Wuthering heights is a must, it changed my life at the age of 16 and is such a beautiful read. Definitely for a rainy or a gloomy day but yeah it’s very intriguing in many ways. Social class, Love and Madness, all in one. And nothing beats Emily brontes writing about the moors and nature.
How did it change your life? I read it when I was 12 I think and it was a translation to Farsi. It was amazing and introduced me to the world of former beings. It also stayed with me for life.
I am also planning on reading Mary Barton this year. I heard it was good but I love Gaskell anyway. I have read a lot of her shorter works. Wilkie Collins is awesome. I loved Woman in White and am reading No Name right now. Agnes Gray is also a favorite of mine.
I'm planning to read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde in 2024. I've heard great things about it. It's nice to find a book lover's website for middle aged people. Most of the ones I've come across are by very young people.
Hi, Betsy. I'm glad you're here! I tried reading Dorian Gray this summer and I bet I just wasn't in the mood to be reading it. I put it aside. Do come back and let me know what your experience is if you get to it. Happy New Year!
What an eclectic crew for a 2024 classics TBR! Even though you've picked some stinkers (Joyce and Gaskell primarily) I'm sure you'll love anything from Henry James. I'd highly recommend 'A Portrait of a Lady', it happens to feature my favourite literary character - the newspaper journalist Miss Henrietta Stackpole!
Joe, I can’t wait to find out what I think about Joyce and Gaskell…stinkers, huh? 🤔. I would absolutely LOVE to run across a female newspaper journalist named Henrietta Stackpole. I may need to turn to A Portrait of a Lady first.
Have I ever! I discovered Trollope just this year in the Barsetshire Chronicles series. I read them in order, so I began with The Warden and am now up to the last book in the series - I can hardly believe it!! You are in for a real treat.
I started really getting into classics in 2020 and now I cannot stop! I will be starting David Copperfield by Charles Dickens In January. I am super excited. Jane Eyre and East of Eden are my favorite.
There is a film version of A Handful of Dust. It was directed and produced by the same man that did the brilliant, 1981 Brideshead Revisited television series. It's a good adaption as well. The recent film version of Brideshead Revisited isn't reflective of the novel. As I mentioned, the television series done in 1981, is one of the finest adaptions of a novel. It stars Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud. The script is one of the most faithful to it's source novel.
"It reads like a movie script." John Huston's lifelong dream was to make "The Dead" into a movie. He finally did in 1987; it was his last film. The movie stars Donal McCann and Anjelica Huston. It's superb.
The Woman in White is very fun, a genuine proto-thriller of sorts with some Gothic vibes here and there. Also, I'm actually reading an Evelyn Waugh book at the moment (Brideshead Revisited) and really liking it! Curious to hear more about A Handful of Dust, whenever you get around to reading it.
I really enjoyed reading “The Wings Of the Dove”. James is good at developing manipulative characters and a twisty plot. Plus a good portion of it is set in Venice. Some folks find his prose a bit dense which is not good if there are a lot of other things going on in your life such as a new baby or university exams. “A Handful of Dust” is set among the 1920’s social set in London. Waugh’s skill at irony and satire is on full display in this novel. “Far From the Madding Crowd” is the Hardy to read well ahead of Jude. Also, I recommend the “The Woodlanders” if you come across a copy. For the Brontes-of the ones you have on hand, “Villette” is probably the strongest. However, as a recommended read, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” by Anne Bronte is one I enjoyed much more. Also, “Wuthering Heights” is dynamically written by Emily Bronte. (That doesn’t mean I liked the characters she set on the wild and unforgiving English moors.) I totally agree that Joyce created a wonderful festive ambience in “The Dead” and then pivots to wistfulness. Angelica Houston is wonderful as Greta in the film adaptation.
@@thelefthandedreader6632: Your most welcome. I tend to blather on somewhat when it comes to books. Like now, I almost forgot to mention that “Therese Racquin” is a good place to start with Zola. It’s accessible and not too long. Supposedly, it was inspired by a true love story gone wrong. The plot is a serious case of being careful as to what you wish for. It’s years since I read it but I remember liking it very much.
Jude the Obscure is Hardy at his best, but it’s also the most painful book I read at Tulane in the 80’s. It’s tied with “No Longer Human” as the saddest novel I’ve read. On the lighter side, Somerset Maugham shines brightest in his short stories which are laugh out loud funny. “The Three Fat Women of Antibes” is hysterical!
That is one of Maugham’s funniest stories. However Maugham (while certainly funny at times) to me is more someone who illustrates the dark/evil side of humanity eg adultery, homicide, etc. There are certainly exceptions eg Razor’s Edge is about a highly spiritual being.
such interesting feedback from both you, John, and Scottie. Thank you both! I’m glad you’re here. I’m very glad to know about the funny short story, too. ☺️
@@Scottlp2 you’re right. He does bring the darker side into sharp relief, and skillfully issues cutting critique. When he’s being funny I think the saying, “the truest things are said in jest” applies, so than nothing is frivolous.
I've been intending to try more Henry James and Virginia Woolf for a couple of years. Maybe 2024 is the year! I love Dubliners. "Araby" and "The Dead" are my favorites. Wilkie Collins is great fun. This video is inspiring me to select some additional classics for 2024.
I bought myself the books The Time Machine and Journey to the Center of the Earth this past November for my birthday. I’ve seen the movies now I’m excited to read the books. Currently reading The Grapes of Wrath for kind of the first time. I only got to read the first few chapters in high school before my family moved and I had to return my copy back to the teacher. Now I get to finish it now that I have my own copy! I also read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for the first time this past October.
Excited to hear your thoughts about Orlando! Loved it a lot. And please do read Wuthering Heights. It easily shot up as one of my top 10 books of all time after reading it this month.
Andre, oh I’m inspired! I read maybe the first chapter of Wuthering Heights this year and, at the time, chose Middlemarch instead. I would like to turn back to Wuthering Heights. 🤓
I started a last pass through the classics in 2023. (I say last pass because it's a long list of 150 and I'm only doing 12 per year.) My list for 2024 is: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland The Portrait of a Lady Sense and Sensibility Frankenstein Mrs. Dalloway The Turn of the Screw Lord Jim War and Peace Ulysses The Lord of the Rings (all 3 titles) All of these are rereads (just by chance) except for the Tolstoy and the Tolkien.
Our book club tries to read one classic each year. Most of us read the classics when we were younger and the interesting thing is how our opinions have changed with time. We re-read "Catcher in the Rye" last year and we're all scratching our heads over how this became a classic.
For James, I recommend starting with The American. James' style, at that point, is not nearly as dense as it will become in Wings of the Dove. If you have copies of both, read any page or two from each, and you'll see the difference immediately. The American was one of the first works by James that I read and it's still among my favorites. For Waugh, I would recommend Brideshead Revisited (and the1981 tv miniseries adaptation is excellent).
Henry James is one of the best. The Portrait of a Lady, Washington Square and The Aspern Papers are excellent. The Razor’s Edge by Maugham is incredible. I really like your choices. James, Collins, Maugham and Waugh are the very best in my opinion. Kim by Kipling is a favorite too. I really am partial to Spiritual Quest themes.
Great video, thanks! I really like the list of books you selected. I work full time, so I came up with a schedule a few years ago that works for me. I read 10 pages in the morning of one book and 10 in the evening in another book. This schedule allowed me to read 24, 300-page books in one year. Sometimes, I can read more, but I know at minimum I can knock out 24 classics per year.
Such well known classics... that I'm yet to get to. I also have a pile of possible classics to choose from for next year, very much looking forward to them and seeing if I can avoid the bright and shiny new releases. I like to listen to the audiobooks of James Joyce works and I listen to them at night as I'm falling asleep. Currently listening to The Dubliners. Orlando is the Woolf I'm really keen to read and I am keen to do a reread of Jane Eyre. I just finished listening to a new release called Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell, the protagonist is Emily Bronte and it's a beautiful book. Happy Reading 🙂
I read alot of scifi and fantasy but not enough classics! I did read Frankenstein and wuthering Heights but i want to try to get to at least 5 in 2024...that will include stoner....jane eyre...little doritt... picture of Dorian grey ...and east of eden..idk what else
I read Far from the Madding Crowd last year and I must say I wasn’t sure whether I would finish it. I found the first half very meandering, but the second half is where it started to get interesting. Evelyn Waugh is such a fun author! I read Vile Bodies by him last year and a friend of mine read When the Going was Good (and read me a couple of excerpts) and we both found his writing very witty and playful. He is one of my favourite classics authors, so I hope A Handful of Dust is just as good! I love your channel name by the way and I’ll definitely be making a video like this :)
Oh, Louise! Thanks for letting me know you have a channel. I have found it! I’m looking forward to watching. Oh, I’m so excited now to dip more into Waugh. Isn’t it fun to have a whole backlist before you? And Far From The Madding Crowd…oh I bet I would have the same experience with that book!
Came across your UA-cam channel by happenstance. Thanks for sharing what is in your book cue. By way of introduction, I read mostly non-fiction, histories, but always keep fiction at the ready. Lately I have become attracted to books I have read in my youth, boy was that a long time ago, like Homer, Hawthorne, Chaucer, Twain and commentaries on these works, currently near the end of The War that Killed Achilles (as a teen did not realize The Iliad was as much an anti-war tome is it was about heroes) by Caroline Alexander. Keep sharing, and most of all folks, keep reading.
I read North and South the first time in high school and that’s when I fell in love with classic literature! I’m now 29 trying to get back into reading them. Thank you for the suggestions I will be looking for a few if these at the library!
