Would anyone like to join me in a modern classics challenge for 2015?

[mmack]

This year I read some very good books but a lot of mediocre ones as well. So next year I plan to read 12 modern classics that I haven't read before. Would anyone be interested in doing something similar? Or in discussing any of the books with me? My list is below. It's a bit male-dominated but that's because I tend to read mostly female writers so the classics I haven't read are mostly by male writers.

1. Saul Bellow; Herzog 2. Martin Amis; Money 3. Truman Capote; In Cold Blood 4. John Updike; Rabbit, Run 5. Philip Roth; American Pastoral. 6. Kent Haruf; Plainsong 7. Kurt Vonnegut; Slaughterhouse 5 8. Iris Murdoch; The Sea, The Sea 9. Doris Lessing; The Golden Notebook 10. Margaret Atwood; The Handmaid's Tale 11. Ron Moody; The Ice-Storm 12. J.M. Coetzee; Disgrace.

I thought the part where the friend explains to her about why her father might have liked to go to Hove was brilliant. I've read lots of books set in the period between the two world wars and lots of books about WWII but that passage is a man's whole life and 20 years of British history in a few beautifully written paragraphs. That part and the bit at the funeral where she realises she can't miss him because she never knew him are heart-breaking.

I was also curious about the narrator's mother. Obviously she cared enough to send her to convalesce by the sea but it seems quite callous to send a sick girl away for months with a great-granny she doesn't know.

It's a pity CB didn't write a memoir. I know someone wrote a biography but I'd like to read her story in her own voice. I was also chuffed to see that Julian Sands is her son-in-law. A Room With A View is one of my favourite films and I do like a random connection.

That is random!

It's strange - I found it hard to care much about the narrator's father. Although things would have to have been pretty bad for the house in Hove to be an "escape".

I was a little curious about Tommy Redcliffe. It's such an "everything on the page" type of book that I'm reluctant to imagine a subtext - but why was a man in his mid thirties taking a 17 year old girl out for lunch? (Bearing in mind that her mother was a deb at the same age.)

And her mother is such an absence in the story. I can't fathom whether this was a pointed omission or - well it can't have been accidental as the author had a choice about what she included.

There was a point where I wondered if, EastEnderishly, we might find out that Aunt Lavinia was her real mother. But that was wrong of me because this book has no "plot". Which was refreshing in a way. But I'd have liked a full novel as well. Particularly more of the Dunmartin great aunts and the three red headed cooks and the footmen in wellies.

Another thing I loved was the way the enormous solid paragraphs in themselves portrayed the vast, comfortless buildings and the vast, comfortless lives she was talking about.

I am glad to have been shown Great Granny Webster. Not least because I realise how dangerously close I am to turning into her.

It's funny that we could read it quite differently. I think that to us reading the book the mother is an absence but to the narrator her father is the absence.

I thought that the narrator was interested in Great Granny Webster because her father was the only person in the family who had any relationship with her and she was trying to find a connection to her father. I didn't think Tommy had any ulterior motives-I think he just missed his friend and the narrator wanted to talk about her father.

I think Lavinia spent her whole life searching for what was missing from her childhood. But it wasn't the material things she needed-it was her parent's attention. So sad.

The aunts in GGW reminded me so much of the aunts in the Cazalet chronicles. I think that in a few years I will have these books mixed up in my head. The falling down house reminded me of The Little Stranger. I wonder if GGW is one of those books that was quietly influential and sort of filtered into a lot of other books.

It's actually astonishing that one such tiny book has told each of us a different story.

For me the author was describing consecutive, unchangeable monoliths: GGW's unrelenting solitude, Aunt Lavinia's brittle craziness, the gothic chaos of Dunmartin Hall. The whys and wherefores of how people got themselves into those situations and how they felt was so - secondary. The joy was in the painting. I'm not sure how much I would have cared about Aunt Lavinia written by someone else - but insofar as I did care about her it was because of the exterior detail rather than because I felt invited to examine her psyche. (I think that's perhaps the main reason I found it all so unusual. Most books are all about emotion. I just didn't find that here.)

I haven't read any Sarah Waters so can't comment. And I've only heard The Cazelets, not read any of them. So I don't know how the words work on the page. On scant acquaintance they don't seem obviously family with this. On the radio they all sounded comparatively grounded. And at least empathetic. (Will have to try actually reading one.)

Whereas very strong connections to the Beckett, Waugh and Peake novels I mentioned in an earlier post leapt out at me. (With perhaps some of the flavour of Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond.) But Caroline Blackwood did everything better.

Read The Stepford Wives the other week. Didn't enjoy it much - the writing was basic, but I guess the ideas he put across were groundbreaking at the time, and the ending was very creepy.

Next up is The Handmaid's Tale and I must remember to look for American Pastoral in a charity shop over the next few weeks. I've felt quite disappointed with the three modern classics I've read so far.

Has the OP decided what to select for April?

I might read The Golden Notebook in April. Have you read We Have Always Lived in the Castle yet? I can order it from the library so if you let me know when you are reading it I will order it and we can discuss it. I feel I should read The Golden Notebook but I'm a bit scared of it. I think it might be the most challenging book I picked.

No, still not read it yet but plan to over the next few months - perhaps it could be the choice for April or May?

Sounds good to me. I think more people would be interested in reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle so that can be the official April modern classic.

