Any big reading projects planned for 2025?

[Dappy777]

Do you plan to tackle any of the big monsters this year? You know, have a crack at Proust or Tolstoy or something?

This year, I want to read Middlemarch. I'd also like to try Virginia Woolf. She's been on my to-read list for years, but somehow I've never got around to her.

A few others I want to try (though I doubt I'll even pick half these up, let alone finish them):

Dickens: Bleak House
Thomas Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
Jane Austen: Emma
Heller: Catch 22
Ford Madox Ford: Parade's End

I've started Great Expectations. Never read it because it looks like a bloody doorstop, but have always wanted to. I'm going to try and really commit to it, in the hope it won't take too long!
I also have a Virginia Woolf on my bookshelf that's never been picked up 😆

I attempted Wolf Hall a couple of years ago but couldn't get to grips with it. Every other man was called Thomas and I found it so confusing. But I accept I'm in the minority because so many other people love it!

I've already done many of the big monsters and I'm writing up my PhD so I don't think I'll be in the mood for Proust etc in my downtime. My resolution for this year's leisure reading is Pratchett - lots and lots of him, in text and on audiobook. I've already read or listened to the first 6 (although the way Pratchett laid out and planned Discworld makes it difficult to be sure.) I have knowledgeable encouragement as my DH is a long-time reader and enthusiast and there's nothing he enjoys more than gabbing about the Pratchett oeuvre.

Middlemarch btw is brilliant. There are scenes in it that have me reaching for the paper hankies. But if you are new to George Eliot, you might prefer to start with The Mill on the Floss. It has as strong a plot-line and fewer philosophical meanderings. Wolf Hall is an absolute Marmite of a book - I really enjoyed it, but it has its detractors. Bleak House is as good a place as any to start with Dickens, because it's not hard, just fat. Dickens wrote in instalments for magazines and it shows - huge, baggy monsters, loads of cliffhangers, an endless list of characters. You might love BH or you might want to throw it at the wall.

Some people love Thomas Hardy and I'm one of them, but I can see why others don't. His novels are full of humanity's flaws and his characters don't always have happy endings. I enjoyed The Mayor of Casterbridge (recommended by my GP of all people) but Far From The Madding Crowd is absolutely gorgeous.

Finish re-reading the Wolf Hall Trilogy and an easy read novel in French.

I enjoyed Great Expectations, though I preferred David Copperfield. GE is considered his masterpiece (Harold Bloom would say Bleak House), but DC seemed richer and deeper and more heartfelt to me.

Lots of people seem to struggle with Wolf Hall. My mother gave up, and so did a work colleague. There's something about her style that seems to confuse people. I'm curious to see how I get on.

I've signed up for an online course on medieval female writers so I am starting Julian of Norwich's The Revelations of Divine Love and The Book of Margery Kempe. Not sure how its going to go

Ooo interesting @BuffysBigSister. If you're nearby, the British Library have an exhibition on until the start of March called Medieval Women: In Their Own Words. Looks so good, but sadly I don't think I'll have the opportunity to go.

Unfortunately not - but the course is run by British Library online - probably in conjunction with this exhibition

@Dappy777 great list, it inspired me to open up a secondhand copy of Remembrance of things Past that I'd bought a year or so ago. Nestled in the third page was a Morrisons receipt from 2017 for 2 x mushroom bolognaise and six eggs. I wonder if this is how far the previous owner reached!

That’s a rather Proustian experience, actually. I’ve been reading Remembrance of Things Past with friends for the past couple of years - I reckon we’re on course to finish in 2025!

My other main intention is to read more Trollope. I’m determined to get round to The Eustace Diamonds at last.