Top Ten Tuesday: Needing to read more

September 16, 201440 Comments

I don’t normally take part in Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish), but this week’s topic is one that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently:

Top Authors I’ve Only Read One Book From But NEED to Read More

There are many, many authors I could include in this list, but I’ve decided just to concentrate on authors I’ve tried for the first time since I started book blogging. After the name of each author, I have given the title of the one book I’ve read…and of course, I would welcome any suggestions as to which books I should read next!

1. Kate Atkinson (Life After Life)
This was one of my favourite books read last year, so it seems ridiculous that I haven’t tried any of her others yet. I’m looking forward to starting the Jackson Brodie series.

2. Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale)
I loved this, but I read it for “Advent with Atwood” two Decembers ago and still haven’t picked up any more of her books. That will have to change soon!

3. E.M. Forster (A Room with a View)
Early last year I participated in a “Turn of the Century Salon” reading event and decided to try two authors who were new to me. I liked both but haven’t got round to reading a second book by either of them yet. One of these authors was E.M. Forster (I think Howards End will be the next of his books I read) and the other was #4 below.

4. W Somerset Maugham (The Painted Veil)
This is another novel that found its way onto my favourite books of the year list last year, but again, I still haven’t explored Maugham’s other work. I like the sound of The Moon and Sixpence.

5. Barbara Pym (Less than Angels)
This isn’t regarded as one of Barbara Pym’s most successful books, but I did enjoy it and am expecting to love some of her others…especially Excellent Women which I really must read soon!

6. Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe)
I was always intimidated by the thought of reading Walter Scott, until I read Ivanhoe and found it much easier to read than I’d expected. As I do love reading classic historical fiction, I’m sure I would like Scott’s other novels too…if I could only find time to read them!

7. Josephine Tey (The Daughter of Time)
I read this because of my interest in Richard III but I do want to read some of Josephine Tey’s other mystery novels eventually as well.

8. Elizabeth von Arnim (The Enchanted April)
It’s been more than three years since I read this book and I still haven’t read another von Arnim, despite stating in my review that I would “definitely be reading more”.

9. Edith Wharton (Ethan Frome)
I didn’t love Ethan Frome, but I’m hoping I’ll love one of Edith Wharton’s other novels. The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence are both on my Classics Club list.

10. John Wyndham (The Midwich Cuckoos)
I don’t read science fiction very often, but I enjoyed this book when I read it a year ago. I think The Day of the Triffids will probably be next.

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Do you like any of these authors? Do I need to read more of their work? What would you recommend?

Classics Club July Meme: Biographies

July 22, 20148 Comments

This month’s Classics Club Meme question is:

Have you ever read a biography on a classic author? If so, tell us about it. If you had already read works by this author, did reading a biography of his/her life change your perspective on the author’s writing? Why or why not? // Or, if you’ve never read a biography of a classic author, would you? Why or why not?

Looking through my list of books reviewed here on my blog, I can only see three or four biographies of classic authors that I’ve read in the last five years. I’ve also read some fictional biographies (such as The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan) but they’re not quite the same thing! When I read a book, classic or otherwise, I do like to know some basic information about the author (whether they are male or female, which country they are from, how old they are, etc) but I can usually get that information from the book cover or ‘about the author’ page. Beyond that, I don’t usually feel any need to know every detail of the author’s life and prefer just to concentrate on enjoying their work.

One biography that I did enjoy was Claire Tomalin’s Charles Dickens: A Life. It didn’t leave me with a very good opinion of Dickens as a person, but it was interesting to see how people and events from his personal life inspired his fictional plots and characters. Having also read Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which is another excellent book, I would like to read more of her work at some point, despite my usual lack of interest in reading biographies. Her book on Thomas Hardy sounds the most appealing to me, but I’ve been waiting until I’ve finished reading all of Hardy’s novels first.

Earlier this year I read The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins by William M. Clarke but although Collins is one of my favourite classic authors, I was a bit disappointed with this particular biography. There’s a lot of information on Collins’ private life (though to be fair, you would expect that from the title) but Clarke doesn’t spend much time discussing his writing. He does occasionally show how aspects of Wilkie’s personal life may have related to his work, but there’s not enough of this and when I reached the end of the book I didn’t feel I’d gained any real insights.

While I did learn a lot about Collins’ and Dickens’ lives from these two biographies, I can’t really say that they changed how I feel about their writing. For the purposes of this meme, a better book for me to mention here is probably the biography of Daphne, Angela and Jeanne du Maurier which I read last year – Daphne du Maurier and Her Sisters by Jane Dunn. Although I had a few problems with this biography too (which I’ve explained in my review) I do think Jane Dunn did a good job of explaining how the girls’ childhood experiences and influences shaped their future careers. I’ve never read anything by Angela du Maurier, but I know that Daphne put a lot of herself into her writing and many of her novels include autobiographical elements – reading Dunn’s biography gave me a better appreciation of this.