Such a great list! I have come to adore Gaskell's writing. MB is on my list. I read North and South and Cranford last year. So different from each other, so delightful. I am reading Moby Dick for the first time, and I'm in awe. Not even halfway through, and I already have it on my must read again list.
That's very high praise for Moby Dick, but one i COMPLETELY understand after finishing War & Peace. 🥰 Oh, I'm excited to try Gaskell - even more excited now!
Zola for the win!!! I’m missing his work so much because I had to take a hiatus so Leo could catch up as I started them in the author’s order, not publication order for the Rougon-Macquart series. (Don’t follow my lead on that one!) you have so many great books ahead of you next year. It’s very exciting!
If you'd like to make a revival on the late 18th century, you could read another book of Henry James and these three others: "The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James (1881) "The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells (1898) "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880) Nice to meet you and your channel. Happy 2024
Hi and thanks for the recommendations. I appreciate it! Ooooh, the Brothers Karamazov has been on my possibility list for awhile now. Who knows whether I’ll read a Dostoevsky this year or not. And oh yes, Henry James is on the list to try this year.
You've got some great reading ahead of you! For Hardy, I'd recommend FftMC to start. Jude the Obscure is one of my favorite books, but like others have said, it's sad and grim. I love Dubliners too. I easily get lost in reading about that world. The first story might be my favorite, but I like them all. (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is tied with Jude for my favorite book, but I'm getting ahead of myself. One Joyce a year...) I read Wuthering Heights in college and loved it. I've got Agnes Grey in mind for my next Bronte. Been waiting on my next for thirty years, so I should probably get a move on. Haven't read much Henry James. (Read quite a bit of his brother William though.) Turn of the Screw might be the only one. Maybe Portrait of a Lady. I think I'll (re)start with Portrait myself. Anyway, happy reading! 📚
thanks for all your feedback and recommendations. I absolutely love and appreciate it. The best part of having a Booktube channel…this interaction. I’m glad you’re here!
I have almost all of those plus hundreds more! A lot to get through over the next few years. I've been reading for decades and once again returning to it as a main activity. I might also suggest supporting local used bookstores. I have done some destination driving to used stores that are more selective in their material, well worth it. You pay more but keep local stores around!
Hi there! Oh, fantastic! Oh, I’m a lover of used bookstores, believe you me, and couldn’t agree more about helping them to stay in business. I don’t know what we’d do without the independently owned used bookstores here in my area alone! Thanks for watching. 🥰
I love “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf. It’s written in the stream of consciousness style so it won’t be for everyone; but it is just so beautiful, in my mind her best work. My favorite Thomas Hardy novel is Tess of the d’Urbervilles. All your choices are excellent.
It's a Saturday morning, I'm having my first coffee with my faithful cat friend and I just discovered your UA-cam channel. I'm glad to see the good taste you have in literature. I hope you enjoy these books. This year I want to read some classics by Thomas Hardy, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy... Let's hope you enjoy them a lot. Thank you very much for sharing your readings for 2024. Greetings from Barcelona!
Oh, wow. I’m so glad you’re here! Please keep me posted as the year goes on if you try a Victor Hugo or Hardy or Tolstoy. You may or may not know, since you’re new here, that I ADORED my year long reading of War & Peace. I read a chapter a day. Fabulous. Happy New Year!
I read North and South recently, my first Elizabeth Gaskell. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's divided into 2 volumes. Actually, I just thought the first volume was just OK but as soon as Volume 2 started, I got quite interested.
Don’t be daunted by Ulysses. I thought the same as you but then read Dubliners, which is incredible literature, then immediately started reading Ulysses. Haven’t yet finished it, but it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. And as far as I can tell, every word in the English language is used somewhere. It’s amazing.
I really enjoy Gina Stranger's channel, have been subscribed for awhile. I like Eliz. Gaskell. Just learned today that Wilke Collins was a little bit younger than Dickens, his bks. approximately the same time or maybe after A Christmas Carol. I am one of the very few who likes Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It is my 2nd most favorite bk. of all time. I collect copies of it. I want to read more Bronte bks. (read Jane Eyre) also about their lives as well as Dickens life. Also The Last Of The Mohegans(sp?). Other classics too for 2024, I made a list, but not near me now. This is the 2nd u-tube I have watched tonite that didn't have a " thumbs up" to hit. ????? Thanks!
Hi, Eileen. No thumbs up? Funny. I think they may just have that “Like” button to hit now? I do want to get to Wuthering Heights. I read maybe the first chapter - it and Middlemarch back in the Fall and decided on Middlemarch at that point. Oh how fun to collect copies of a certain book. I love that idea. Please do share your list of classics you’d like to get to when you have the list in front of you. I’d love to hear!
Evelyn Waugh is one of my favorites, and A Handful Of Dust is terrific. Henry James’ Washington Square is a great starting place, and The Portrait Of A Lady is stellar.
Thanks for the video and recommendations. Surely I will follow up on your content. Alexandre Dumas is another great classic that is a "must" for everyone who enjoys the classics.
I was very loose with my classics timeframe too lol. I included The Odyssey for goodness sake! Maybe I’ll do the same video for modern classics - it’s a lot of fun to think about.
Only last week I reread Waugh’s A Handful of Dust. I thought it was even more beautiful than the first time I read it. Being older now I think I got more out of it. Currently I’m reading the 6th novel in Zola’s Rougon Macquart series. Absolutely stunning, every one of them so far. Sarah and I are reading all 20 of them together. We also read several Henry James novels together. We both loved his books, until we got to Wings of the Dove and we both dnf’d 😬. Gaskell is another love of mine, I’m even a member of the British Gaskell Society. As for the Brontës, I absolutely loved Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. But I ab.so.lutely hated her sister’s Wuthering Heights. OMG, these people! Crazy, totally mad! Lol. Maugham’s The Painted Veil is one of the books I’m trying to read by the end of this year. It will be my first of him ever. Lovely video!
Thanks, Leo. You and Sarah have inspired me to try Zola. I can’t wait to give him a go. The British Gaskell Society! How exciting! Speaking of Handful of Dust, I’m going to pull that from the shelf now so I remember to start reading it..it’s such a tiny little thing. Wuthering Heights does seem to be one of those Marmite-y books. I kind of enjoyed the tone of the first chapter or so I read of it this Fall. At the same time, it felt melodramatic from the get go!
orlando has been my favorite virginia woolf so far! she’s definitely an author i’d like to read more of in 2024. jane eyre is one that i need to get to. i haven’t found my groove with classics yet but this video is inspiring me!!
Thanks, Cass! I hear you about finding classics that fit your taste. Jane Eyre, btw, is a good place to start because it's so unexpectedly gritty & so easy to read. I'm looking forward to Orlando. Mrs Dalloway is my favorite Woolf so far. It feels so cinematic to me.
Please read "Orlando" !! I love that one. I couldn't get into "to the Lighthouse" but they were years apart and I've gone through phases like everyone else
I wanna read more classics from the 18th century. I have Evelina by Frances Burney in mind but I definitely want to look more into that time. I also want to look more into classics that heavily focus on sex and relationships since that is something that I haven't seen much yet. I also just want to try new to me classics authors. For the most part I read classics by authors that I've read before nowadays and I want to broaden my horizon a little bit. Some of the authors I want to read this year include: Elizabeth Gaskell Emily Brontë Edith Wharton Nancy Mitford Also, to the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite books of all time and I would highly encourage you to give it another try!!
What a great list! I’m excited for you. I too am going to try Elizabeth Gaskell. I think Mary Barton. Nancy Mitford: I must try her someday. And oh yes. To The Lighthouse I will be turning to again!
The final passages of The Dead where Joyce describes the falling snow on the bog and sea and the graveyard are I think perhaps the most perfectly written (as distinct from necessarily the best) prose of the 20th century. The cadences of the sentences, the choice of vocabulary, it is poetry masquerading as prose: if you haven't done so, read them aloud to see what I mean. A Handful of Dust is very good, I find the child character John Andrew especially amusing; but if you like Waugh's sense of humour try also Scoop which is even funnier: but you might also prefer The Loved One as this is set in the US, and the author's outsider (foreign) perspective might be of particular interest. If you want to squeeze in a short Woolf I'd suggest Jacob's Room which often gets overlooked.
What a wonderful way to describe that last scene. Yes! Since I still have The Dubliners out - and working through it - I will do just that. I'm glad to have the Waugh recs and the Woolf. Happy New Year!
I read a lot of classics last year. All Quiet on the Western Front, several Ernest Hemingway novels, Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, There were 3 books last year that genuinely made me cry: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and The Art of Racing In the Rain by Garth Stein. I read books on a whim, but in my stack of classics for this year I have Fahrenheit 451, The Lord of the Rings series, Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald, Brothers Karamazov, The Godfather, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, more Hemingway as well. I want to read everything he wrote.
@@thelefthandedreader6632 A Farwell to Arms is amazing because it’s a classic war novel, and a romance novel which makes the romance that much more intense happening during wartime. And it’s based on Hemingway’s direct experience as an ambulance driver for the Italian army during WW1. I read The Sun Also Rises and For Whom The Bell Tolls also last year, some of the best books I’ve ever read. The Sun Also Rises is a joy to read. I do have A Moveable Feast in my stacks as well I’m hoping to get to that this year too.
