September TBRCAT: Classics I Feel I Should Read

You know how it is. You feel your brain needs a bit of a workout beyond the everyday so you decide to read the "classics" everybody made such a fuss about at school and uni. And they've been sitting there on the shelves ever since looking at you as accusingly as the gym membership you bought in January and used a couple of times, if that.

But what is a classic? Well, we can take the easy way out and say it's whatever Penguin Classics or Oxford World's Classics says is a classic.

If pressed to define a "classic" myself, I would say somethinig that is more than a generation old (say 25-30 years) but is still being read for itself, not just as an academic exercise. That way we can include the classics in our favourite genres as well.

So, what do you think is a classic? What classics are sitting on your shelves? Now is the time for those workouts to begin.

ETA: Don't forget to add your classics to the wiki.

I’ve been pondering reading something by Ayn Rand for quite some time, especially since a former boss said I would like her. Finally reading Atlas Shrugged for my book club which coincides with this challenge. More of a modern classic but still something I feel I ought to have read.

I'm surprised to see Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather on the Oxford's World Classics list. It's one of the few of hers I haven't read and I have it on Mount TBR. It's very short so I may work in something else too. I haven't read Washington Square by Henry James and I have it so I'll read it too if I can.

I will probably read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, especially since it will fit my BingoDOG square for mentioned in a book I read. It was the basis for a trip which Lee Smith took with some of her college friends in the 1960s, and the basis for her book, The Last Girls in which it is mentioned several times.

A few on my tbr to choose from:
Cannery Row / John Steinbeck
Kim / Rudyard Kipling
Roots / Alex Haley

I have many options in the TBR. A few I had previously identified as having purchased in a "should" frame of mind:

Faust, Part One by Goethe
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Mastro-Don Gesualdo by Giovanni Verga

I've earmarked Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for this challenge. My other half picked this out of the book prize pool at a trivia tournament (the organizers of these events will usually buy lots of cheap paperbacks and each member of, say, the top three teams will get to pick a book).

I have a few "classics" that I am hoping to finish next month, first I will be completing my read of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding and I am also going to read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.

The Penquin list shows Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome which I took as a BB a while ago. So I think I'll read it for this.

I couldn't see it on either list, but I'm planning on reading A Study in Scarlet for this month's challenge. I have never ever read a Sherlock Holmes book before, and I probably should!

I'm planning on Nicholas Nickleby...I enjoy Dickens but somehow never got to this one!

I'm planning on reading an un-read children's classic, Anne of Green Gables.

>12 VioletBramble: I just visited Prince Edward Island and the Anne of Green Gable historic site. There was an entire exhibit devoted to Lucy Maud Montgomery. She was quite a persistent person and writer. The house itself was also interesting to see. You might like to check out the website. Seeing the house and grounds added a lot to my enjoyment of the book, although it meant less to my husband, who has not read any of the books. I also read a graphic novel version of Anne of Green Gables. It was fun to see the artist's conceptualization of Anne and the setting of the story.

I did not see The Great Gatsby on any of the lists! I was planning on reading that one--oh no!!

So for me in no particular order:
Lord of the Flies,
1984,
Animal Farm,
And Then There were None,
To Kill a Mockingbird.

Not an exhaustive list but these are the ones I've read, enjoyed, and could read again.

I'm going to finish off Tom Jones (by Henry Fielding and; if I can muster the mental energy for it, a re-read of The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair.)

>14 LadyoftheLodge: I think the lists are just suggestions, I'd consider Gatsby a classic so go for it! (the book I'm going to read isn't on either list either)

>17 Jackie_K: Okay, thanks!

I'd flagged Vanity Fair or A Clockwork Orange for this at the start of the year but I don't think I'm in the right frame of mind for the latter at the moment.

>13 LadyoftheLodge: Thanks. I will check out the website. I've wanted to visit Prince Edward Island ever since I watched the Megan Fellows version of Anne of Green Gables back in the "90s.

I have finished La curée, part of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. It's amazing how little we like the main characters, and yet it is a fascinating story.

I read Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. It was recommended to me as a good start for his work and is on the 1001 list. Didn't love it, but it was intriguing. A little bit up itself and I suspect that could become irritating in a larger volume

I finished reading Willa Cather's Prairie Trilogy with O Pioneers!. This was a beautifully written simple yet heartfelt story that I loved.

I recently watched and enjoyed Julian Fellowes's adaptation of Doctor Thorne, then realized I've had the book on my e-reader since 2013! I've just started it and am already loving Trollope's cheeky style.

