One classic a month til the end of the year :)
 

I wish I'd thought of starting this in Jan..I may read 2 in Feb to catch up but I'm going to read one classic a month. Anyone want to join me?

First for me will be Emma by Jane Austen...somehow it's the one book of hers that I've never read. :)

Here's a goodreads list of popular classics :)

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...assics-top-100

I love this idea! I'll have to do some up catching myself. And, I've read A LOT of the classics, so choosing where to start might be hard.

LOVE Emma!!!

I love Emma, too! Don't tell anyone but I liked it way better than Pride and Prejudice. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell is from the same era...it's pretty funny, and the BBC made it into a TV show that is absolutely wonderful.

ooh - i'll join in too!

emma is a great choice - i love it and read it about once every year or two :)

I was an English major in college and one semester I took a class called The English Novel..we had to read a book a week for the entire semester..it was a lot but it was my favorite class ever. I don't know if I could do one a week these days though lol

I will try. I have quite a few on my Nook that I downloaded for free. I have not read many classics since I was in school.

Just checked and Emma is "always available" at the library, so I'll start that when I'm done with the book I'm now reading. I'm already behind my book goal this year as I haven't been reading much!

We're trying to read more classics to the boys this year.

We read the Hobbit to the boys last month, which IMO is a classic but most lists discount it because it's fantasy. :( We're reading them Orwell's Animal Farm this month (how is this considered a classic & not the Hobbit??) & I am delighted to see them making the same mistake/assumption I did when I read it without anyone 'explaining' it to me - it's a neat story about about animals and aren't those pigs mean! DH had to read it in school so he got the symbolism explained to him chapter by chapter & hated it. I read it on my own & loved it & the boys are enjoying it too.

I too prefer Emma to Pride & Prejudice. I know no one will agree with me but I never really saw the appeal of Darcy.

We're got the Time Machine & Agatha Christie's Murder of Roger Ackroyd next on our list

Who is to say that The Hobbit is not a classic? It's just that it's a children's classic (unlike Lord of the Rings, which is written with adults in mind, whereas The Hobbit was a tale Tolkien used to narrate to his children).

Animal Farm is not for children, so it would be among adult classics. As you know, it's a parable on totalitarian regimes (the Soviet one specifically, but it works for any), so it's in a different league than The Hobbit in terms of topic. Yes, you can read it as a story rather than a parable, but it's still a disturbing one.

Makes sense to me.

Love this idea! I'm reading the Hobbit right now, actually. I've read LOTR, but never the Hobbit and I'm loving it! So sweet and a lot like LOTR, but before the world became so dark and sinister.

Emma is a favorite as well! But P&P is my all time favorite book--ever. :wub:

Emma better than P&P?! Sacrilege! Actually, although by a different author, I like Jane Eyre better than either of them -- my favorite classic.

haha oh dear I've gotten myself in some trouble, haven't I? I guess I should say Emma was much more my style - I remember it being funnier than P&P. Maybe I'm just remembering the respective movie versions, though.

When I was younger, I liked P&P better than Emma, but I reead both in autumn and P&P annoyed me to no end (esp. Elizabeth, which surprised me as I used to like her), while I found Emma endearing, so I definitely prefer that book at this point of my life. A question of mood/age/whatever.

I think Sense and Sensibility is my fave Austen :P

But hands down my favorite of all time is Wuthering Heights. I think i've read it about 10 times in all.

Not gunna lie, I find Emma a lot easier, quicker, and more enjoyable to read than Pride and Prejudice. lol! I mean I love both, but I can't even think of how many times I've read Emma.

Perhaps this isn't the appropriate time for me to admit that I've never read Pride and Prejudice. And, I've never seen any of the movies/mini-series either - at least not all the way through. Some how, I got all the way through high school and an English degree in college without ever being assigned P&P, and it hasn't had enough of a pull on me in the last 20 years to make me pick it up and finish it. It may have something to do with a certain character with whom I share my name. I've heard she's kind of a twit. Lol.

Maybe I should make it my goal to finally read P&P this year.

I've found, and this may be just me, I can't just dive into books from that time. I need to read a good (though not necessarily like a literary masterpiece) new historical book first. Or any other newer book that is heavy on descriptions. I've found that it helps me a lot when it comes to reading those. Even so, Pride and Prejudice is one I just have to make myself start and keep reading, I just have so much trouble getting into it at first.

I finished up Emma this week. I liked it but it's not my favorite Austen.

Next up for me in March will be Brideshead Revisited

So Brideshead was a huge disappointment..didn't enjoy it much at all.

Next up is Bleak House by Charles Dickens. I watched the miniseries on Netflix last summer so I think this is a good pick.

Oooh - good luck with Bleak House. It's kinda hard to get into. At least it was for me. :) But, I absolutely adore Dickens, so I think it's definitely worth reading. :)

I liked the story in Bleak House but man it needed some editing...10 pages of descriptive passages before getting to the meat of a chapter was a bit much. But I made it through. It's one of those rare instances when the movie was better.

So I just got through with Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome which isn't a classic but man it was good...at 800 pages of teeny tiny print though (it's not available on kindle) it took me several weeks to get through. Still LOVED it and there are still 6 more books in the series!

Anyway..taking a little break from the streets of Rome to get my classic in for April...I picked E.M. Forster's A Passage to India

Hoping it's a good one :)

Nikki - I need you to give me a swift kick in the rear. I haven't completed any book since February. :( You are doing awesome! I'd love to hear how you like A Passage to India. Bleak House is one of the few books that I started but haven't finished yet. It's a bit of a bear, but it's still on my list because I adore Dickens.

That Masters of Rome series looks interesting, but I hate when books aren't available for Kindle. I don't like buying physical books anymore, so when they aren't available for Kindle, it means that I have to actually leave my house and pick it up at the library. Oh, woe is me! Lol.

Have you ever shopped at alibris.com?

I used to shop there all the time before Kindle...anyway I got all of the masters of rome series for .99 each and in hardcover..they're used books but still..can't beat that and their CS is good and shipping is quick.

We don't have a local library so I don't have that option :(

I'll have to look into that. Thanks for the linkage. :)

I love Jane Austen. My favorite book by her so far is "Persuasion." I was disappointed at how the military character was such a cad in "Pride and Prejudice." Persuasion was one of her last novels and I think the characters have much more dimension.

You should try Les Misérables, Dickens is very, very brief in his descriptions compared to Hugo. :-D

That's how they wrote in that time. It's us who lack patience these days - and what amazes me I didn't mind in my teens, but in my 30s I simply can't read 19th century prose for this reason. :-)

Haha. I thought of that book, too. :) Great book. LOTS of words. :D

Great minds think alike! :-)))

Actually, I'm a bit bummed that I don't have the patience for the classics these days, but I'm hopeful for the future. Maybe I'll learn to love the slow pace again as I get older. :-)