Hardy: DEFINITELY read Far from the Madding Crowd before Jude. Jude should be the LAST Hardy you read. However, I think Tess of the D'Urbervilles is his best. Also The Woodlanders and Return of the Native are superb. Far from the Madding Crowd is good, but I didn't connect to its characters as deeply as I did with is other novels. But the writing is breathtaking. I also liked Mayor of Castorbridge but the voice in Mayor feels a bit different than his others. Jude is a very tough story. You need to understand Hardy before you dive into it. Brontes: I would recommend following Jane Eyre with Villette. Wuthering Heights is very obtuse and has a dramatically different voice and themes. I have Agnes Grey on my TBR too but I would keep with Charlotte for now. I would recommend Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. OMG, I love that book. Eventually read Middlemarch which is a masterpiece but start with Mill on the Floss. James: Turn of the Screw is the point of entry for most James readers. Also a good companion for Jane Eyre.
I Thank you for all the recommendations! I love it I’m happy to be reminded of The Mill of the Floss. I actually read Middlemarch this year. I had it on my shelf and so so glad I did. I love all this feedback, Marjorie. 🥰. Happy Holidays!
Wonderful! What a great reading list for 2024. I’d like to read Orlando and Zola too. My big read for 2024 will be Don Quixote! Wishing you and your family a merry Christmas and a great (reading) new Year. Here’s to many hours immersed into the classics! 📚📚📚🎄
Oooh, Don Quixote. On my someday list for sure. I should plan on breaking that one up into daily segments when I do read it. I can’t wait to hear about your experience with it!
Out of the list you mentioned, my favorites are The Woman in White and Portrait of a Lady. I found Wings of a Dove to be unreadable, frankly. Recent classics I have enjoyed are Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Classics I am looking forward to reading in the near future include Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Bleak House, The Red and the Black, Anna Karenina, and Don Quixote.
Oooh you’ve got some really cool books on your list! Bleak House is one I’ve been thinking about. Oh and yes. I have yet to try a Hardy, so I’m glad to be reminded to try him out!
Every year I say I will read East of Eden, and War and Peace. We’ll see….. love your choices! I read The Dead recently as it was final story in a collection of Christmas stories by Irish authors. Didn’t remember that I had read it before in Dubliners!😅
Oh, I’m the same about East of Eden. That’s a good reminder to me, once more. Oh man..the chapter a day War & Peace reading…bar none the best reading experience I’ve ever had. It’s hosted and organized by footnotes and tangents on Bookstagram.
Try to find War and Peace in the Ann Dunnigan translation. I have read it twice. I tried a couple of other translations and they weren't nearly as good.
@@eveningprimrose3088 , I'm fascinated by the different editions. Alas, since I've just finished it 2 weeks ago, I'll wait a couple years before turning back to it. I'm missing it though!
My book club is doing War and Peace starting Jan. Make sure to have character list to refer to (characters can be referred to by first name, family name, or nickname), and I still like Maude translation.
I really am itching to like Henry James, I read The Turn of The Screw and it wasn’t bad I just couldn’t get into it like other people did. I at least want to have read Portrait of a Lady because that’s one of his big ones. Also Orlando is one of my favorite books ever, Mrs. Dalloway is a very subtle work and Orlando really is a tour de force especially with the emphasis on the force aspect. Orlando is agonizingly perfect, it gives the impression that it never could have been written any other way. That was my impression at least lol
The Woman in White is terrific--super fun, particularly if you edition notes not just the chapters, but the divisions of the parts when it was originally published serially. The parts end on great cliffhangers.
I’ve never read Zola nor Balzac (Brian at Bookish likes Balzac) but would like to. I couldn’t stand Henry James who I had in a class, but I’m finding my older self’s opinions don’t always accord with those of my younger self. I have _Woman in White_ waiting for me too.
She was on my list too in 2023. I read her first book, A Voyage Out or The Voyage out and Mrs Dalloway. I adore Mrs Dalloway! I began To The Lighthouse and didn’t finish it. It just got crowded out. I can’t wait to hear about your experience when you get to it!
a handful of dust was my first Evelyn Waugh!! i liked it a lot. i read orlando earlier this year and found it to be very engaging. The Ladies' Paradise is the first and only zola novel i've read, i'm looking forward to hearnig your thoughts on zola when you get to him :)
Oh, was it? How fantastic. It’s so small…and I’ve enjoyed the time period(ish) that The Age of Innocence was set in, so I think I’m properly primed to get to A Handful of Dust. Maybe it’ll be the holiday read. Zola is going to be so fun to try. Will he be as wonderful a discovery as Trollope has been in 2023? Time will tell. Happy Holidays, my friend. 🥰
What a beautiful pile of books, to say nothing of their potential reader. Dubliners and Orlando are two personal favourites of mine. Enjoy your reading and Happy New Year by a fellow left-handed reader.
A Handful of Dust is one of the most incredible books I've ever read. It starts off light and carefree and ends off (spoilers ahead) very differently (decided not to spoil too much after all). Wuthering Heights is a very difficult read (it took me thirty years and three attempts before I finally managed, a few months ago), but it is an absolute must-read if you are interested in Literature. The characters are horrible, all of them. They suffer, they do horrible things to one another. The writing is quite demanding: there are several narrators, each writes differently, etc. It's an uncompromising descent into human experience and a daring book, both in subject, and formally. A book like no other, you think you know it, but reading it is quite another story!
Thanks for all the feedback! I ended up reading A Handful of Dust and really enjoyed its BIZARRE nature! I still think about Wuthering Heights. It’s time is coming!
@@thelefthandedreader6632Thanks for doing this channel! Always a pleasure to be talking about books, especially classics :)) Good luck with Emily Brontë!!!
I would definitely finish reading Far from the Madding Crowd. A wonderful book and one with a sort of happy ending, not typical of Hardy. Then there's Hardy's The Woodlanders; a marvellous story but a very sad ending. Jude The Obscure is grim. My favourite Bronte novel( along side JE) is Anne Bronte's second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. You also talked of Elizabeth Gaskell. My favourite of hers is North and South , my opinion of that book may have been influenced by the wonderful 2004 BBC production of the story.
I read all the 📚 you mention and just yesterday finished re-reading "The Woman in White"...originally I have it 3 out of 10 but now have it 5 out of 10 . At long last a cousin from across the pond who doesn't speed-speak ! Sorry,I do not mean to be rude but we Brits like to speak slower. Happy Christmas and A Very Happy New Year from GB.
Hello! I’m glad you’re here. Oh, interesting that your experience with The Woman in White increased as you kept reading the book! Ad a Very Happy New Year to you, too!
The American is about a woman who is apparently a psychic of sorts and meets a Southern man. Wings of the Dive is the last book of Henry James. Hardy is great - read Jude the Obscure . Very sad, however- Far From The Madding Crowd is cheerier. Dubliners is amazing. The Dead was a film: John Huston’s last film. No, Cranford is what you need to read by Gaskell. Waugh - Brideshead Revisited definitely. Orlando is about someone who changes gender every lifetime. You must read Wuthering Heights and you Must read Villette. I can’t stress that enough and yes, it’s by Charlotte. Zola - definitely Therese Raquin
Hi, Thomas. Fantastic feedback. Thank you! Cranford…I’m writing that down. And, I’m on the look-out for Brideshead Revisited during my next used book store visit. Yay…for the vote to read Wuthering Heights and Villette. And Zola! Thanks for your input, Thomas.
I've just found your channel and loved this video. I plan on reading a few classics this year: Middlemarch Wuthering Heights (re-read after 35 years!) Jane Eyre Pride and Prejudice East of Eden Little Women Far From The Madding Crowd Good luck in with your reading 📚 😊
hi Blondie! I’m glad you’re here! Oooh what a list! Please keep me posted on it. 🤓🤓🤓. I too may turn to Wuthering Heights. And….East of Eden!! I’ll be in good company.
@@thelefthandedreader6632 and I forgot that I'll be adding Far From The Madding Crowd to that list. My physical copy arrived in the post today! Definitely will be checking back in with you. 😊
Our book club read The Woman in White. Tedious. Good luck. I think we discussed that he wrote at a time when books were published in a series in weeklies and the more words he used, the more money he was paid. It’s obvious in this book.
I read Jude the Obscure this year and it is really good but bleak. Far From the Madding Crowd is one of his less depressing novels, so I think picking which depends on how you are feeling about depressing books. I hope to pick up a few classics by authors I haven't read. I also haven't read Zola so I may read Germinal. I am going to read Swann's Way with a group beginning in January. I also hope to read Vanity Fair by Thackeray. Actually I hope to read several other new to me classic authors, but we'll see what I actually pick up. I am reading only my own books next year, so I have lots of classics to pick from.
Laurie, thanks for the recommendation and also for sharing your plans with Classics. Good reminder! I've written down Thackeray's Vanity Fair now on my white board. That's one I'd like to get to someday! Reading with a group sounds fun. Happy Holidays, Laurie. I'm glad you're here!
I love Hardy! Madding Crowd is definitely the lighter of the two, but I think I preferred Jude (though I’m a big fan of depressing books 😂). I’m attempting Joyce for the first time next year too!
@@thelefthandedreader6632 I actually tried a bit of The Razor's Edge a few months back and thought it was nice... But I was already juggling a bunch of books at the time so I did not continue. So I might try that during semester break... Or Of Human Bondage if I'm feeling ambitious 🤣
@@SluggishReader , oh yes! The Razor's Edge. I forgot about that one. I read Of Human Bondage so long ago, I'd like to re-read it ....at some point! Keep me posted!