Well, it seems I’ve found more to say on the subject of biographies than I’d expected! Do you enjoy reading biographies of classic authors? Which ones have you read?

Six in six!

July 12, 201411 Comments

Two years ago Jo of The Book Jotter came up with this fun and simple meme to help us reflect on the books we’ve read in the first six months of the year. The idea is to pick six different categories and then for each one list six books or authors that you’ve read so far this year. Jo has provided lots of category headings to choose from if you need inspiration or you can be creative and think of your own. This time I’ve used some of the same categories that I’ve used in previous years, as well as one or two new ones. I’ve only listed each book once, though some could have been included in more than one category.

Six classics read in 2014

1. Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
2. Stoner by John Williams
3. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
4. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
6. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Six novels based on the lives of real people

1. Sisters of Treason by Elizabeth Fremantle (Katherine and Mary Grey)
2. The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick (Eleanor of Aquitaine)
3. Crippen by John Boyne (Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen)
4. Empress of the Night by Eva Stachniak (Catherine the Great)
5. Girl on the Golden Coin by Marci Jefferson (Frances Stuart)
6. Falls the Shadow by Sharon Penman (Simon de Montfort)

Six books with an element of mystery and suspense

1. The Second Duchess by Elizabeth Loupas
2. Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart
3. Tropical Issue by Dorothy Dunnett
4. A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton
5. Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie
6. Watch the Wall, My Darling by Jane Aiken Hodge

Six books that took me to six different locations

1. Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato (Sicily)
2. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (Nigeria)
3. The Long Song by Andrea Levy (Jamaica)
4. The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed (Somalia)
5. One Night in Winter by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Russia)
6. Ghostwritten by Isabel Wolff (Java)

Six authors new to me this year

1. Jenny Barden (The Lost Duchess)
2. Paul Doherty (Roseblood)
3. Laurie Lee (Cider with Rosie)
4. Deborah Harkness (A Discovery of Witches)
5. Octavia Butler (Kindred)
6. Margaret Irwin (These Mortals)

Six books I loved but didn’t manage to fit into another category above

1. The Moon in the Water by Pamela Belle
2. Insurrection by Robyn Young
3. Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton
4. The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin
5. Little Man, What Now? by Hans Fallada
6. The Convictions of John Delahunt by Andrew Hughes

How has your reading been in 2014 so far? Have you or will you be posting your own six in six?

Classics Club March Meme: Literary Periods

March 8, 201412 Comments

It’s been a while since I last answered one of the Classics Club’s monthly memes, but this one appealed to me and I thought I’d join in. The question this month is:

What is your favorite “classic” literary period and why?

This is a very easy question for me to answer. My favourite literary period is, and always has been, the Victorian period (1837-1901). I love the style of Victorian writing and while I do also enjoy reading books from other periods, I usually feel much more comfortable with a Victorian classic than with a classic from the 20th century. The reasons people sometimes give for disliking Victorian novels – the length, the wordiness, the long descriptive passages, the habit of directly addressing the reader – have never really been a problem for me. And some of the greatest characters and most memorable plots in literature can be found in Victorian fiction too.

One of the first Victorian novels I remember reading was A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which I was given as a Christmas present as a child. It was a lovely illustrated hardback edition which I still have and sometimes re-read at Christmas. This was followed several years later by Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, both of which I read as a young teenager and loved. It took me a lot longer to get to Anne Bronte’s novels but when I eventually did I enjoyed those as well, particularly The Tenant of Wildfall Hall.

Despite enjoying A Christmas Carol when I first read it all those years ago, it’s only more recently that I’ve come to appreciate Charles Dickens’ other work. Our Mutual Friend found its way onto my books of the year list in 2011 and A Tale of Two Cities did the same in 2013.

Dickens and the Brontes are probably the first names that come to mind for most people when they think of Victorian novelists, but there are so many others that I love too. As the Victorian period covers several decades, it obviously encompasses a wide range of different types of books and authors from Gothic novels such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas to the wonderful Victorian sensation novels of Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Ellen Wood (The Woman in White, Lady Audley’s Secret and East Lynne are some of my favourites) and the comedy of Jerome K. Jerome who wrote the hilarious Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel.

Anthony Trollope is another of my favourite Victorians (I have now read all six of his Chronicles of Barsetshire and am currently in the middle of his first Palliser novel, Can You Forgive Her?) and so is Thomas Hardy – I’ve loved all of his books that I’ve read so far, especially Tess of the d’Urbervilles and A Pair of Blue Eyes.

As I come to the end of this post I realise I haven’t even mentioned George Eliot or Elizabeth Gaskell – or any of the non-British authors who I’m never quite sure whether to class as ‘Victorian’ or not but who wrote during the same period. And there were some classic children’s novels published during the Victorian era too. I think Black Beauty may actually have been the very first Victorian novel I ever read!

