Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion
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Intrusive questions about your intimate relationship with the Bookshelf (or what I did when I had a spare hour)
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My spellcheck is very English too and decided Kafka was a Frank.
Mod
Before I begin though I am going to give a small advertisement for the group Listopia list https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9... - There are at least a dozen books that I am the only person who has voted for. To keep all the books from the bookshelf on the list, we need multiple voters.
Best books on the shelf:
My favorites that I rated on Listopia are
1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
3. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austin
6. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Books that give the shelf charm?
1. Rip van Winkle by Washington Irving
2. Heidi by Johanna Spyri
3. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
4. The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Best represented author: Jane Austin
Missing books by represented authors? uncertain, pass
Favorite unrepresented authors:
1. Tennessee Williams
2. Willa Cather
3. Honore de Balzac
My conclusion: I much prefer older books. There are very few "classics" from the last few decades that I actually enjoy reading. Usually the more I avoid recent prize winners, the happier I am.
Best Books:The Leopard
Beloved
The Trial
The Maltese Falcon
Mrs Dalloway
Books that give the shelf charm:
Master & Margarita
We Have Always Lived In The Castle
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Good Soldier Švejk
Cold Comfort Farm
Best represented:
Wilde, Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Hardy, du Maurier, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Austen
Books missing by represented authors:
The History of Mr. Polly by H. G. Wells
Nostromo by Conrad
Invisible Cities by Calvino
The Dispossessed by Le Guin
Unrepresented authors:
Le Carre (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)
DeLillo (Underworld)
Patrick White (The Tree Of Man)
Jeanette Winterson (Oranges are Not the Only Fruit)
Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
What does this list say about me:
very much New School over Old School
i.e. the mind-blowing smorgasbord that is 20th Century literature! :oD
99% of the books on my shelves are unread, and it'll be a while till I'm in a stable enough loving space to start expanding my permanent collection. For now, I have:The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
as worthy of mention. I hope to acquire nice editions of all my favorites (https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...), five stars (https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...), and even some of my four stars (https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...) in the future.
@Lynn- I’m finishing up 100 Years of Solitude which might fit that generalised modern classic mould; loose plot, magic realism perhaps the sort of original style that might have fervent fans but not universal acceptance; which should make for good discussion of its merits as a classic; a good battleground if you like. @Darren- The Leopard is an extraordinary Visconti film and I love all your other choices for best book so I’ll slot both The Leopard and The Master and Margarita on my to read list. Thanks.
“We Have Always Lived In The Castle” cane to mind when I was making my list; strange charm of its own.
Best books on the shelf:Hamlet
The Secret History
Beloved
The Odyssey
Animal Farm
Middlemarch
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Age of Innocence
Lolita
Catch 22
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Books that give the shelf charm?
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
We have always lived in the Castle
Perfume
Matilda
Giovanni's Room
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Brave New World
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Best represented authors?
Dickens, Austen, Hardy, Eliot
Books missing by represented authors?
Emma - Austen
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Hardy
Unrepresented authors?
Tom Jones - Henry Fielding
Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne
Conclusions?
I'm a mix of old and new school, with a heavy leaning towards English or American lit. I also need to read more from our shelves!
Best books on the shelf?The Count of Monte Cristo, Hamlet,Bleak House, Lonesome Dove
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Secret Garden,
Doctor Zhivago, The Unbearable Lightness of Being,
The Odyssey , The Picture of Dorian Gray,
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Flowers for Algernon,
Fahrenheit 451 , Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
East of Eden , A Study in Scarlet
Breakfast at Tiffany's , The Raven and Other Poems,
My Cousin Rachel , The Woman in White,
The Loved One
Books that give the shelf charm?
The Secret Garden
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Flowers for Algernon
Best represented authors? Dickens, Jules Verne, Austen, Shakespeare
Books missing by represented authors?
Little Dorrit, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Unrepresented authors?
The Wolfe's and Woolf:
Thomas Wolfe : Look Homeward, Angel
Tom Wolfe :The Bonfire of the Vanities
Virginia Woolf (especially pre experimental) The Voyage Out
The John's: John leCarre Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
John Dos Passos: The 42nd Parallel (USA Trilogy)
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
Edna Ferber So Big
Conclusions?
What does this list say about you?
I have to come back to this. So far it says I like too many books and I'm late for work!
Updated 6/20 .
Fun challenge. Hard though, so many books to mention! But keeping it brief :)Best books on the shelf?
-The Brothers Karamazov, The Devils, White Nights - Fyodor Dostoevsky
-In the first Circle, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
-War and Peace, How much land does a man need?, The Death of Ivan Illych - Leo Tolstoy
-Moby Dick - Herman Melville
-Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
-Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
-One Hundred Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
Books that give the shelf charm?
Any and all Thomas Hardy
Lady Susan - Jane Austen
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Winter notes on summer impressions, The Idiot - Dostoevsky
Doctor Zhivago - Pasternak
Best represented authors?
Haha, anyone with a Russian surname. Almost. But there's a lot of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Bulgakov, Turgenev and Pushkin.
Also Hardy and Austen.
Books missing by represented authors?
Cancer ward - Solzhenitsyn
I'd also, just to spoil myself, like a new edition of Pride & Prejudice
Unrepresented authors?
I should buy, and read, more of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Louis Borges, and Isabelle Allende
Conclusions? What does this list say about you?
I really like Russian novels
Sue wrote: "Best books on the shelf?The Count of Monte Cristo
Hamlet
Bleak House
Lonesome Dove
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
[book:The Secret Ga..."
Sue, your list heavily overlaps with my favourites from our shelf. There are three I haven’t read, but should get to sooner rather than later - Lonesome Dove, The Unbearable Ligtness of Being and East of Eden.
What a fun way to familiarize ourselves with the group shelf, and think about upcoming nominations!Best books on the shelf
Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
The Haunting of Hill House
The Odyssey
Don Quixote
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
Giovanni’s Room
Middlemarch
The Great Gatsby
Beloved
Charm
I think what gives our shelf charm is the short works and the poetry. Things we've read recently like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, but also The Raven and others. So many great short reads!
Best Represented Authors
Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Dostoyevski, Hardy, Steinbeck.
Books Missing by Represented Authors
I'll just mention one. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I love this magical book so much!
Unrepresented Authors
We need more women and authors of color and more translated works. Here's a few I think are musts:
Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)
Marguerite Yourcenar (Memoirs of Hadrian)
Carson McCullers (The Member of the Wedding) (up for vote right now!)
Conclusions
I think this group does a fantastic job of combining well-loved and more unusual classics, and I think we'll add more diversity as we go.
We do have overlap Pink. You have some on your list that I thought, I should have added. There are 3 of yours I haven't read that I need to get to. Middlemarch, Perfume, Story of a Murderer and Lolita.
I'm afraid to read Lolita but many say it's very good.
Lonesome Dove is hands down the book with the best character developement I've ever read. It's a real quick read for its page length because the writing is not complex. If you aren't loving the characters by 1/3 in then it's not for you.
Unbearable Lightness Of Being is so wonderfully philosophical. It won't work for people to don't like philosophical musings or those who would have a hard time with the breaking of the 3rd wall, or people who don't like a lot of sex infused in a story (though it's critical to the philosophy here - not gratuitous)
East of Eden: - Great rich writing of time and place about the nature of good and evil.
Sue, thanks for your thoughts on those three books. I don’t think I’ve heard a bad word about Lonesome Dove, but it isn’t the sort of book I’d ordinarily pick up. Unbearable lightness sounds good, but I’m not a fan of philosophical musings, so I’ll see. East of Eden will have to wait a while, as I have The Grapes of Wrath pencilled in first. These are all on my long list of books to read, they just need bumping up, so it helps to know that you’ve enjoyed them so much.
Mod
Sue is absolutely right about not enjoying Unbearable Lightness if philosophical musings are not to your taste. I did not like it for those reasons and I have similar issues with Dostoyevsky. An interesting thread topic which I will give some thought soon.
First of all, I'm embarrassed to admit how long I spent thinking about this, lol. Best books on the shelf?
Anna Karenina
The Color Purple
Dracula
Far From the Madding Crowd
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Lord of the Rings
Slaughterhouse-Five
Twelfth Night
Books that give the shelf charm?
And Then There Were None
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Great Expectations
Kindred
The Maltese Falcon
Peter Pan
The Sound and the Fury
Best represented authors?
Charles Dickens
William Faulkner
Kazuo Ishiguro
Leo Tolstoy
Books missing by represented authors?
Isaac Asimov / I, Robot
Kate Chopin / Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie
Agatha Christie / Murder on the Orient Express
Ernest Hemingway / The Sun Also Rises
Stephen King / It
Unrepresented authors?
Philip K. Dick / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
T. S. Eliot / The Waste Land and Other Poems
Flannery O'Connor / A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Sam Shepard / Buried Child
Tennessee Williams / Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Conclusions? We have a pretty diverse bookshelf, but I'd love to see more plays, books of poetry, and more stuff by non-Western authors. I like that we have a mix of famous classics and off-the beaten path works.
What does this list say about you? I like the strange and the fantastic. I have embraced a good mix of the traditional and the offbeat and the old and the new. I have some catching up to do.
😀 I was aware; asking the question, it’s a test of how much free time people can make for themselves; family/work kind of get in the way of sitting down with a list like this. I appreciate the time taken.
My choice for an Asimov would be I Robot; it’s such a valuable thought experiment concentrating the mind on robot ethics. The early Stephen King books- Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining really stand out for me especially the vampire book, such a tragic story, well written. I also like his book on horror writing (Danse Macabre?) which is a great source of recommendations of other horror books in one place.
PinkieBrown wrote: "My choice for an Asimov would be I Robot; it’s such a valuable thought experiment concentrating the mind on robot ethics. The early Stephen King books- Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining really sta..."
All of those books are amazing.
Best Books on the Shelf?The Iliad and The Odyssey (Fagles/Pope/Lattimore/Fitzgerald translations)
The Oresteia
The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
The Divina Commedia: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (ed. Peter Alexander)
The King James Bible
Al-Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation, tr. Ahmed Ali
The Essays
Don Quixote
War and Peace & Anna Karenina
In Search of Lost Time
Books that Give the Shelf Charm?