An interesting selection. Henry James can be quite variable. A lot of his early writing was fairly mediocre. Unfortunately I started plowing through him chronologically instead of cherry picking his better stuff. Did read Rebecca West's Henry James: A Critical Biography recently, which is a good guide to what's good, what's not, and what's likely to be of interest. James Joyce, Dubliners. Great book. Araby is one of my favorites too. An annotated edition really helps. Joyce piles on the turn-of-the-century Dublin color, but he never, ever explains anything. You have to be familiar with his references or figure them out somehow. A map of Dublin really helps, as well as some acquaintance with Irish history. I spent over a week, including Bloomsday, in Dublin in 2022. So I got familiar with the lay of the land there. Got to go to the Joyce Museum in the Martello Tower by Sandy Cove where Ulysses opens, the Joyce Museum in Dublin, as well as wander around Glasnevin Cemetery and visit Parnell's grave. Read Theresa Raquin over Thanksgiving while I was traveling and visiting my niece in Southern California. Started it on the plane going out there and had trouble putting it down. Well written. Very depressing. His first popular novel. The inevitable comparison is between it and Crime and Punishment, which was written near the same time. It has a somewhat different dynamic and lacks the Nietzschean overtones. It predates his Rougon-Macquart series. Of that, I recommend Germinal. Quite the ride. Sobering, but more complex and not nearly as depressing as Theresa Raquin. Love Virginia Woolf. Love Orlando. First read it in high school. One of my friends from high school, John, whom I haven't seen since 1967, is now Joanna. Recently got an annotated edition by Harcourt which I haven't finished going through for my umpteenth reread, but unpacking the inside jokes is fascinating. The first book you were trying to think of was The Voyage Out. There is also Melymbrosia, which is the reconstructed first version of The Voyage Out before she made the edits her publisher required. It's interesting comparing the two, but to modern sensibilities the reason for the changes is pretty elusive. I've also read To the Lighthouse, although it took me a couple of tries; it is not the easiest of her books to read. I also read Flush in high school and this year, as well as A Room of One's Own, The Death of a Moth and Other Essays, and am currently going through her complete collected essays. Even some of her very early short reviews of deservedly forgotten books are a hoot -- after scathingly dissecting them, she finishes with a tongue-in-cheek compliment. A lot of people love Hardy. There, I said something nice about him. We had to read the Mayor of Casterbridge in my high school AP English class. I read about 80 pages and DNFed it because I loathed it, which was a pretty radical thing for me to do. I didn't call attention to the fact that I DNFed it. I articulately ranted about why I loathed it when we had an essay exam on it. I don't recall getting a bad grade on it. When I was in graduate school, a friend of mine went on about how he loved Thomas Hardy. He told me I should read Jude the Obscure. I read Jude the Obscure. I loathed it. I recently read The Mayor of Casterbridge completely and confirmed my opinion from high school. I read a collection of his short stories. I thought they were awful. I'll read some more Hardy sometime I'm sure. A lot of people love Hardy. I haven't found out why yet. I just don't get it. Good luck. You'll probably love him. I first read Jane Eyre as assigned reading (probably an abridge edition) in junior high school English class. It was OK then. In 1979 I read Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, kind of a slightly time-shifted prequel to Jane Eyre, and loved it. Recently, I got the collected novels of Jean Rhys to read since I had loved Wide Sargasso Sea so much. An interesting, but not ecstatically happy reading experience. When I got to Wide Sargasso Sea at the end, I reread Jane Eyre to refresh my memory before pressing on. They were both good. I also read a biography of Jean Rhys. That help explain the connection between her early novels and Wide Sargasso Sea, but Wide Sargasso Sea was not the ecstatic experience I remember from 1979. Heraclitus and all that.
Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts. How lovely! Wide Sargasso Sea is on my list for 2024. I’m intrigued by the unedited version of Woolf’s The Voyage Out. (I really enjoyed that story.). Very interesting! I’m very glad to hear about your reading experience with Theresa Raquin. 👏👏.
I’m intrigued by the Rebecca West biography of Henry James. I read a Rebecca West this year…Return of the Soldier I think it’s called. It blew me away.
English major checking in with a confession... that I have read NONE of these great classics. I spent many wonderful months and years plowing through the works of the inimitable one, Charles Dickens, of course, and that journey left me with little energy to read other authors. Hardy sounds like my kind of author!!!
You should read Indian classic novels too (like Premchand). Westerners allow themselves with limited outlook of western fictions. They forget about the world other than 'west'
Wuthering heights is a must, it changed my life at the age of 16 and is such a beautiful read. Definitely for a rainy or a gloomy day but yeah it’s very intriguing in many ways. Social class, Love and Madness, all in one. And nothing beats Emily brontes writing about the moors and nature.
That sounds fantastic. And in keeping with that first chapter or so I read this Fall!
How did it change your life? I read it when I was 12 I think and it was a translation to Farsi. It was amazing and introduced me to the world of former beings. It also stayed with me for life.
I am also planning on reading Mary Barton this year. I heard it was good but I love Gaskell anyway. I have read a lot of her shorter works. Wilkie Collins is awesome. I loved Woman in White and am reading No Name right now. Agnes Gray is also a favorite of mine.
Oh, we may very well be in good company!
I'm planning to read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde in 2024. I've heard great things about it. It's nice to find a book lover's website for middle aged people. Most of the ones I've come across are by very young people.
Hi, Betsy. I'm glad you're here! I tried reading Dorian Gray this summer and I bet I just wasn't in the mood to be reading it. I put it aside. Do come back and let me know what your experience is if you get to it. Happy New Year!
I would Definitely start with Far From the Madding Crowd. Jude is so grim.
Yay! Another vote for Madding Crowd. Thanks for the recommendation!
If you read Jude the Obscure, best not to have sharp instruments within easy reach.
@@ba-gg6jo , thanks for the warning!
I read Jude the Obscure a couple of years ago and loved it. I still think about it all the time.
@@AsWeDraw , thanks for sharing your experience. High praise!
One Henry James that is less well-known is The Princess Cassamassima, relatively short and interestingly political. I loved it.
What a name for a book! Thanks for the recommendation. 🥰
You are gonna love Handful of Dust -- greatest ending ever. Also, do give Waugh's very first novel Decline and Fall a go.
Now I know…having finished it. Oh my!
What an eclectic crew for a 2024 classics TBR! Even though you've picked some stinkers (Joyce and Gaskell primarily) I'm sure you'll love anything from Henry James. I'd highly recommend 'A Portrait of a Lady', it happens to feature my favourite literary character - the newspaper journalist Miss Henrietta Stackpole!
Joe, I can’t wait to find out what I think about Joyce and Gaskell…stinkers, huh? 🤔. I would absolutely LOVE to run across a female newspaper journalist named Henrietta Stackpole. I may need to turn to A Portrait of a Lady first.
Have you read Anthony Trollope? I plan to read “Barchester Towers” and “The Eustace Diamonds” in the coming year.
Have I ever! I discovered Trollope just this year in the Barsetshire Chronicles series. I read them in order, so I began with The Warden and am now up to the last book in the series - I can hardly believe it!! You are in for a real treat.
I started really getting into classics in 2020 and now I cannot stop! I will be starting David Copperfield by Charles Dickens In January. I am super excited. Jane Eyre and East of Eden are my favorite.
It’s such a vast, fascinating world, isnt it? I’m with you. I feel like I’m JUST getting started! Let me know your experience of David Copperfield.
There is a film version of A Handful of Dust. It was directed and produced by the same man that did the brilliant, 1981 Brideshead Revisited television series. It's a good adaption as well.
The recent film version of Brideshead Revisited isn't reflective of the novel. As I mentioned, the television series done in 1981, is one of the finest adaptions of a novel. It stars Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud. The script is one of the most faithful to it's source novel.
Thanks for that info!
"It reads like a movie script." John Huston's lifelong dream was to make "The Dead" into a movie. He finally did in 1987; it was his last film. The movie stars Donal McCann and Anjelica Huston. It's superb.
A movie? Wha! I'm looking that one up. Thanks for sharing!
The Woman in White is very fun, a genuine proto-thriller of sorts with some Gothic vibes here and there. Also, I'm actually reading an Evelyn Waugh book at the moment (Brideshead Revisited) and really liking it! Curious to hear more about A Handful of Dust, whenever you get around to reading it.
"Handful of Dust" is excellent.
Mary Barton, The Woman in White and Agnes Gray, and far from the Madding Crowd are all excellent! I haven’t read the others.
Adrienne, yay! I’m very excited.
I really enjoyed reading “The Wings Of the Dove”. James is good at developing manipulative characters and a twisty plot. Plus a good portion of it is set in Venice. Some folks find his prose a bit dense which is not good if there are a lot of other things going on in your life such as a new baby or university exams.
“A Handful of Dust” is set among the 1920’s social set in London. Waugh’s skill at irony and satire is on full display in this novel.
“Far From the Madding Crowd” is the Hardy to read well ahead of Jude. Also, I recommend the “The Woodlanders” if you come across a copy.
For the Brontes-of the ones you have on hand, “Villette” is probably the strongest. However, as a recommended read, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” by Anne Bronte is one I enjoyed much more. Also, “Wuthering Heights” is dynamically written by Emily Bronte. (That doesn’t mean I liked the characters she set on the wild and unforgiving English moors.)
I totally agree that Joyce created a wonderful festive ambience in “The Dead” and then pivots to wistfulness. Angelica Houston is wonderful as Greta in the film adaptation.
Oooh, Mary! Thanks for all the recommendations and feedback. How lovely! I’m even more excited to try Henry James and Thomas Hardy, especially!