Do you enjoy reading Victorian literature or is there another period that you prefer?

If you do like the Victorians, do you have any favourite authors or books that I haven’t mentioned here?

Classics Club August Meme: Forewords and Notes

August 11, 201322 Comments

I haven’t taken part in the Classics Club Meme for a while, but August’s topic is one I feel quite strongly about! This month’s question is:

Do you read forewords/notes that precede many classics? Does it help you or hurt you in your enjoyment/understanding of the work?

I do sometimes read the forewords and notes but I’ve learned from experience to read them at the end rather than the beginning! I’ve never understood why so many publishers think it’s acceptable to give away the entire plot of a novel in the introduction just because it’s a classic. It’s true that many classics have become such a big part of popular culture that most of already know what happens, but that’s not always the case and I hate to think of anyone unsuspectingly reading the introduction first and having the story completely spoiled for them. When I read the Penguin English Library edition of Far from the Madding Crowd recently, I was pleased to find that the ‘introduction’ had been placed at the end of the book as an afterword instead of at the front. I think it would be nice if all publishers could either do the same or at least print a spoiler warning at the beginning the way Wordsworth Classics do.

Personally I like to go into a book knowing as little as possible about the plot and whether it’s a classic or a contemporary novel makes no difference. I might go back to read the introduction after I’ve finished the book, though not always as sometimes I either forget or decide that I’m happy with my understanding of the book and am ready to move straight on to another one. I read classics simply because I enjoy them so I’m not necessarily interested in analysing every little detail. I like to read the information on the author and their life, if any is given, or information that places the story into historical context, but apart from that I don’t usually find the introduction particularly helpful and prefer to interpret a book the way I want to interpret it.

What are your opinions on forewords? Do you like to read them or not?

Six sixes…again!

July 4, 20136 Comments

This time last year Jo from The Book Jotter came up with a fun way for us to look back at the books we read over the first six months of the year. I was hoping she would bring the meme back again for 2013 – and she has!

The idea of the meme is to choose six categories and within each category list six books or authors that you’ve read so far this year. Here are my six sixes:

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Six books from my Classics Club list:

1. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
2. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
3. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
4. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
5. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
6. The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola

***

Six books with King or Queen in the title:

1. The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan
2. The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier
3. King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett
4. Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle
5. The Forbidden Queen by Anne O’Brien
6. The Iron King by Maurice Druon

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Six authors new to me this year:

1. Guy Gavriel Kay
2. Barbara Pym
3. Kate Atkinson
4. E.M. Forster
5. Robert Goolrick
6. Bee Ridgway

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Six books set in six different centuries:

1. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (17th)
2. The Poisoned Island by Lloyd Shepherd (19th)
3. The Memory of Lost Senses by Judith Kinghorn (20th)
4. Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick (12th)
5. The Agincourt Bride by Joanna Hickson (15th)
6. She Rises by Kate Worsley (18th)

***

Six series I’ve started, continued or finished:

1. Anne Zouroudi’s Greek Detective series (continued)
2. Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series (started)
3. Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire (finished)
4. Maurice Druon’s Accursed Kings series (started)
5. Philippa Carr’s Daughters of England series (started)
6. Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel series (continued)

***

Six books filled with mystery or suspense:

1. The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
2. The Chalice by Nancy Bilyeau
3. The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham
4. Like This, For Ever by S.J. Bolton
5. The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor
6. Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

***

Those are my choices! How has the first half of 2013 been for you?

Classics Club May Meme

May 7, 201320 Comments

I haven’t participated in the last few monthly memes from the Classics Club but I thought I would join in this month as it’s a nice, easy question to answer.

Tell us about the classic book(s) you’re reading this month. You can post about what you’re looking forward to reading in May, or post thoughts-in-progress on your current read(s).

Before I start to discuss this month’s books, I should probably mention the three books from my Classics Club list that I read in March and April and still haven’t found time to write about yet! They are:

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola

I’ve been behind with my reviews all year, but I hope to post my thoughts on these three in the next couple of weeks.

This month I’m planning to read these:

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

I received a beautiful Penguin English Library edition of this book in a giveaway from Heavenali last year and feel bad that I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. This will definitely be the next classic I read and I’ll probably start it this weekend. I’ve only read a few of Thomas Hardy’s books but I loved them and am really looking forward to reading more of his work.

Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

I re-read The Three Musketeers recently and mentioned that I want to continue with the other books in the Musketeers series. Twenty Years After is the second one and I can’t wait to read it as I’ve loved everything else I’ve read by Dumas. This is a very long book, though, so I might not finish it before the end of the month.

And those are my plans for May! I also need to read this month’s section of War and Peace (Book 2, Parts 3 and 4) for the readalong I’m taking part in.

Are there any classics you’re looking forward to reading this month?