2022 year of classics

[stiltonandcrackers]

I normally read historical fiction or just contemporary fiction and the odd biography. But there are so many classics that I both want to read and feel I should.

I have lined up Little Women to start with.
Dracula, The brothers Karamazov, Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina.

Any suggestions of classics that you have loved?

I rarely watch costume dramas but am currently loving Vanity Fair and planning to read the book.
I read all George Orwell's books 40 years ago, the two most famous are my least favourite.
I'll add Anna Karenina to my list.

@Xiaoxiong

This was me in 2021! I read two Trollope (the warden and barchester towers), two Evelyn Waugh (decline and fall and vile bodies), and am now almost done with Bleak House (which really picks up after the first 100 pages and is brilliant).

It's one of the best decisions I made in the lockdown last January - to read all the books I knew enough to pretend that I'd read, but hadn't actually read

If you enjoyed The Warden and Barchester Towers, I strongly recommend that you read the other four Barsetshire Chronicles. I love them all but the last is one of my favourite books of all time. The Palliser novels are also good (actually I enjoy all Trollope's novels).

My aim for 2022 is to finish rereading all the Dickens novels. I read them all years ago (though I didn't enjoy or finish Pickwick Papers) and last year I decided to revisit them all. I'm about half way through and currently reading David Copperfield. The last two will be the ones I know best: Bleak House, which I studied for A level over 40 years ago, and A Tale of Two Cities. And this time I hope to persevere with Pickwick Papers!

I love this thread. Some inspiration for me.
I love Wilkie Collins and remember loving North and South.

Ah, okay, I hadn't read it before, I can imagine analysing it to death does take the fun out of it!!
Totally forgot I read A Picture of Dorian Gray this year too, I enjoyed that

My friend got me one of those posters of the 100 top books where you scratch off the ones you've read so I've been slowly working my way through a lot of classics this last year.

Classics I love and reread:
Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Rebecca
Sherlock Holmes
1984
Dracula
All's Quiet on the Western Front

Classics that I'm glad I read but wouldn't re-read
Frankenstein
The Plague
Gullivers Travels
The Little Prince
Hard Times

In general I find Charles Dickens a bit long winded. Oh and I gave up on Les Miserables.

My favourites are:
Wilkie Collins. His female characters are wonderful and complex and his stories are complete page turners.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. This is completely bonkers and feels both very much of its time (it was written in the 18th century) and yet startlingly modern as well as it plays with the structure of the novel and the relationship between life and literature. Probably not the best to start with but watch the film A cock and bull story and then embrace the crazy.
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves and Testament to Youth by Vera Brittain. The two best British autobiographies about WW1.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Well worth the hype.

More recent options that are well on their way to being classics:
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. A glorious romp about an acrobat with wings.
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. Magic realist novel inspired by the history of the Allende family (a politically important family in Chile).

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

Some great recommendations here, thank you!

@JaninaDuszejko have not heard of some of the authors you have mentioned, will look into them. House of Spirits is on my TBR shelf. Not really sure why I haven't read it yet.

Have not considered Dickens. He would certainly be a good one to add, which book?

@Enrosadira is the boring part of War and Peace the end? I have heard the last hundred pages or so are totally unnecessary.

@123ZYX thanks for the tip about Dracula, I have tried to start it several times and failed, this is probably why. Will stick with it this time.

I am going to look into North and South and The Count of Monte Cristo. I should really re read pride and prejudice and Jane Eyre but will see how I go.

Now to finish my last book of '21 while the kids are at home before next week.

Am really looking forward to reading next year. Especially looking forward to reading the brother Karamazov.

Yes covid has been good for the classics

Hmmm to me there was a part in the middle about a massonic conversion that did very little to me. But then again I was so in love with Prince Andrej that…

Dracula, I preferred the first half to the second. When Mina was an active agent rather than a passive one all the men had to save. She is an Hermione really.

i love the Karamazof alhough I remember very little about it now

My challenge is on number of book I need to read next year (hence less phone) and a mixture with classics and whatever happens to grab me. The classic for some reasons feels like a blanket and a hot choc though.

The Masonic stuff was less interesting than the rest but still interesting I thought. That second epilogue though … as W&P is a reread for me I am not reading it!