@@thelefthandedreader6632: Your most welcome. I tend to blather on somewhat when it comes to books. Like now, I almost forgot to mention that “Therese Racquin” is a good place to start with Zola. It’s accessible and not too long. Supposedly, it was inspired by a true love story gone wrong. The plot is a serious case of being careful as to what you wish for. It’s years since I read it but I remember liking it very much.
@@mame-musing , I can't wait to try it!
The Turn of the Screw is a really good Henry James!
Oooh, I had forgotten that one. Thanks for reminding me!
Jude the Obscure is Hardy at his best, but it’s also the most painful book I read at Tulane in the 80’s. It’s tied with “No Longer Human” as the saddest novel I’ve read. On the lighter side, Somerset Maugham shines brightest in his short stories which are laugh out loud funny. “The Three Fat Women of Antibes” is hysterical!
That is one of Maugham’s funniest stories. However Maugham (while certainly funny at times) to me is more someone who illustrates the dark/evil side of humanity eg adultery, homicide, etc. There are certainly exceptions eg Razor’s Edge is about a highly spiritual being.
such interesting feedback from both you, John, and Scottie. Thank you both! I’m glad you’re here. I’m very glad to know about the funny short story, too. ☺️
@@Scottlp2 you’re right. He does bring the darker side into sharp relief, and skillfully issues cutting critique. When he’s being funny I think the saying, “the truest things are said in jest” applies, so than nothing is frivolous.
I've been intending to try more Henry James and Virginia Woolf for a couple of years. Maybe 2024 is the year! I love Dubliners. "Araby" and "The Dead" are my favorites. Wilkie Collins is great fun. This video is inspiring me to select some additional classics for 2024.
oh, fantastic! Which Woolf’s have you read so far? I’m excited to try Henry James 🤓👏👏👏
Henry James is an underrated classic writer. I really enjoy his work.
“Araby” is my favorite Dubliners story - heartbreaking.
Oooh, I can’t wait to discover it! That story and Henry James. 🥰
Brook Smith by Henry James was very good and interesting to do with insights into the master and servant relationship in those days
@@davidrichards9654 , Now that's a Henry James I havent heard of. Thanks!
If James is underrated, it may be because he is an excellent, challenging author. He did not write any books for the beach.
I bought myself the books The Time Machine and Journey to the Center of the Earth this past November for my birthday. I’ve seen the movies now I’m excited to read the books. Currently reading The Grapes of Wrath for kind of the first time. I only got to read the first few chapters in high school before my family moved and I had to return my copy back to the teacher. Now I get to finish it now that I have my own copy! I also read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for the first time this past October.
Fantastic!! Let me know what your experience is with The Grapes of Wrath. I’ve yet to read it.
Excited to hear your thoughts about Orlando! Loved it a lot.
And please do read Wuthering Heights. It easily shot up as one of my top 10 books of all time after reading it this month.
Andre, oh I’m inspired! I read maybe the first chapter of Wuthering Heights this year and, at the time, chose Middlemarch instead. I would like to turn back to Wuthering Heights. 🤓
I started a last pass through the classics in 2023. (I say last pass because it's a long list of 150 and I'm only doing 12 per year.)
My list for 2024 is:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Portrait of a Lady
Sense and Sensibility
Frankenstein
Mrs. Dalloway
The Turn of the Screw
Lord Jim
War and Peace
Ulysses
The Lord of the Rings (all 3 titles)
All of these are rereads (just by chance) except for the Tolstoy and the Tolkien.
What an exciting list!! What a mix of authors, tones, themes, timeframes!! Fantastic. Thanks for sharing!
Our book club tries to read one classic each year. Most of us read the classics when we were younger and the interesting thing is how our opinions have changed with time. We re-read "Catcher in the Rye" last year and we're all scratching our heads over how this became a classic.
oh what a nice theme for a book club. You know, I can’t remember Catcher In The Rye!
I think Catcher in the rye is overrated.
For James, I recommend starting with The American. James' style, at that point, is not nearly as dense as it will become in Wings of the Dove. If you have copies of both, read any page or two from each, and you'll see the difference immediately. The American was one of the first works by James that I read and it's still among my favorites. For Waugh, I would recommend Brideshead Revisited (and the1981 tv miniseries adaptation is excellent).
Thanks for the recommendations. I appreciate it! Oh, Brideshead Revisited is on the list!
yes to the Woolf!!! planning to do a rereading of her work sometime next year! love this strong collection of classics!
Thanks, Nathan! I’m looking forward to reading MORE Woolf…picking up where I left off…with either To The Lighthouse or Orlando. 🤓
Henry James is one of the best. The Portrait of a Lady, Washington Square and The Aspern Papers are excellent. The Razor’s Edge by Maugham is incredible. I really like your choices. James, Collins, Maugham and Waugh are the very best in my opinion. Kim by Kipling is a favorite too. I really am partial to Spiritual Quest themes.
Ah, thanks for your thoughts and the reminder about Maugham's The Razor's Edge!
Great video, thanks! I really like the list of books you selected. I work full time, so I came up with a schedule a few years ago that works for me. I read 10 pages in the morning of one book and 10 in the evening in another book. This schedule allowed me to read 24, 300-page books in one year. Sometimes, I can read more, but I know at minimum I can knock out 24 classics per year.
Jake, that is SO smart! I love that method!
Amazing list!! Dubliners is FANTASTIC. Myself, in 2024 I want to go back to my bread and butter: Modern Classics.
Oliver, ooh I’m even more excited to keep on going with it then! I’m with you! I’m looking forward to following your reading in the year ahead. 🥰
Such well known classics... that I'm yet to get to. I also have a pile of possible classics to choose from for next year, very much looking forward to them and seeing if I can avoid the bright and shiny new releases. I like to listen to the audiobooks of James Joyce works and I listen to them at night as I'm falling asleep. Currently listening to The Dubliners.
Orlando is the Woolf I'm really keen to read and I am keen to do a reread of Jane Eyre. I just finished listening to a new release called Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell, the protagonist is Emily Bronte and it's a beautiful book. Happy Reading 🙂
Kim, thanks for sharing! Oh, what a lovely experience listening to The Dubliners must be to fall asleep to. We’re both in the Orlando club!
I read alot of scifi and fantasy but not enough classics! I did read Frankenstein and wuthering Heights but i want to try to get to at least 5 in 2024...that will include stoner....jane eyre...little doritt... picture of Dorian grey ...and east of eden..idk what else
What a list!! Yay! I had to look up Little Dorrit. Dickens! I’m glad to know about it. 🥰🤓😊🔥
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh 1944. Both novel & film superb! ❤ ❤
Oooh yes! I’ve heard good things. It’s on my list to scout out at the thrift store!
One of the BEST books ever. Read it twice, and plan to re-read again.
@@TheNutmegStitcher , high praise! I'm glad I have it to look forward to!!
The movie is good....but!....the book! Read it!
@@tamarakonczal6350 , Oh believe you me, I will read it. I would never watch the movie first!
I read Far from the Madding Crowd last year and I must say I wasn’t sure whether I would finish it. I found the first half very meandering, but the second half is where it started to get interesting.
Evelyn Waugh is such a fun author! I read Vile Bodies by him last year and a friend of mine read When the Going was Good (and read me a couple of excerpts) and we both found his writing very witty and playful. He is one of my favourite classics authors, so I hope A Handful of Dust is just as good!
I love your channel name by the way and I’ll definitely be making a video like this :)
Oh, Louise! Thanks for letting me know you have a channel. I have found it! I’m looking forward to watching. Oh, I’m so excited now to dip more into Waugh. Isn’t it fun to have a whole backlist before you? And Far From The Madding Crowd…oh I bet I would have the same experience with that book!
@@thelefthandedreader6632 It is fun, isn’t it! I’m excited to get my hands on more of Waugh’s work.
I loved The Woman in White! One of the best villans ever in it. I also have Dubliners on my list. So glad I ran across your channel.
I’m so glad you’re here, Lisa! Welcome in. I’m more enthused about Wilkie Collins than ever!
I'm in the middle of it now. Really enjoying it.
@@dragon-ed1hz , Nice!
Wuthering Heights is a classic of classics, but Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is also amazing.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is one of my favorite books.
Oh, thanks for that reminder, Stan. I had forgotten about that one!
I read "Portrait of a Lady"...what a page-turner, loved it!
Thanks for reminding me that I’d love to get back to Henry James!
Came across your UA-cam channel by happenstance. Thanks for sharing what is in your book cue. By way of introduction, I read mostly non-fiction, histories, but always keep fiction at the ready. Lately I have become attracted to books I have read in my youth, boy was that a long time ago, like Homer, Hawthorne, Chaucer, Twain and commentaries on these works, currently near the end of The War that Killed Achilles (as a teen did not realize The Iliad was as much an anti-war tome is it was about heroes) by Caroline Alexander. Keep sharing, and most of all folks, keep reading.
Welcome! Oh my. You were reading some heavy hitters in your youth. Very nice!
I read North and South the first time in high school and that’s when I fell in love with classic literature! I’m now 29 trying to get back into reading them. Thank you for the suggestions I will be looking for a few if these at the library!
what a great experience! High praise for that book too!
Wonderful group of classics to get to. I really enjoyed Agnes Grey and Orlando is wildly inspiring.
Eric, that says a lot about those 2 classics! I’m further inspired to get to Orlando. 👏👏👏🤓
Such a great list! I have come to adore Gaskell's writing. MB is on my list. I read North and South and Cranford last year. So different from each other, so delightful. I am reading Moby Dick for the first time, and I'm in awe. Not even halfway through, and I already have it on my must read again list.
