There is a game that people play in which they confess that they have never actually read a famous book or literary classic. It’s a curious game since it involves an admission of failure, and to win, you must have not read something that everyone else in the room has read. There are many books that I haven’t read, or ones that I have picked up and attempted and then simply abandoned, splayed on a side table, or rediscovered with a bookmark placed a telltale eighth of an inch inside, waiting patiently, as books do, for your return, only to be put on a shelf or recycled to the Oxfam bookshop.

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