Mea maxima culpa

There's a meme that's been going round: sovay introduced me to it, but it's been popping up across my f-list. Ostensibly a confession of reading sins, it provides a framework for talking about books under not-the-usual headings:

Lust, books I want to read for their cover

Not guilty, though possibly only on a technicality. If lust is what causes me to order a copy of a book NOW!, it springs from description or recommendation, here or in book reviews. I like a pretty cover, of course I do (here's the prettiest one I've read lately); the cover might make me curious enough to pick up a book and leaf through it. But lust provoked by the cover alone? No. The nearest I can think of would be the days when I trawled through the library in search of the yellow Gollancz covers...

Pride, challenging books I've finished

I was omnivorous in my teens: I remember reading Crime and Punishment. I've read the whole of Proust (in French, though actually I think that made it easier) over several years in my teens and twenties. More recently, not so much - though I read Alan Moore's Jerusalem during lockdown, even the Lucia Joyce chapter, and that was as tough as anything I've read.

Gluttony, books I've read more than once

That's not gluttony, if anything it's fidelity: are we not to be allowed comfort reads?

Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest

I don't have a to-read list, but I do have heaps of books, purchased and waiting to be read - and some of them have been waiting for a very long time. First example that comes to mind is Moby-Dick.

Greed, books I own multiple editions of

Librarything informs me that I do indeed now own two copies of The Enchanted Castle. I blame my memory for this sort of duplication, and often discard onee. There are two copies of The Lord of the Rings in the house, both the old three volume edition: my own very tattered copy and the one we inherited from durham_rambler's father (less well-read). Neither of those is going anywhere.

Wrath, books I despised

I don't often persevere with reading a book I despise: but it does happen to me to take a violent dislike to a perfectly respectable book. I'm sure I've posted about some of them, but right now the only one I can think of is Rose Macaulay's They Were Defeated. Mostly I love Rose Macaulay, and this is often described as her masterpiece, but no.

Envy, books I want to live in

I wouldn't mind visiting Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, but I wouldn't want to live there. Howard's End, maybe, but I'd have to be one of the affluent characters...