That's very high praise for Moby Dick, but one i COMPLETELY understand after finishing War & Peace. 🥰 Oh, I'm excited to try Gaskell - even more excited now!
Zola for the win!!! I’m missing his work so much because I had to take a hiatus so Leo could catch up as I started them in the author’s order, not publication order for the Rougon-Macquart series. (Don’t follow my lead on that one!) you have so many great books ahead of you next year. It’s very exciting!
it’s SO exciting. Oh, it would be hard to pause a series you’re enjoying, but for the best reasons!
If you'd like to make a revival on the late 18th century, you could read another book of Henry James and these three others:
"The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James (1881)
"The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells (1898)
"The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
Nice to meet you and your channel. Happy 2024
Hi and thanks for the recommendations. I appreciate it! Ooooh, the Brothers Karamazov has been on my possibility list for awhile now. Who knows whether I’ll read a Dostoevsky this year or not. And oh yes, Henry James is on the list to try this year.
You've got some great reading ahead of you! For Hardy, I'd recommend FftMC to start. Jude the Obscure is one of my favorite books, but like others have said, it's sad and grim. I love Dubliners too. I easily get lost in reading about that world. The first story might be my favorite, but I like them all. (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is tied with Jude for my favorite book, but I'm getting ahead of myself. One Joyce a year...) I read Wuthering Heights in college and loved it. I've got Agnes Grey in mind for my next Bronte. Been waiting on my next for thirty years, so I should probably get a move on. Haven't read much Henry James. (Read quite a bit of his brother William though.) Turn of the Screw might be the only one. Maybe Portrait of a Lady. I think I'll (re)start with Portrait myself. Anyway, happy reading! 📚
thanks for all your feedback and recommendations. I absolutely love and appreciate it. The best part of having a Booktube channel…this interaction. I’m glad you’re here!
I have almost all of those plus hundreds more! A lot to get through over the next few years. I've been reading for decades and once again returning to it as a main activity. I might also suggest supporting local used bookstores. I have done some destination driving to used stores that are more selective in their material, well worth it. You pay more but keep local stores around!
Hi there! Oh, fantastic! Oh, I’m a lover of used bookstores, believe you me, and couldn’t agree more about helping them to stay in business. I don’t know what we’d do without the independently owned used bookstores here in my area alone! Thanks for watching. 🥰
I love “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf. It’s written in the stream of consciousness style so it won’t be for everyone; but it is just so beautiful, in my mind her best work. My favorite Thomas Hardy novel is Tess of the d’Urbervilles. All your choices are excellent.
Duane, thanks for sharing your favorites from these 2 authors. ☺️
"The Woman in White" is AMAZING!! I think you will really love it.
Yay!
It's a Saturday morning, I'm having my first coffee with my faithful cat friend and I just discovered your UA-cam channel. I'm glad to see the good taste you have in literature. I hope you enjoy these books. This year I want to read some classics by Thomas Hardy, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy...
Let's hope you enjoy them a lot.
Thank you very much for sharing your readings for 2024. Greetings from Barcelona!
Oh, wow. I’m so glad you’re here! Please keep me posted as the year goes on if you try a Victor Hugo or Hardy or Tolstoy. You may or may not know, since you’re new here, that I ADORED my year long reading of War & Peace. I read a chapter a day. Fabulous. Happy New Year!
War and Peace is a masterpiece!
happy ney year!! :-)
What a great list. North and South was my favorite book for this year. And I love Zola Therese Raquin is a great place to start. Good book.
oh, fantastic! Thanks for sharing 🥰
I need to read more classics in 2024, too! You've inspired me to put together my own TBR for the occasion.
I look forward to watching that video!
I tried to read Wuthering Heights three different times. I couldn't get into it. It's weird not to be interested in a book that everyone loves
Nelly, I hear you! I’ll be interested to see how I get on with it. Happy New Year to you!!
Nelly try watching the film with I think Vivian Lee and Laurence olivier
I read North and South recently, my first Elizabeth Gaskell. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's divided into 2 volumes. Actually, I just thought the first volume was just OK but as soon as Volume 2 started, I got quite interested.
Betsy, I’ve had that on my shelf for SO long. I really want to get to it!
@@thelefthandedreader6632 💘
Don’t be daunted by Ulysses. I thought the same as you but then read Dubliners, which is incredible literature, then immediately started reading Ulysses. Haven’t yet finished it, but it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. And as far as I can tell, every word in the English language is used somewhere. It’s amazing.
thanks SO much for this feedback! I’m feeling more confident about it. 🤓👏👏
I really enjoy Gina Stranger's channel, have been subscribed for awhile. I like Eliz. Gaskell. Just learned today that Wilke Collins was a little bit younger than Dickens, his bks. approximately the same time or maybe after A Christmas Carol. I am one of the very few who likes Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It is my 2nd most favorite bk. of all time. I collect copies of it. I want to read more Bronte bks. (read Jane Eyre) also about their lives as well as Dickens life. Also The Last Of The Mohegans(sp?). Other classics too for 2024, I made a list, but not near me now. This is the 2nd u-tube I have watched tonite that didn't have a " thumbs up" to hit. ????? Thanks!
Hi, Eileen. No thumbs up? Funny. I think they may just have that “Like” button to hit now? I do want to get to Wuthering Heights. I read maybe the first chapter - it and Middlemarch back in the Fall and decided on Middlemarch at that point. Oh how fun to collect copies of a certain book. I love that idea. Please do share your list of classics you’d like to get to when you have the list in front of you. I’d love to hear!
Evelyn Waugh is one of my favorites, and A Handful Of Dust is terrific. Henry James’ Washington Square is a great starting place, and The Portrait Of A Lady is stellar.
Thanks for the recommendatioins!
Far from the Madding Crowd & Agnes Grey are both on my 2024 list as well. Along with Anna Karenina as my year long read. Plus a dozen more! 😂😂 📚
Oh yay!! I’m in good company!
Thanks for the video and recommendations. Surely I will follow up on your content. Alexandre Dumas is another great classic that is a "must" for everyone who enjoys the classics.
Ah, great recommendation! I have never read any Dumas.
I was very loose with my classics timeframe too lol. I included The Odyssey for goodness sake! Maybe I’ll do the same video for modern classics - it’s a lot of fun to think about.
Gina, Oh…hilarious! Oooh, and how about one themed around mid-century women writers…oh man!
Only last week I reread Waugh’s A Handful of Dust. I thought it was even more beautiful than the first time I read it. Being older now I think I got more out of it.
Currently I’m reading the 6th novel in Zola’s Rougon Macquart series. Absolutely stunning, every one of them so far. Sarah and I are reading all 20 of them together.
We also read several Henry James novels together. We both loved his books, until we got to Wings of the Dove and we both dnf’d 😬.
Gaskell is another love of mine, I’m even a member of the British Gaskell Society.
As for the Brontës, I absolutely loved Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. But I ab.so.lutely hated her sister’s Wuthering Heights. OMG, these people! Crazy, totally mad! Lol.
Maugham’s The Painted Veil is one of the books I’m trying to read by the end of this year. It will be my first of him ever.
Lovely video!
Thanks, Leo. You and Sarah have inspired me to try Zola. I can’t wait to give him a go. The British Gaskell Society! How exciting! Speaking of Handful of Dust, I’m going to pull that from the shelf now so I remember to start reading it..it’s such a tiny little thing.
Wuthering Heights does seem to be one of those Marmite-y books. I kind of enjoyed the tone of the first chapter or so I read of it this Fall. At the same time, it felt melodramatic from the get go!
I would recommend Tess of the D’Urbervilles for Hardy. It’s my favourite by him! I have to read Ulysses and Dubliners for university (in the UK) ahaha
Thanks for the recommendation!
What a great list. I look forward to seeing which ones you get to. 😊💙
thank you!
orlando has been my favorite virginia woolf so far! she’s definitely an author i’d like to read more of in 2024. jane eyre is one that i need to get to. i haven’t found my groove with classics yet but this video is inspiring me!!
Thanks, Cass! I hear you about finding classics that fit your taste. Jane Eyre, btw, is a good place to start because it's so unexpectedly gritty & so easy to read. I'm looking forward to Orlando. Mrs Dalloway is my favorite Woolf so far. It feels so cinematic to me.
Amazing selection.
Thanks, Andy!
Nice video! The Hardy and Joyce books are great reads. Orlando is on my bucket list, too. Maybe I'll get to it this year!
I hope we do. 🥰
Please read "Orlando" !! I love that one. I couldn't get into "to the Lighthouse" but they were years apart and I've gone through phases like everyone else
it is on my list!!
I wanna read more classics from the 18th century.
I have Evelina by Frances Burney in mind but I definitely want to look more into that time. I also want to look more into classics that heavily focus on sex and relationships since that is something that I haven't seen much yet.
I also just want to try new to me classics authors.
For the most part I read classics by authors that I've read before nowadays and I want to broaden my horizon a little bit. Some of the authors I want to read this year include:
Elizabeth Gaskell
Emily Brontë
Edith Wharton
Nancy Mitford
Also, to the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite books of all time and I would highly encourage you to give it another try!!
What a great list! I’m excited for you. I too am going to try Elizabeth Gaskell. I think Mary Barton. Nancy Mitford: I must try her someday. And oh yes. To The Lighthouse I will be turning to again!
The final passages of The Dead where Joyce describes the falling snow on the bog and sea and the graveyard are I think perhaps the most perfectly written (as distinct from necessarily the best) prose of the 20th century. The cadences of the sentences, the choice of vocabulary, it is poetry masquerading as prose: if you haven't done so, read them aloud to see what I mean. A Handful of Dust is very good, I find the child character John Andrew especially amusing; but if you like Waugh's sense of humour try also Scoop which is even funnier: but you might also prefer The Loved One as this is set in the US, and the author's outsider (foreign) perspective might be of particular interest. If you want to squeeze in a short Woolf I'd suggest Jacob's Room which often gets overlooked.
What a wonderful way to describe that last scene. Yes! Since I still have The Dubliners out - and working through it - I will do just that. I'm glad to have the Waugh recs and the Woolf. Happy New Year!
cant wait to hear your thoughts on all these..especially wilkie 👀
Oooh thanks! He’s patiently waiting. 🤓🧐
I read a lot of classics last year. All Quiet on the Western Front, several Ernest Hemingway novels, Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn,
There were 3 books last year that genuinely made me cry: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and The Art of Racing In the Rain by Garth Stein.
I read books on a whim, but in my stack of classics for this year I have Fahrenheit 451, The Lord of the Rings series, Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald, Brothers Karamazov, The Godfather, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, more Hemingway as well. I want to read everything he wrote.
Matthew, I love your "possibilities" list for 2024! I do need to get to A Farewell to Arms! I adore A Moveable Feast.
@@thelefthandedreader6632 A Farwell to Arms is amazing because it’s a classic war novel, and a romance novel which makes the romance that much more intense happening during wartime. And it’s based on Hemingway’s direct experience as an ambulance driver for the Italian army during WW1. I read The Sun Also Rises and For Whom The Bell Tolls also last year, some of the best books I’ve ever read. The Sun Also Rises is a joy to read. I do have A Moveable Feast in my stacks as well I’m hoping to get to that this year too.
@@matthewgallant3622 , The Moveable Feast, because it's a memoir, really stopped me in my tracks - that writing!
Hardy: DEFINITELY read Far from the Madding Crowd before Jude. Jude should be the LAST Hardy you read. However, I think Tess of the D'Urbervilles is his best. Also The Woodlanders and Return of the Native are superb. Far from the Madding Crowd is good, but I didn't connect to its characters as deeply as I did with is other novels. But the writing is breathtaking. I also liked Mayor of Castorbridge but the voice in Mayor feels a bit different than his others. Jude is a very tough story. You need to understand Hardy before you dive into it.
Brontes: I would recommend following Jane Eyre with Villette. Wuthering Heights is very obtuse and has a dramatically different voice and themes. I have Agnes Grey on my TBR too but I would keep with Charlotte for now.
I would recommend Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. OMG, I love that book. Eventually read Middlemarch which is a masterpiece but start with Mill on the Floss.
James: Turn of the Screw is the point of entry for most James readers. Also a good companion for Jane Eyre.
I
Thank you for all the recommendations! I love it I’m happy to be reminded of The Mill of the Floss. I actually read Middlemarch this year. I had it on my shelf and so so glad I did. I love all this feedback, Marjorie. 🥰. Happy Holidays!
There is an interesting examination of Henry James in last week’s NYTimes book review. Worth a read.
Wonderful! What a great reading list for 2024. I’d like to read Orlando and Zola too. My big read for 2024 will be Don Quixote! Wishing you and your family a merry Christmas and a great (reading) new Year. Here’s to many hours immersed into the classics! 📚📚📚🎄
Oooh, Don Quixote. On my someday list for sure. I should plan on breaking that one up into daily segments when I do read it. I can’t wait to hear about your experience with it!
I’ll let you know when I’m starting to read Therese Raquin
The Brontes, YES!!! Don't miss The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte. Of course my very fave is Jane Eyre by Charlotte B.
Believe me, I have it noted!
I bought james joyce's novel, dubliners, a couple month ago and i hope i have to read this novel soon
Oh, great! I’m enjoying dipping into the stories each evening. It’s my first experience with Joyce.
The Dubliners is short stories so very accessible Joyce.
Out of the list you mentioned, my favorites are The Woman in White and Portrait of a Lady. I found Wings of a Dove to be unreadable, frankly. Recent classics I have enjoyed are Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Classics I am looking forward to reading in the near future include Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Bleak House, The Red and the Black, Anna Karenina, and Don Quixote.
Oooh you’ve got some really cool books on your list! Bleak House is one I’ve been thinking about. Oh and yes. I have yet to try a Hardy, so I’m glad to be reminded to try him out!
Every year I say I will read East of Eden, and War and Peace. We’ll see….. love your choices! I read The Dead recently as it was final story in a collection of Christmas stories by Irish authors. Didn’t remember that I had read it before in Dubliners!😅
Oh, I’m the same about East of Eden. That’s a good reminder to me, once more. Oh man..the chapter a day War & Peace reading…bar none the best reading experience I’ve ever had. It’s hosted and organized by footnotes and tangents on Bookstagram.
East of Eden will not disappoint... on my top 10 list of all time.. 👍
@@ThaiEcka555 , Fantastic. High praise!
Try to find War and Peace in the Ann Dunnigan translation. I have read it twice. I tried a couple of other translations and they weren't nearly as good.
@@eveningprimrose3088 , I'm fascinated by the different editions. Alas, since I've just finished it 2 weeks ago, I'll wait a couple years before turning back to it. I'm missing it though!
Currently reading George Orwell's 1984. Next book is Mary Shelly's Frankinstien
Oooh, Wendy. 1984! If I ever read it, I've forgotten it. Please come and tell me what your experience is of Frankenstein!
My book club is doing War and Peace starting Jan. Make sure to have character list to refer to (characters can be referred to by first name, family name, or nickname), and I still like Maude translation.
oh how exciting!!
Ann Dunnigan translation is excellent.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "The Great Shadow" its set in Napoleonic era and I'm sure you would love it
Thanks for the recommendation! Happy New Year to you!
I really am itching to like Henry James, I read The Turn of The Screw and it wasn’t bad I just couldn’t get into it like other people did. I at least want to have read Portrait of a Lady because that’s one of his big ones. Also Orlando is one of my favorite books ever, Mrs. Dalloway is a very subtle work and Orlando really is a tour de force especially with the emphasis on the force aspect. Orlando is agonizingly perfect, it gives the impression that it never could have been written any other way. That was my impression at least lol
Oh, how interesting about Orlando! Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m more intrigued than ever.
The Woman in White is terrific--super fun, particularly if you edition notes not just the chapters, but the divisions of the parts when it was originally published serially. The parts end on great cliffhangers.
I’m glad I have it to look forward to!
Mary Barton is one of my most favorite books ever. I hope you enjoy it.
oh, nice! Thanks for letting me know, Jojo. High praise!
I’ve never read Zola nor Balzac (Brian at Bookish likes Balzac) but would like to. I couldn’t stand Henry James who I had in a class, but I’m finding my older self’s opinions don’t always accord with those of my younger self. I have _Woman in White_ waiting for me too.
Oh don’t i know it …when it comes to books we had to read in school!
Don't delay.. read Zola today..! 😊
Virginia Woolf is also on my list for this year. I bought a used copy of "The Waves" and I'm dying to read it.
She was on my list too in 2023. I read her first book, A Voyage Out or The Voyage out and Mrs Dalloway. I adore Mrs Dalloway! I began To The Lighthouse and didn’t finish it. It just got crowded out. I can’t wait to hear about your experience when you get to it!
a handful of dust was my first Evelyn Waugh!! i liked it a lot. i read orlando earlier this year and found it to be very engaging. The Ladies' Paradise is the first and only zola novel i've read, i'm looking forward to hearnig your thoughts on zola when you get to him :)
Oh, was it? How fantastic. It’s so small…and I’ve enjoyed the time period(ish) that The Age of Innocence was set in, so I think I’m properly primed to get to A Handful of Dust. Maybe it’ll be the holiday read. Zola is going to be so fun to try. Will he be as wonderful a discovery as Trollope has been in 2023? Time will tell. Happy Holidays, my friend. 🥰
What a beautiful pile of books, to say nothing of their potential reader.
Dubliners and Orlando are two personal favourites of mine.
Enjoy your reading and Happy New Year by a fellow left-handed reader.
Thank you! Oh, nice. I’m in good company!
A Handful of Dust is one of the most incredible books I've ever read. It starts off light and carefree and ends off (spoilers ahead) very differently (decided not to spoil too much after all). Wuthering Heights is a very difficult read (it took me thirty years and three attempts before I finally managed, a few months ago), but it is an absolute must-read if you are interested in Literature. The characters are horrible, all of them. They suffer, they do horrible things to one another. The writing is quite demanding: there are several narrators, each writes differently, etc. It's an uncompromising descent into human experience and a daring book, both in subject, and formally. A book like no other, you think you know it, but reading it is quite another story!
Thanks for all the feedback! I ended up reading A Handful of Dust and really enjoyed its BIZARRE nature! I still think about Wuthering Heights. It’s time is coming!
@@thelefthandedreader6632Thanks for doing this channel! Always a pleasure to be talking about books, especially classics :)) Good luck with Emily Brontë!!!
@@apneiaproductions696 , thanks!
I would definitely finish reading Far from the Madding Crowd. A wonderful book and one with a sort of happy ending, not typical of Hardy. Then there's Hardy's The Woodlanders; a marvellous story but a very sad ending. Jude The Obscure is grim. My favourite Bronte novel( along side JE) is Anne Bronte's second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. You also talked of Elizabeth Gaskell. My favourite of hers is North and South , my opinion of that book may have been influenced by the wonderful 2004 BBC production of the story.
