I love 2024 your year of reading classics! I love Cold Comfort Farm, and Persuasion might be my favourite Jane Austen right now! And I only made it through Crime and Punishment because Jessie said I "wouldn't get it" - very useful to get someone to goad you into reading unappealing books! She was right, I didn't get it. :(
I love that you're reading classics. Let me just tell you though. Skip Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I cannot stress enough how incredibly BORING and terrible that book is. I'm a fiction junkie and I love the classics but I've never understood why English teachers fawn all over Thomas Hardy. It always makes me think of the literary Canon and who gets to decide who is in the English literary canon -- and I ask myself: Should that author remain there simply because a group of white men at one one point put him there? I think this book needs to be tossed out. :))))
It's been a while since I made it through a real-doorstopper of the Moby-Dick / Portrait of a Lady / Bleak House / Buddenbrooks kind (thank you, children!). But it's a consolation that a great many of the classic classics at quite short. For example, you can safely sub out Crime & Punishment for Notes from the Underground and get a strong flavour of Dostoevsky - and Tolstoy's shorter fiction (The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, Hadji Murad, etc) is just as immersive as his grand epics. Just: smaller.
Throw in Gogol's The Overcoat (30 pages?), Eugene Onegin (70,000 words or so, and it rhymes) and a few Chekhov short stories and you'll have a pretty good grounding in 19th century Russian litrature in a week or so.
This gives me much to think about. Two of my favorites have been A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and To Kill a Mockingbird. Looking forward towards a new year of reading makes me realize I would like more structure and routine in my schedule to highlight time to read. I think I will look towards reading books from my birth year and going down a list of banned books to read.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry blew me away - and I'd never wanted to read a western before. But it won the Pulitzer, and deservedly so. Another Pulitzer winner: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Both fairly modern but classics in my opinion!
Your year of reading classics reminds me of Susan Hill's Howard's End is on the Landing: she committed to a year of only reading the books in her house that she had always intended to read. It's a fun journey through classics through the eyes of someone who had been putting them off!
Always a pleasure to read you! I read Tess in my teens and recall being gripped. Also a fan of Far From the Madding Crowd. I finally read In Cold Blood quite recently and was glad I did. Looking forward to reading about your reading.
Sometimes when I'm not sure what to read next I go to the Classics section at the Sheffield Central Library and choose a book based entirely on it being the thinnest one I can see. My theory is that I'm going to get through a great story in a short space of time. It generally works on both counts... Recents have included Of Mice and Men, The Castle of Oranto and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. A less well known classic that I really recommend is The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas.
Hattie - two must reads from me are The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark and Cassandra At The Wedding by Dorothy Baker.
I love 2024 your year of reading classics! I love Cold Comfort Farm, and Persuasion might be my favourite Jane Austen right now! And I only made it through Crime and Punishment because Jessie said I "wouldn't get it" - very useful to get someone to goad you into reading unappealing books! She was right, I didn't get it. :(
I love that you're reading classics. Let me just tell you though. Skip Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I cannot stress enough how incredibly BORING and terrible that book is. I'm a fiction junkie and I love the classics but I've never understood why English teachers fawn all over Thomas Hardy. It always makes me think of the literary Canon and who gets to decide who is in the English literary canon -- and I ask myself: Should that author remain there simply because a group of white men at one one point put him there? I think this book needs to be tossed out. :))))
The Secret History by Donna Tartt - one of my faves of all time. In Cold Blood is the book that made me a reader. That feels weird, but it's true.
For me, Remains of the Day is The One to read if you haven't xx
I’m excited for you to read To the Lighthouse 🥲🥲🥲
I’ll recommend it until the day I die:
The Peregrine by JA Baker
It's been a while since I made it through a real-doorstopper of the Moby-Dick / Portrait of a Lady / Bleak House / Buddenbrooks kind (thank you, children!). But it's a consolation that a great many of the classic classics at quite short. For example, you can safely sub out Crime & Punishment for Notes from the Underground and get a strong flavour of Dostoevsky - and Tolstoy's shorter fiction (The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, Hadji Murad, etc) is just as immersive as his grand epics. Just: smaller.
Throw in Gogol's The Overcoat (30 pages?), Eugene Onegin (70,000 words or so, and it rhymes) and a few Chekhov short stories and you'll have a pretty good grounding in 19th century Russian litrature in a week or so.
Neither truly "classics" but older and excellent: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner and Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey.
This gives me much to think about. Two of my favorites have been A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and To Kill a Mockingbird. Looking forward towards a new year of reading makes me realize I would like more structure and routine in my schedule to highlight time to read. I think I will look towards reading books from my birth year and going down a list of banned books to read.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry blew me away - and I'd never wanted to read a western before. But it won the Pulitzer, and deservedly so. Another Pulitzer winner: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Both fairly modern but classics in my opinion!
Your year of reading classics reminds me of Susan Hill's Howard's End is on the Landing: she committed to a year of only reading the books in her house that she had always intended to read. It's a fun journey through classics through the eyes of someone who had been putting them off!
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra is more than 5 years old, but to me, it's a modern classic.
I read Brother of the More Famous Jack recently and it is heartbreaking and rambling and GORGEOUS - 100% recommend
I haven’t read any Jane Austen 🫣 but planning on reading persuasion before the end of the year
Always a pleasure to read you! I read Tess in my teens and recall being gripped. Also a fan of Far From the Madding Crowd. I finally read In Cold Blood quite recently and was glad I did. Looking forward to reading about your reading.
Sometimes when I'm not sure what to read next I go to the Classics section at the Sheffield Central Library and choose a book based entirely on it being the thinnest one I can see. My theory is that I'm going to get through a great story in a short space of time. It generally works on both counts... Recents have included Of Mice and Men, The Castle of Oranto and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. A less well known classic that I really recommend is The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas.