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?

Turn of the Century Salon: January – An Introduction

January 15, 201312 Comments

During 2013 I am going to be taking part in the Turn of the Century Salon, hosted by Katherine of November’s Autumn. The idea of the salon is to read and discuss classics from the late 1880s to the early 1930s.

This month Katherine has asked a few questions to help us introduce ourselves…

What era have you mainly read? Georgian? Victorian? Which authors?

I’ve definitely read more classics from the Victorian era than any other period. I love Wilkie Collins, the Brontë sisters (all three), Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Alexandre Dumas.

What Classics have you read from the 1880s-1930s? What did you think of them?

When I first saw this question, I could think of very few classics I had read from this period (the only one that came instantly to mind was The Great Gatsby). Then I had a look back at my list of books read since I started blogging and discovered that I had actually read a lot more than I thought I had! Here are some of the books from the 1880s-1930s that I’ve read in the last few years (I haven’t listed all of them):

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (published 1889)
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (published 1895)
Ann Veronica by H.G. Wells (published 1909)
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (published 1911)
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West (published 1918)
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (published 1922)
Orlando by Virginia Woolf (published 1928)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (published 1929)

Name some books you’re looking forward to read for the salon.

I don’t really like making reading plans in advance as I never manage to stick to them, but here are some books I would like to read for the salon, listed in order of publication. I won’t necessarily read all of these and will almost certainly also read other books I haven’t mentioned here.

Germinal by Emile Zola (published 1885)
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (published 1886)
The Odd Women by George Gissing (published 1893)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (published 1905)
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (published 1908)
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (published 1915)
The Painted Veil by W Somerset Maugham (published 1925)

Is your preference prose? poetry? both?

Definitely prose!

Memories of A Christmas Carol: a Classics Club meme

December 23, 2012December 23, 20127 Comments

The Classics Club monthly meme question for December asks us for our thoughts and memories of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens:

What is your favorite memory of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? Have you ever read it? If not, will you? Why should others read it rather than relying on the film adaptations?

I was given a copy of A Christmas Carol as a Christmas present when I was a child, though I don’t know exactly how old I was. I can’t remember who gave it to me either, but I suspect it was probably an aunt or uncle. I remember taking the book with me to my grandmother’s a few days after Christmas and reading those famous opening lines for the first time:

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

The last time I re-read the book was in 2009, shortly after I started blogging, and it was still a pleasure to read – both the story itself and this particular edition. It’s a beautiful hardback book with colour illustrations and black and white line drawings by Arthur Rackham. Reading a book that looks and feels beautiful can really enhance the experience! Rackham’s twelve colour plates, originally published in 1915, can be seen here. I’ve always liked the one of Bob Cratchit sliding down the icy street.

I received a different edition of the book a few years later from another family member (again I’ve forgotten who it was). I’m not sure where I’ve put this one, though I know I must still have it somewhere. After a lot of searching online – which wasn’t easy, as there are literally hundreds of different versions of A Christmas Carol and I couldn’t recall the names of either the illustrators or the publisher – I managed to find a picture of the front cover for you:

This edition, which I’ve discovered was published by Viking, was illustrated by Peter Fluck and Roger Law (who were also the creators of Spitting Image) with pictures of grotesque puppet-like caricatures, like the one of Scrooge pictured on the cover.

There have been so many adaptations of A Christmas Carol, but although the story and the sentiment might be the same, if you only watch them instead of reading the novel you will be missing out on so much. As I said in my 2009 post on the book, even if you already know the story it’s still worth reading it for the richness and humour of Dickens’ writing and for his wonderful descriptions and imagery.

You can see how other Classics Club members responded to this month’s meme here.

Have a great Christmas and I’ll be back later in the week with my Best Books of 2012!

Classics Club August Meme – A Favourite Classic

August 9, 201211 Comments

The Classics Club are now hosting a new monthly meme and this month we are asked to write about our favourite classic. Like most of the other Classics Club members who have been participating in this meme I find it difficult to pick just one book. There are so many that I love and on a different day and in a different mood I might have chosen to write about Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Woman in White, Gone with the Wind or even a children’s classic, like my beloved Watership Down. But if I have to name one classic as my all-time favourite, it would have to be The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

I’ll admit that other classics might offer deeper insights into life, more beautifully-written descriptive passages and more fully-developed characters, but this is the one I enjoy reading the most and that’s why it’s my favourite. It has such an exciting, entertaining plot (and lots of fascinating subplots), so much action and adventure – and one of my favourite fictional characters, Edmond Dantes.

I’m sure most of us have experienced some form of injustice at some point in our lives and can remember how it made us feel. The hero/anti-hero of The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes, is the victim of an injustice so great that it completely destroys his life. Determined to punish his enemies for what they have done, he transforms himself into the Count of Monte Cristo and sets into motion an intricate plan for revenge.

I read The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time in 2006 and knew from the very first chapter that I was going to enjoy it. It’s a very long book – over 1,000 pages in the edition I read – but if you’ve never read it, please don’t let the length put you off. The story moves along at such a fast pace I remember being surprised to find it was a much quicker read than I’d expected. Don’t be tempted to read an abridged edition either because you would be missing out on so much. The plot is so complex I can’t imagine how anything could successfully be left out without spoiling the whole structure of the story.

