the book itself, I’ve never gotten past page one. The little I know, I read in critical papers that I scoured for tips with which I could throw my mother off the scent. So I know it’s about some dude named Santiago who ends up with a giant marlin’s skeleton. Oops, did I spoil it for you? Never mind, you’ll survive.

The most I can say about this book is that it has generated some of the craziest meta theories I ever read in which that dumb fish is everything from Christianity to God Himself. And the funniest fact I found out was that all the critics who loved it as a shining example of realism when it first came out, changed their minds once Hemingway began to pontificate about its layers of meaning. Ha ha, Hemingway. Couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you? But thanks for proving once and for all that critical opinion is still just one person’s fallible opinion whether your find it in the pages of The New York Times or your neighborhood newsletter.

The Tropic of Cancer (and Capricorn) by Henry Miller
Okay, I can’t blame this one on my mother. She’d probably rather I never read this one. But it weighs heavily on my mind that I haven’t read a book that George Orwell thought was one of the most significant books to be written in the 20th century.

I mean, Henry Miller has always seemed a part of that intensely self-conscious, envelope-pushing crowd that inhabited the middle part of the last century (necessary evil, I guess) but I do know that these two books are ones that I should read. Actually, I think I should read at least one book by all the writers Anais Nin took as lovers but Henry Miller will do for now. Lawrence Durrell, your time will come.

Problem is, I get the blahs just thinking about it. This is mainly a reflection of my own prejudice – I’m not a big fan of 20th century literature. I personally feel a significant portion of it is pretentious humbug, written with one eye firmly fixed on being “important”.
There! I said it and I mean it. It is entirely possible that Miller is not one of those writers but a little voice in the back of my head remains dubious. Whatever be the case, a mere glimpse of it is enough to give me an instant case of ennui.

***

So that’s my secret list. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t particularly feel guilty about them either. Not until my mother wants to know what I’m currently reading anyway.