Are novels worth to read?

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I have been thinking about if novels are worth to read for a long time.

I like some history-based novel, or some very deep ones.

I also like some classics, classical romances...

For too popular novels, I prefer not to read them..

For recent days, I was reading The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid suns. I like them. I think they maybe the best from recent years( I have not read too many new novels, I used to not read them.)

How about contemporary novels?

Do you think novels are worth to read? And, if so, would you like to list some novels you like, please?

I am so curious!

P.S. Let's also discuss them please. I am waiting for your list, then I will write my own list. See how many of us have similar views...

Some yes, some no.

The lists vary depending on who you are, as so much else.

Having been forced through Ulysses, I would need very powerful incentives to turn another page of James Joyce.

Certain others [PBS, I keep mum] have been in various ways very important to me.

Unsually, if the Lit Professor is not forcing me, I know within a few pages whether this work, that author is of value / interest to me.

Indiscriminate reading, unless you are deliberately expploring to determine your limits, can be painful.

have you read midnights children?

I started reading Ulysses this morning

Focible reading is painful. As awful as Forcible-feeding. (Suffagettes I am not a feminist). And indiscriminate reading is the thing I would never do.

If I am forced by one to read my favourite novel, I would never read it again.

I haven't...Please not feel contemptuous to me. It is the next novel that I am going to read. I will read it immidiately when I finished Ulysses. I already want to read it since you mentioned it...

I have read its Introduction before..

However, I have read The Satanic Verse and Shame.

"If I am forced by one to read my favourite novel, I would never read it again."

Right - how often have I said / thought the same?

The literature courses is the American school system [I will speak to no other] have much to answer for. Fortunately for me, most of the authors they approve enough to teach [from 1900 on] are people whose work would not speak to me in any case.

Besides novels, are you into poetry? Your preferred poetry can tell a lot about you.

Shame I love
I used to say that Satanic Verses was his weakest novel (but then he wrote earth beneath her feet)

I have never like syllbus. Syllbus of the world are always simlilarly awful. It changed all the beautiful things, suffocated the spirit...

Poetry.. I tend to read Oriental poetry.

For Occidental poetry.. Homer. Sappho. Some Latin Poets....How about poets after them? I am curious about your ideas. I like some of them but not sure.

So curious about what novel do you like...(several examples??)

Some novels are worth reading, others not.

ruveyn

Sir...

Would you please to give me some examples?

I hesitate to do so. A novel you would like or dislike is predicated on a highly subjective basis. Since I do not know you personally, I would hesitate to recommend ( dis-recommend) any particular novel.

What is your taste. History based novels? Science Fiction? Utopian? Dystopian? Romance? Reality-noir? Novels about war? About adventure? Novels emphasizing action or stream of consciousness?

I dislike novels that appeal to sentimentality. I like novels about hard-headed, hard-hearted people who are more just than kind. Touch feely turns me off.

Novels about the spirit turn me off. The minute I hear people speak of or write of spirituality I reach for my phasor and it is not set to stun.

ruveyn

Ha, if I was asked to read novels I would gladly doing it all day long... Its second hand experience if not first..

Hey did you read Shantharam by Gregory David Roberts?

Thank you, sir. I will hesitate also if anybody ask me so.

Probably history-based romance? Utopian?

They should be hard to understand to common people. I detest shallow, vulgar, trifling things( A perfect example of these, Jane Austen).

metaphysics -

my guess is that your mind's poetry would differ seriously from mine.

Of the Classics I enjoy the epics - Homer, Virgil - and Martial's Epigrams.

Some medieval European song lyrics are quite good.

Of later stuff, there is not much, and that not well known. If you read German, I enjoyed some of Tucholsky's stuff:- as Das Mitglied [http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Tucholsky,+Kurt/Werke/1926/Das+Mitglied].

You likely, if you are not into Jane Austen, do not match Herself's poetic choices. But some T S Eliot both she and I can appreciate. Do you know Rumi? More Herself than me.