Kylie's Classics Challenge

[Kylie]

Kylie's Classics Challenge :readingtwo:

Seeing as I love reading classics above all else, I just have to give this challenge a go! I'm going to put my 'classic' classics in this thread along with my 'modern' classics.

I love that the term 'classic' is ambiguous because it means I can fiddle the years to suit my own needs :smile2: So for this challenge I'm going to label any literature prior to 1900 as 'Classic' and any from 1900 to around the mid 60s as 'Modern Classic' (even though in everyday life I would just refer to them all as Classics :mrgreen: ).

I'm also going to cheat a bit and list the classics I read last year, because that's when I really started getting into them and it would be a shame having them missing from the list.

[Kylie]

'Classic' classics and 'Modern' classics, in the order they were read, with year published and rating out of 10.

The Catcher In The Rye 8/10
JD Salinger, 1951

Catch-22 10/10
Joseph Heller, 1961

On The Road 8/10
Jack Kerouac, 1957

Metamorphosis 7/10
Franz Kafka, 1915

The Great Gatsby 8/10
F Scott Fitgerald, 1925

The Day Of The Triffids 8/10
John Wyndham, 1951

The Count Of Monte Cristo 9/10
Alexandre Dumas, 1844-1846

The Invisible Man 8/10
HG Wells, 1897

Brave New World 9/10
Aldous Huxley, 1932

Lord Of The Flies 7/10
William Golding, 1954

Pride And Prejudice 10/10
Jane Austen, 1813

A Tale Of Two Cities 9/10
Charles Dickens, 1859

The Trial 7/10
Franz Kafka, 1925

Waiting For Godot 5/10
Samuel Beckett, 1952

A Christmas Carol 9/10
Charles Dickens, 1843

[Kylie]

A selection of classics on my TBR pile:

Classics
Jane Austen: Mansfield Park
Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen: Persuasion
Jane Austen: Sense And Sensibility
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Charles Dickens: Bleak House
Charles Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby
Thomas Hardy: Far From The Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'urbervilles
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House Of The Seven Gables
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
James Joyce: Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
William Makepeace Thackeray: Barry Lyndon
William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair
Jules Verne: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Emile Zola: Nana

Modern Classics
Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood
Tom Collins: Such Is Life
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
AB Facey: A Fortunate Life
Frank Herbert: Dune
Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game
DH Lawrence: Sons And Lovers
Joan Lindsay: Picnic At Hanging Rock
Henry Miller: Tropic Of Cancer
Henry Miller: Tropic Of Capricorn
Margaret Mitchell: Gone With The Wind
Sally Morgan: My Place
Boris Paternak: Doctor Zhivago
Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged
Nevil Shute: A Town Like Alice
Betty Smith: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
John Steinbeck: East Of Eden
John Steinbeck: The Grapes Of Wrath
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy Of Dunces
Nathaniel West: The Day Of The Locust
Edith Wharton: The House Of Mirth
John Wyndham: The Chrysalids

Books that I'm reading are in blue. Once read, they'll be moved to the next post.

[Kylie]

Crime And Punishment 8/10
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866

To Kill A Mockingbird 10/10
Harper Lee, 1961

Lolita 9/10
Vladimir Nabokov, 1955

The Bell Jar 8/10
Sylvia Plath, 1963

Black Beauty 4/10
Anna Sewell, 1877

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland 8/10
Lewis Carroll, 1865

Dracula 10/10
Bram Stoker, 1897

Of Mice And Men 9/10
John Steinbeck, 1937

A Clockwork Orange 10/10
Anthony Burgess, 1962

Through The Looking-Glass 8/10
Lewis Carroll, 1871

The Time Machine 8/10
HG Wells, 1895

Slaughterhouse-Five 9/10
Kurt Vonnegut, 1969

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest 10/10
Ken Kesey, 1962

Carmilla 8/10
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872

Peter Pan 8/10
JM Barrie, 1911

Anne Of Green Gables 8/10
Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1908

Lady Chatterley's Lover 5/10
DH Lawrence, 1928

Diary Of A Nobody 9/10
George Grossmith, 1892

The Midwich Cuckoos 7/10
John Wyndham, 1957

Emma 9/10
Jane Austen, 1816

Great Expectations 9/10
Charles Dickens, 1860

The Town And The City 9/10
Jack Kerouac, 1950

The Thirty-Nine Steps 6/10
John Buchan, 1915

[Kylie]

Today I've started Through The Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.