I just finished Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I read 1984 and Brave New World years ago but never read this so I thought I'd read it after The Handmaid's Tale to keep with the dystopian theme. It was written in 1953 and has a lot of interesting ideas in it. He was on the money about large screen televisions and advertising being personalised. But I don't think I'd call it a classic as I found it badly written and everything in it happened so quickly it was hard to suspend disbelief and get caught up in the story.

That's interesting - I agree the writing is weird, rushed, disjointed - but for some reason it's had more impact on my understanding of civilization than almost any other piece of dystopian lit.

In a way it's more like a series of deceptively simple cartoons hung on a wall, as I'm walking past they all appear flawed and childish but months and years afterwards they're still in my head and I'm judging every single thing I see against the reality portrayed in crayon. I guess I can never not see the world through the eyes of the community he found at the end of the book now.

Definite classic for me.

I think Brave New World will always be my favourite dystopian book. It's so prescient it's almost impossible to believe it was written in the 1930s. Everyone should read it.

Between Christmas and yet another birthday at least a dozen new books have arrived at my door. But all I ever seem to read is MN.

BTW has anyone else stepped into a Waterstones lately and found there are almost no books? Cafés, stationery, toys, board games in abundance ... I know it's my fault, our lovely local bookshop closed down about three months after I signed up to Amazon. But now I don't seem to have a choice.

Anyone care to update on their reading lists?

I read two really lovely books recently-The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa and History of the Rain by Niall Williams. I'm planning to read American Pastoral next week and I ordered The Golden Notebook as well.
Easons is the big chain bookstore here in Ireland and it's about 10% books as well. I haven't bought much from amazon recently either-the conversion from Sterling to Euro and the international postage make it very expensive. I am just glad the local library is so good-I would be heartbroken if it ever closed.

I'm still not getting on with the modern classics I've read so far this year . Last month I read The Handmaid's Tale ,which was confusing and hard-going, and I'm now a fifth of the way through Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - my God is this book dull. Will probably give up on it - fifty pages to go until the end of part one and then I'll decide.

How about some poetry or a 21st century play SEdweller? No point ploughing on with something that's not hitting the spot.

The Nether by Jennifer Haley dropped through my door yesterday. I knew I wouldn't get to see it on stage so this is the next best thing. I hope it proves to be a future classic.

Have never attempted Jonathan Strange - not convinced that everything popular is necessarily great.

OP Yoko Ogawa is entirely unfamiliar to me. I might not pick one up from the covers - they don't promise muscularity and awkward edges. But I'll investigate.

I don't like magic or fantasy at all so I don't think I'll ever read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I think if I was a child now I wouldn't even like Harry Potter. I wouldn't read a 1000 page book unless I was really enjoying it so I also think you should abandon it.
The Housekeeper and The Professor is a really simple book about friendship and maths. It is probably the literary polar opposite of Jonathan Strange.

I now know why I've never bothered trying to read a fantasy book. It's going back to the charity shop tomorrow.

Zero Poetry sounds like a good idea, and last month I loved reading the text and commentary of A Taste of Honey so I think I need to read more plays. Also have The Secret History and American Pastoral to read.

I now know why I've never bothered trying to read a fantasy book up until now I meant to add.

I've been quite lucky with the modern classics I've read so far this year - I've enjoyed them all (reviews for each on the 50 Books Challenge thread):

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
Nemesis, Philip Roth
Indignation, Philip Roth
The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
When we were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro

Currently reading and really enjoying:
A House for Mr Biswas, V.S. Naipaul

Next book to read:
A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul

In between I've read several contemporary books too.

Just the mention of A House For Mr Biswas throws me back to my late teens ... I've recalled it with such fondness ever since (some passages were still making me laugh a few years after) but I would be afraid to read it again in case age and cynicism spoil it for me.

I'm going to have to reassess my "classic" categorisation. Struggling to the end of a "very good book" but I'm not sure I'll be able to say it's a classic. And I don't know why.

Has anyone mentioned Primo Levi yet? Not very uplifting but well worth reading.

YY to Margaret Atwood.

What is the "very good book", Zero? I never read A House for Mr Biswas but it looks really good.

My list so far is:
Nemesis Philip Roth
Stoner John Williams
Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami
Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
In Cold Blood Truman Capote
Great Granny Webster Caroline Blackwood
The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury

I'm enjoying the challenge because even the books I didn't really like are making me think. I'm reading at least two classic a month so I think I'm going to have a think and add a few more to my list. Primo Levi is a good suggestion, Duchesse. It would be the right year to read If This is a Man.

Finished!

Was The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally, which I'm sure I mentioned at the start of the year. I had put it aside for In Cold Blood.

I just don't know what I feel about it. It is a thoroughly researched, complex, entertaining, properly grown up novel - with one absolutely staggering and original incident of revenge that left me with this face.

But I'm not sure I ever felt that "ohhhh" moment - where I learn something entirely new about the world and the people in it - as in Farenheit 451 or the moment in The Portrait of a Lady when Isabel realises ...

Dunno. I would recommend it to almost anyone though!

Well, The Nether took minutes to read so I don't think I'll count it as my twelfth book. Was very topical, satisfyingly twisty but astonishingly brief and simply written.

Have ordered Onitsha...

I started American Pastoral. I have a feeling it's going to get good but there is way too much narrator and too little plot in the first section.
I'm still thinking about books to add to my list-I think Kazuo Ishiguro is someone I might like. I also want to read Things Fall Apart as Chinua Achebe is Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's favourite writer and I loved all her novels.