I read Dracula this year whilst on a break in Whitby, and really enjoyed the link between place and novel. I am going to think about doing this a bit more .

I also read Animal Farm this year but have mostly been reading novels (including everything Julia Quinn has written after really enjoying Bridgerton ☺️). In 2022 I need to stretch myself more in my reading

The masonic stiff was interesting but the initiation went on and on. The second epilogue I can’t even remember it so you must be right @StColumbofNavron

All I know is that it had absolutely nothing to do with the precious 1,000 pages. The war stuff though, I really loved, possibly more than the peace sections, which was unexpected. I found myself sitting on local vast open space imagining Borodino etc.

I read Dracula this year whilst on a break in Whitby, and really enjoyed the link between place and novel.

The description of Whitby is so accurate isn't it (unlike the description of Orkney in Frankenstein)? English Heritage has a good article on their website about the relationship between the town and the novel.

Many of my favourites have already been mentioned but here are a few more,
Mrs Dalloway ~ Virginia Woolf
Sons and Lovers ~ D H Lawrence
A Room with a View ~ E M Forster
Ulysses ~ James Joyce
Brideshead Revisited ~ Evelyn Waugh
Our Mutual Friend ~ Dickens
Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hardy
Cold Comfort Farm ~ Stella Gibbons
Middlemarch ~ Eliot

Rebecca
The Remains of the Day

Some that I loved:
Tess
Madame Bovary
Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Animal Farm
1984
Dracula.
Anna Karenina
Rebecca
The Trial by Kafka

Have also read Germinal but found it hard going.

Would like to join in a classics read but not sure what to start with...

I got the following Penguin cloth-bound classics for Christmas:

1984
Animal Farm
Pride and Prejudice
A Tale of 2 Cities

Great Expectations is an excellent Dickens to start with.

Middlemarch is brilliant; one of my favourite classics.

Arnold Bennet is a very underrated Edwardian novelist. I love The Old Wives' Tale, the story of two sisters' contrasting lives.

I agree with a PP that Germinal, the story of a poor coal-mining community. is grim - good though - however Zola is such a versatile writer. The Ladies' Paradise, set in a Paris department store, is completely different. I've been meaning for years to read the whole Rougon-Macqart series and this might be the year to start.

Trollope is very readable too. I have the last volume of Barsetshire Chronicles to read this year.

And Pride and Prejudice is fantastic. Always fun to revisit.

A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Little Dorrit and David Copperfield are my fave Dickens novels. Is it worth sticking with Our Mutual Friends?

I did love Les Miserables, except the chapter about the Paris sewers

Howard's End is gorgeous.

Perhaps I shouldn't call then classics but I love Nancy Mitford's novels.

*Friend

I'm trying to read more classics and modern classics too. Last year I read

Persuasion (a reread as it is my favourite Austen)
A Tale of Two Cities
Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
My Cousin Rachel (even better than Rebecca)
I Capture the Castle
Dombey and Son

In 2022 I plan to read
Anna Karenina
Another Dickens but haven't decided which
1984
Jamaica Inn
The Grapes of Wrath
A Thomas Hardy - not read any of the novels, just some short stories for O Level

Recommend
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall-Anne Bronte
The Story of an African Farm -Olive Schreiner
Martha Quest-Doris Lessing
The Turn of the Screw-Henry James

@KateF I’ve only read Tess and Return of the Native but I am still not over Tess and it was 2013!

I’ve read L’Assomoir (The Dram Shop in some copies) by Zola which is the one before Nana mentioned above. It was brilliant, though very very bleak. I also read Therese Raquin which I was less keen on.

I had to read Jane Eyre for GCSE and hated it. Re read it over lockdown and thought it was great. I also read a lot of Thomas Hardy. He writes some really good female characters.

I'll join. I've read a fair few classics.

War and Peace (OK but I was so done by the end)
Anna Karenina (Loved)
Jane Eyre (loved)
Wuthering heights (hated it)
Oliver Twist (Loved)
A Christmas Carol (loved - read it every year)
David Copperfield (good)
1984 (loved)
Brave New World (loved)
To Kill A Mockingbird (loved)

Planning on Middlemarch and a Dickens this year - possibly Great Expectations