Hi, Sue. Thanks for the recommendations. I'm glad to have them. Oh, and the reminder about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. That one is on my list!
I read all the 📚 you mention and just yesterday finished re-reading "The Woman in White"...originally I have it 3 out of 10 but now have it 5 out of 10 .
At long last a cousin from across the pond who doesn't speed-speak ! Sorry,I do not mean to be rude but we Brits like to speak slower.
Happy Christmas and A Very Happy New Year from GB.
PS: So sorry re:UT typos; gave not have.
UT 🙄
Hello! I’m glad you’re here. Oh, interesting that your experience with The Woman in White increased as you kept reading the book! Ad a Very Happy New Year to you, too!
@thelefthandedreader,
Thank you.
Much appreciated.
Just realized that I forgot to subscribe yesterday but now have 😊
The American is about a woman who is apparently a psychic of sorts and meets a Southern man. Wings of the Dive is the last book of Henry James. Hardy is great - read Jude the Obscure . Very sad, however- Far From The Madding Crowd is cheerier. Dubliners is amazing. The Dead was a film: John Huston’s last film. No, Cranford is what you need to read by Gaskell. Waugh - Brideshead Revisited definitely. Orlando is about someone who changes gender every lifetime. You must read Wuthering Heights and you Must read Villette. I can’t stress that enough and yes, it’s by Charlotte. Zola - definitely Therese Raquin
Hi, Thomas. Fantastic feedback. Thank you! Cranford…I’m writing that down. And, I’m on the look-out for Brideshead Revisited during my next used book store visit. Yay…for the vote to read Wuthering Heights and Villette. And Zola! Thanks for your input, Thomas.
I've just found your channel and loved this video.
I plan on reading a few classics this year:
Middlemarch
Wuthering Heights (re-read after 35 years!)
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
East of Eden
Little Women
Far From The Madding Crowd
Good luck in with your reading 📚 😊
hi Blondie! I’m glad you’re here! Oooh what a list! Please keep me posted on it. 🤓🤓🤓. I too may turn to Wuthering Heights. And….East of Eden!! I’ll be in good company.
@@thelefthandedreader6632 and I forgot that I'll be adding Far From The Madding Crowd to that list. My physical copy arrived in the post today!
Definitely will be checking back in with you. 😊
@@Blondie101010100 , oh fantastic!!
Have you read the classics Quo Vadis by Sinkiewicz, The Gods Thirst by Anatole France and The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells?
no I haven’t Jorge!
@@thelefthandedreader6632 The first has to do with Nero's Rome,the second set in France during the Terror and the last an experiment in horror.
@@jorgelopez-pr6dr , Interesting!
Our book club read The Woman in White. Tedious. Good luck. I think we discussed that he wrote at a time when books were published in a series in weeklies and the more words he used, the more money he was paid. It’s obvious in this book.
Oh, yes. The same with Trollope and Dickens…writing in a series. I’ll be prepared for the filler!
I read Jude the Obscure this year and it is really good but bleak. Far From the Madding Crowd is one of his less depressing novels, so I think picking which depends on how you are feeling about depressing books.
I hope to pick up a few classics by authors I haven't read. I also haven't read Zola so I may read Germinal. I am going to read Swann's Way with a group beginning in January. I also hope to read Vanity Fair by Thackeray. Actually I hope to read several other new to me classic authors, but we'll see what I actually pick up. I am reading only my own books next year, so I have lots of classics to pick from.
Laurie, thanks for the recommendation and also for sharing your plans with Classics. Good reminder! I've written down Thackeray's Vanity Fair now on my white board. That's one I'd like to get to someday! Reading with a group sounds fun. Happy Holidays, Laurie. I'm glad you're here!
I love Hardy! Madding Crowd is definitely the lighter of the two, but I think I preferred Jude (though I’m a big fan of depressing books 😂).
I’m attempting Joyce for the first time next year too!
Oooh are you? What Joyce will you be trying?
@GemofBooks have you read Hardys poetry from the loss of his wife?
@@AK-ks1kq I haven’t. I don’t always get on with poetry, but if it’s Hardy I’d be willing to give it a whirl!
Great video! Thanks for the ideas 💡😊
Hi, John. It’s my pleasure. Happy New Year to you!
Excellent choice ❤
Thanks!
Wilkie Collins makes a great cottage or beach read.
thanks for letting me know that!
I really want to read William Somerset Maugham for next year! 😁
Do you? Oh, great! Where do you think you’ll start? Do you have any in mind?
@@thelefthandedreader6632 I actually tried a bit of The Razor's Edge a few months back and thought it was nice... But I was already juggling a bunch of books at the time so I did not continue. So I might try that during semester break... Or Of Human Bondage if I'm feeling ambitious 🤣
@@SluggishReader , oh yes! The Razor's Edge. I forgot about that one. I read Of Human Bondage so long ago, I'd like to re-read it ....at some point! Keep me posted!
An interesting selection.
Henry James can be quite variable. A lot of his early writing was fairly mediocre. Unfortunately I started plowing through him chronologically instead of cherry picking his better stuff. Did read Rebecca West's Henry James: A Critical Biography recently, which is a good guide to what's good, what's not, and what's likely to be of interest.
James Joyce, Dubliners. Great book. Araby is one of my favorites too. An annotated edition really helps. Joyce piles on the turn-of-the-century Dublin color, but he never, ever explains anything. You have to be familiar with his references or figure them out somehow. A map of Dublin really helps, as well as some acquaintance with Irish history. I spent over a week, including Bloomsday, in Dublin in 2022. So I got familiar with the lay of the land there. Got to go to the Joyce Museum in the Martello Tower by Sandy Cove where Ulysses opens, the Joyce Museum in Dublin, as well as wander around Glasnevin Cemetery and visit Parnell's grave.
Read Theresa Raquin over Thanksgiving while I was traveling and visiting my niece in Southern California. Started it on the plane going out there and had trouble putting it down. Well written. Very depressing. His first popular novel. The inevitable comparison is between it and Crime and Punishment, which was written near the same time. It has a somewhat different dynamic and lacks the Nietzschean overtones. It predates his Rougon-Macquart series. Of that, I recommend Germinal. Quite the ride. Sobering, but more complex and not nearly as depressing as Theresa Raquin.
Love Virginia Woolf. Love Orlando. First read it in high school. One of my friends from high school, John, whom I haven't seen since 1967, is now Joanna. Recently got an annotated edition by Harcourt which I haven't finished going through for my umpteenth reread, but unpacking the inside jokes is fascinating. The first book you were trying to think of was The Voyage Out. There is also Melymbrosia, which is the reconstructed first version of The Voyage Out before she made the edits her publisher required. It's interesting comparing the two, but to modern sensibilities the reason for the changes is pretty elusive. I've also read To the Lighthouse, although it took me a couple of tries; it is not the easiest of her books to read. I also read Flush in high school and this year, as well as A Room of One's Own, The Death of a Moth and Other Essays, and am currently going through her complete collected essays. Even some of her very early short reviews of deservedly forgotten books are a hoot -- after scathingly dissecting them, she finishes with a tongue-in-cheek compliment.
A lot of people love Hardy. There, I said something nice about him. We had to read the Mayor of Casterbridge in my high school AP English class. I read about 80 pages and DNFed it because I loathed it, which was a pretty radical thing for me to do. I didn't call attention to the fact that I DNFed it. I articulately ranted about why I loathed it when we had an essay exam on it. I don't recall getting a bad grade on it. When I was in graduate school, a friend of mine went on about how he loved Thomas Hardy. He told me I should read Jude the Obscure. I read Jude the Obscure. I loathed it. I recently read The Mayor of Casterbridge completely and confirmed my opinion from high school. I read a collection of his short stories. I thought they were awful. I'll read some more Hardy sometime I'm sure. A lot of people love Hardy. I haven't found out why yet. I just don't get it. Good luck. You'll probably love him.
I first read Jane Eyre as assigned reading (probably an abridge edition) in junior high school English class. It was OK then. In 1979 I read Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, kind of a slightly time-shifted prequel to Jane Eyre, and loved it. Recently, I got the collected novels of Jean Rhys to read since I had loved Wide Sargasso Sea so much. An interesting, but not ecstatically happy reading experience. When I got to Wide Sargasso Sea at the end, I reread Jane Eyre to refresh my memory before pressing on. They were both good. I also read a biography of Jean Rhys. That help explain the connection between her early novels and Wide Sargasso Sea, but Wide Sargasso Sea was not the ecstatic experience I remember from 1979. Heraclitus and all that.
Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts. How lovely! Wide Sargasso Sea is on my list for 2024. I’m intrigued by the unedited version of Woolf’s The Voyage Out. (I really enjoyed that story.). Very interesting! I’m very glad to hear about your reading experience with Theresa Raquin. 👏👏.
I’m intrigued by the Rebecca West biography of Henry James. I read a Rebecca West this year…Return of the Soldier I think it’s called. It blew me away.
You should look into "The Beast in the Jungle" by Henry James. Its short and one of the best short novels I have ever read.
thanks for the recommendation!
Going to read East of Eden and Far from the Madding Crowd.😊
Erin, I’m going to try East of Eden too…I think? I’m jumping on the band wagon!
English major checking in with a confession... that I have read NONE of these great classics. I spent many wonderful months and years plowing through the works of the inimitable one, Charles Dickens, of course, and that journey left me with little energy to read other authors. Hardy sounds like my kind of author!!!
I can understand that!
You should read Indian classic novels too (like Premchand). Westerners allow themselves with limited outlook of western fictions. They forget about the world other than 'west'