I have been reading John Richardson's third volume of his magnificent biography of that demonic genius, Pablo Picasso. In the late 1920s Picasso was part of the Parisian intellectual elite and not infrequently was in the company of Marcel Proust. It struck me that I have never been tempted to pick up Proust's novel and probably never will. Perhaps I have been put off by a graffito I once saw ("Proust is a yenta") but perhaps not. In any event, fellow Commonwealians, is there is any famous "classic" that you never itend to read? I am sorry to be so bookish with my posts but I have always been partial to a mot ascribed to Logan Pearsall Smith: "People say that life is the thing but I prefer reading."