I’ve also read two other Dumas novels – The Black Tulip and The Three Musketeers – and I loved them both, but not quite as much as I love this one. I’ve now read it twice and it’s on my list to re-read again soon for The Classics Club!

What is your favourite classic?

Six sixes from the first six months

July 11, 20127 Comments

When I saw that Jo of The Book Jotter had posted a summary of the first six months of the year by putting six books into six different categories, I thought it was a great idea and the perfect way to look back on our reading so far in 2012.

You can see my own ‘Six Sixes’ below. I’ve changed a few of the categories slightly to suit my own reading and although some of the books I’ve read would fit into more than one category I’ve only listed each book once.

Six books I loved:

Here are some of my favourite books from the first half of the year. I loved Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles so much it was very tempting to include all six of them here, but I wanted to give other books a mention too!

1. The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
2. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
3. Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman
4. The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye
5. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
6. Mariana by Susanna Kearsley

Six books by authors who were new to me:

I hadn’t read anything by any of these authors until this year and would be happy to read more books by all six of them.

1. The Last Summer by Judith Kinghorn
2. The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
3. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
4. Wonder Girls by Catherine Jones
5. Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
6. The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan

Six books with a mystery to solve:

I haven’t read many mysteries or crime novels this year but I enjoyed all six of these – especially my first two choices.

1. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King
2. Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
3. Towards Zero by Agatha Christie
4. The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi
5. Every Secret Thing by Susanna Kearsley
6. Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton

Six books that took me back in time:

Historical fiction novels appear in most of my other categories too, but as it’s my favourite genre I decided to give it a category of its own.

1. The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau
2. The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan
3. The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich
4. The Sultan’s Wife by Jane Johnson
5. The Adventures of Alianore Audley by Brian Wainwright
6. Treason by Meredith Whitford

Six classics I’ve read this year:

So far in 2012 I haven’t read as many classics as I was hoping to. Here are six of them – I’m sure I’ll be reading more over the final six months of the year.

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
2. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
3. Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
4. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
5. Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell
6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Six books that I had one or two problems with but am still glad I tried:

I found these books slightly disappointing but there were still some aspects of them that I liked.

1. Sacrilege by S.J. Parris
2. The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay
3. A Small Circus by Hans Fallada
4. The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen
5. The Glovemaker by Stacia Brown
6. The Professor by Charlotte Bronte

~*~

So those are my sixes – will you be posting your own?

One Book, Two Book, Three Book, Four…and Five

October 30, 20115 Comments

This is the second time Simon at Stuck in a Book has hosted this meme about past, present and future reads. I didn’t take part in the previous one, although I enjoyed reading everyone else’s posts, but this time I’ve decided to join in the fun myself!

1.) The book I’m currently reading:

I’m reading two books at the moment. The first one (in honour of Halloween) is a short story collection, Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell. I’ve only read the first story in the book so far and didn’t find it particularly ‘gothic’ but I’m sure the others will be better.

I’m also reading A Red Herring Without Mustard, which is the third book in Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mystery series. I loved the first two and although I’m only halfway through this one, I’m enjoying it as much as the others.

2.) The last book I finished:

This is the second Winifred Holtby book I’ve read: the first was South Riding, which I read earlier in the year and loved. The Land of Green Ginger was not as good, which was probably to be expected, as South Riding is considered to be her masterpiece, but I still enjoyed it and should be posting my thoughts on it soon.

3.) The next book I want to read:

The Ghost of Lily Painter by Caitlin Davies. This is a library book and will probably be the next book I read after I’ve finished the Alan Bradley one.

4.) The last book I bought:

I love historical fiction set during the medieval period and this trilogy about the Percy family was recommended to me. Unfortunately the books are now out of print but I managed to get a used copy of the first one, Lion of Alnwick, in good condition from Amazon. Now I’m trying to decide if I should buy the other two while I know they’re still available or if I should wait to see what I think of this one first!

5.) The last book I was given:

It’s not often that I’m given books by friends and family, but I have received a few review copies this month. This is the most recent one: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. It sounds like a beautiful story and I’m looking forward to starting it soon.

If you’ve read any of these books, what did you think of them?

Musing Mondays: Keeping Books

February 22, 2010April 15, 20106 Comments

Today’s Musing Mondays post from Just One More Page is about keeping books.

Do you keep all the books you ever buy? Just the ones you love? Just collectibles? What do you do with the ones you don’t want to keep?

I keep almost all of them. I usually only buy books that I’m fairly sure I’m going to enjoy (based on the synopsis, reviews, recommendations or because they’re written by an author whose work I’ve previously enjoyed) and I’m lucky in that I like – or even love – most of the books I buy. I know I’ll probably want to read them again one day, so I keep them on my bookshelves.

I don’t have any particular method for disposing of the books I don’t want to keep. A few examples: I used to have a beautiful 26-volume set of encyclopedias, but with Google and Wikipedia taking over everything, it had been years since I used them so I gave them all to charity. I also sold all my Sweet Valley High books on eBay, and gave away my Babysitter’s Club books to someone whose daughter wanted them, but there are a lot of other books from my childhood and teens that I can’t bear to part with even if I never open them again.

I really don’t like having to get rid of books just because I don’t have space for them – I know if I ever have a house with a spare room I’ll regret not keeping them all!

What about you?