taste

Which book are you ashamed not to have read?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

One of 24 questions in The Q&A here.

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On the record

Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Arts and letters 27 Politics and public life 1 Sport 1
Read by age Any age In their thirties 5 In their forties 7 In their fifties 9 In their sixties 4 Seventy and beyond 4
Leona Lewis
Probably all of them because I am not big into English literature. I read a lot of self-improvement books.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 December 2023 source ↗

Jason Donovan
My own biography! Being serious, there’s an Australian novel by Gregory Roberts called Shantaram that I didn’t read through.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 January 2024 source ↗

Indira Varma
This year, I was asked to be a judge for the Women’s prize for fiction and I’ve read 75 books in six months, so I’m parking shame for the time being.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 April 2024 source ↗

Pauline Black
Nineteen Eighty-Four. I always meant to read it before 1984, and once 1984 had passed I didn’t see the point.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 April 2025 source ↗

Marina Diamandis
None! We shouldn’t shame people for not having read “the greats”. There are always new greats emerging that may feel more relevant to our life experience, particularly female writers.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 June 2025 source ↗

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