This will be my 10th classic for the year, which I'm pretty happy with! There are probably 5 more on the list that I really want to read before the year is out, so I'm going to set myself a target of 15, which also happens to be how many I read last year! :D

[Kylie]

I finished Through The Looking-Glass a couple of days ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Next up on the classics list will probably be One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but first I need to start re-reading the Harry Potter books in preparation for the release of the final novel next month.

I was going to leave it until the beginning of July to start reading them (they're light reading so it shouldn't take long to get through them) but I really want to start on them soon so after the Stephen King novel (Different Seasons) that I'm reading right now, I might get through a couple of HPs and then start on Kesey's novel.

[Kylie]

OK, so next up on the classics list isn't One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I didn't have enough time to get it started in between Harry Potter books and I've since moved on to Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut as I've been desperate to read it for a little while now. So far, so good!

I've also started listening to an audiobook of JM Barrie's Peter Pan, spoken by Jim Dale. This is my second attempt at an audiobook. The first time I tried, I went for a walk through some botanic gardens and got completely distracted by everything that was happening around me (which wasn't much - I'm just easily distracted :lol:). I'll try to concentrate more this time :D

So that's one 'modern' classic and one 'classic' classic on the go. After that, nothing is going to get in the way of reading One Flew Over...!

[Kylie]

I've given up on the audio version of Peter Pan again; I just can't concentrate on audio books at the moment. I've decided to just read the ebook instead. Once read, that'll complete my goal of 15 classics for the year, so I might up the goal to 20, which should be easily achievable.

After Peter Pan, I'll be moving onto Anne of Green Gables for the August Reading Circle. And hopefully I'll have time left over at the end of the month to read Lady Chatterley's Lover, which I didn't get around to last month.

[Mels_bells]

Lady Chatterlys Lover- I know someone who says its really good. What is it about?

[Kylie]

Hi Mels Bells!
Lady Chatterley's Lover was chosen as the July book for the Reading Circle. A lot of our members read it and like it; you can read more about their views here (http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=3518). Kell also provides a very handy synopsis in the first post.

[Kylie]

An update to my Classics Challenge:

August has mostly been a good month for reading; I've been reading classics all month long so I've gotten a few out of the way (see earlier post for my ratings).

For starters, I finished One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. I read Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu for the Comparative Reading Circle before moving on to Peter Pan by JM Barrie, which I read after giving up on the audio version.

Then came Anne Of Green Gables by LM Montgomery, which I read for the August Reading Circle and thoroughly enjoyed; I will definitely be reading more of the Anne... series in the future.

Things took a slight turn for the worse with Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence, which I was catching up on for the July Reading Circle, before decidedly picking up again when I read Diary Of A Nobody by George Grossmith .

I'm hoping my luck will hold out as I am now reading The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. I believe this has received high praise on BCF by other members, and as I've already read and loved The Day Of The Triffids, I'm sure I'll enjoy this one too.

With the exception of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, all books I've read so far have been ebooks on my iPod, so it's a nice change to be holding a solid book (The Midwich Cuckoos) in my hands again. :D

[Kylie]

Bit of an update on how my Classics Challenge is going:

Finished The Midwich Cuckoos and Emma and have now moved on to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I've been reading it for a week already but I haven't read much because I've not been able to concentrate on it for long periods at a time (been very tired in the last week and have had a bit going on). I have a long weekend coming up so I'm hoping to get plenty of reading done after I get plenty of sleep ;)

Even though I've already reached my revised target of 20 classics for the year, I'm going to try to knock off a few more. I would love to get through the following before the end of the year (in this order):

Jack Kerouac: The Town and the City
Thomas Hardy: Far from the Madding Crowd
Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair

That works out at 2 per month and they're all quite lengthy!

[KathleenMacIver]

So how did you like Emma?

[Kylie]

I absolutely adored it, Katie :mrgreen: I wrote a gushing review on my other (main) reading blog. I can't wait to read more of her work - she's one of my favourite authors. Have you read Emma? If so, what did you think?