Monday, January 8, 2007

Classics Challenge!

Here's my list for the Winter's Classics Challenge (hosted by booklog at A Reader's Journal). I'm very excited about this, for several reasons. After all, I'm an Aries, so I always love a good challenge. And I really enjoy classic literature, so this made me search for new ones instead of just rereading old ones. :D

1. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
I've been meaning to read this forever: it's referenced in so many other books that I read!

2. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Another book I've always wanted to read. In fact, I've checked it out from the library a couple times in the past and just never got around to it. But I'm hoping to start a biography of George Eliot next month, and it'd be kind of odd to read the bio without having read any of the real works.

3. Out of Africa by Isak Dineson
This will get me off the European continent for awhile, if not out of the European mindset!

4. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Hadn't heard of this book before running across it on A High and Hidden Place's challenge list. I'm always up for a perfectly new author. Furthermore, I haven't really read any Victorian gothic novels before, so between this and The Moonstone, I should have my fill!

5. The Portrait of a Lady or Daisy Miller by Henry James
I'm leaving this choice open, because it'll depend on how much time I have left! I thought that the men probably deserved one author on the list, and this way I'm reading another American as well. As an American who lived half my life in Europe, I've always enjoyed reading James. And yet, I've never gotten around to two of his most famous works!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah you've joined the Classics Challenge. I also have Lady Audley's Secret on my stack. I get the feeling I probably won't finish the challenge - I tend to read classics at a much slower pace - but it'll be fun I'm sure :)

Booklogged said...

Eva, great - thanks for posting your books. I'll add them to the list and update the post. There are a couple on your list I want to read, too, but they'll have to wait til the next go round.

I like that quote just below your name.

Sarah said...

This is a really enjoyable list of books...re Henry James, maybe you should read Daisy Miller as it is much shorter then Portrait of a Lady and was his first commercially and critically successful work (1876)- it is enthralling. I read it because of Azar Nafisi's wonderful discussion of it in Reading Lolita In Tehran, and wasn't disappointed.