>24 christina_reads: One of my favorite Trollope novels. Although I have to qualify that statement: he wrote 40+ novels, and I've read a little over half of them, so there might be another favorite waiting for me....

I'm reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, a classic in my opinion.

>25 kac522: So far I've only read The Warden and Barchester Towers, both of which I liked a lot! I'm definitely looking forward to reading more.

I'll be reading The Turn of the Screw, published as an Oxford World Classics edition. It will also fit the ScaredyKIT this month.

Starting my first Classic for this topic: The Essays: A Selection by Michel de Montaigne. There was an IOT devoted to him and I thought he sounded interesting so bought this 3 years ago and never got round to reading it.

>25 kac522: It is a bit like that with Trollope! Every time I think I've 'found' all his books, another one pops up. Dumas is a bit the same - I did not know he had written so many books.

Kim / Rudyard Kipling
1.5 stars

Kim is an orphan. Apparently, this is 19th century India. This is all I know.

What’s a baboo? What’s a lama? (I know Dalai Lama is a title, but I still don’t know what a lama is.) Mack Boob. Mack Bow Valley (or Mack Bow Bally?) - these are what might have been names (or what sounded like it on the audio). Thou and thee. I heard these words over and over. Beyond that, nothing registered. It just didn’t interest me enough to keep my attention… not even a little bit. I did catch, at the very start, that Kim was an orphan. That’s it. That’s all I know. It got an extra .5 because I didn’t hate it. I didn’t hate it because I wasn’t paying attention. Hate is strong.

I finished my selection today:



Emily Dickinson: Letters collected and edited by Emily Fragos
I have a sentimental spot in my heart for letters, so I went in already loving this collection of Dickinson's correspondence and kept on loving it throughout. The balance between candid and styled, personal and performed in published letters makes me giddy. I also love spending some time in the writer's daily life, and Emily's life is such a lovely one to visit. Recommended, for certain.

Finished The Turn of the Screw, a short classic by Henry James. A ghost story, thankfully it was short, because it had too many words, if you know what I mean.

I've finished Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather. Actually I may have read it before but long ago, the ending seemed very familiar.

October's TBRCat is posted and can be found at: https://www.librarything.com/topic/311224

COMPLETED: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

I finally completed Atlas Shrugged through many months and quite a bit of skimming, but I finished it! Looking forward to book club discussion next week to see what everyone else thought.

I finished A Study in Scarlet too.

Cannery Row / John Steinbeck
3.25 stars

Cannery Row is a community and this tells the story of the people in that community, including a Chinese grocer, a marine biologist, and others. (Somehow I missed – until I read summaries after – that everyone in this community is poor; I guess, thinking back, there were plenty of opportunities to see that, but it just didn’t completely register for me.)

Much of the first… half?… of the book was introducing characters. It got better once the characters were introduced and there was a bit of a storyline. The boys all seemed to like to party and didn’t seem to care what got broken. It was kind of entertaining for the last half once a few things actually happened.

So I ended up reading a classic mystery for this challenge: Trent's Last Case. As a long-time lover and reader of Golden Age mystery, I had to read it!

I hope everybody enjoyed their foray into the classics this month

I had all kinds of lofty plans, but ended up reading Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. I enjoyed it more than I expected.

I also just finished Is Heathcliff a Murderer: Puzzles in 19th Century Fiction by John Sutherland. These are a collection of entertaining essays on various classics, pointing out possible errors, inconsistencies or other vague plot points in many classics.

Besides the title essay, others include:
--"How does Victor make his monsters?" (Frankenstein)
--"Rochester's celestial telegram" (Jane Eyre)
--"What is Jo Sweeping?" (Bleak House)
--"What does Edward Hyde Look Like?" (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)

and many more.

My favorite was "Is Will Ladislaw Legitimate?" (Middlemarch), in which Sutherland provides two genealogy charts of all the residents of Middlemarch and how just about everyone in the book is related to Mr. Bulstrode, either by blood or marriage. I certainly could have used these charts when reading the book, so gives me incentive for (another) re-read.

Lots of fun. I skipped the essays for books I haven't read yet, but am keeping my copy if I ever get to them.

>43 kac522: This sounds like a must-read for the Middlemarch essay alone.

>44 MissWatson: Yep, it made me realize how little I had made all the connections, even though I've read the novel at least 3 times. I had made some, but failed to see how all the characters are, literally, related to one another.