In college I read most of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Stern, and if you don't know why that's an accomplishment, you need to try to find a copy. In the same semester, I had to read Charles Dickens, Tobias Smollett, and Daniel Defoe plus a couple of other authors whose names I don't recall at this moment. I never made it through normally acknowledged classics such as Ulysses by James Joyce, but I somehow ended up studying "The Castle of Perseverance" and "Ralph Roiser Doister" in once class, "Shahname" in another, and (on my own) "The tale of Genji" (in translation, of course...my grasp on other languages has always been meager). I don't read very much anymore. I'm not proud of that fact. I just don't enjoy it as I once did.