E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia: Queen Lucia & Miss Mapp, Lucia in London & Mapp and Lucia, The Worshipful Lucia & Trouble for Lucia
Decline and Fall
The Code of the Woosters
Party Going & Concluding
Our Spoons Came from Woolworths
Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village
A Visit to Don Otavio: A Mexican Journey
A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th Movements
The Adventures of Augie March
Masters of Atlantis
The Balkan Trilogy
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
Best Represented Authors (Get ready...)
William Shakespeare
Dante Alighieri
Homer
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Tacitus
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
Robert Browning
Thomas Hardy
Evelyn Waugh
Henry Green
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Kingsley Amis
Leo Tolstoy
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anton Chekhov
Isaac Babel
Franz Kafka
Thomas Mann
Robert Walser
Stefan Zweig
Bruno Schulz
Sándor Márai
Fernando Pessoa
Primo Levi
Curzio Malaparte
Albert Camus
Irène Némirovsky
Georges Simenon
Flann O'Brien
Vladimir Nabokov
Muriel Spark
William Faulkner
Saul Bellow
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Victor Serge
Vasily Grossman
H.G. Adler
Gregor von Rezzori
Thomas Bernhard
Mario Vargas Llosa
Naguib Mahfouz
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
Yasushi Inoue
Books Missing by Represented Authors
Paul Scott / Staying On
Clarice Lispector / The Hour of the Star
John Cowper Powys / Owen Glendower
Joseph Roth / The Hundred Days
Alan Moorehead / The African Trilogy
Raymond Aron / The Opium of the Intellectuals
Robert Musil / Agathe, or the Forgotten Sister
Leszek Kolakowski / The Main Currents of Marxism
Varlam Shalamov / Sketches of the Criminal World: Further Kolyma Stories
Vasily Grossman / A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945
Unrepresented Authors
Aleksandar Tišma / The Book of Blam & The Use of Man
Matei Călinescu / The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter
Antal Szerb / Journey by Moonlight
Dezső Kosztolányi / Skylark
George Konrád / The City Builder
Aleksander Wat / My Century
Ismail Kadaré / The Pyramid
Jakov Lind / Soul of Wood
Tom Kristensen / Havoc
Henrik Pontoppidan / Lucky Per
Nirad C. Chaudhuri / The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar / The Time Regulation Institute
Simone Weil & Rachel Bespaloff / War and the Iliad
Samuel Menashe / New and Selected Poems: Expanded Edition
Joan Murray / The Complete Poetry
Roberto Juarroz / Vertical Poetry
Conclusions
This is just a minute fraction of my library. It's out of control and I like it that way. There's no focus, there's variety: fiction, non-fiction, short stories, essays, criticism, history, philosophy, politics and a lot of poetry. It's intentionally, self-consciously Eurocentric and then it branches out. The only changes I would make would be to keep adding to it and increase the number of books on religion.
What does this list say about me?
That I like to read. A lot.
I have more books pending than those read, just as Aubrey above. That said,
The best:
1. Anything by Gregor von Rezzori. Seriously, the man rocks.
2. They Were Counted
3. The Things They Carried
4. The Vienna Melody
5. Cyrano de Bergerac
6. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
7. Diary of a Man in Despair
8. The Bridge on the Drina
9. The Feast of the Goat. A highly disturbing book.
10. The Wendigo, The Lottery, and Stefan Zweig's short stories. They are a real treat.
11. Twelve Angry Men
12. Wuthering Heights
13. All Quiet on the Western Front and its sequel The Road Back.
Books that add a certain charm
1. Persuasion
2. The song of Achilles
3. The picture of Dorian Gray
4. White Nights
5. David Copperfield
6. The yellow wallpaper
7. Rebecca
Best represented authors
1. Charles Dickens
2. Daphne du Maurier
3. Erich Maria Remarque
4. Edgar Allan Poe
5. Algernon Blackwood
6. Gregor von Rezzori
7. Honore de Balzac
8. Franz Kafka
9. Tennessee Williams
Books missing by represented authors
1. The siege by Ismail Kadare
2. Swann's way by Marcel Proust
3. Lost illusions by Balzac
4. Bleak house by Dickens
Unrepresented authors
1. Mikhail Sholokhov
2. Magda Szabo
3. Nevil Shute
4. Fernando Pessoa
5. Marguerite Yourcenar
6. Hermann Broch
Conclusions
Like Pillsonista, its a mess. I'd like to read more non-fiction and poetry though, for a long while I shied away from them. I am definitely more a classicist, biased towards old ones.
Mod
The Count of Monte Cristo
Anna Karenina
Middlemarch
East of Eden
Pride and Prejudice
Moby-Dick, or, the Whale
Jude the Obscure
Hamlet
The House of Mirth
Great Expectations
Limited myself to ten (otherwise I could put half the list here)
Books that give the shelf charm?
Gone with the Wind
The Haunting of Hill House
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Maybe not even the best by a certain author; just something you personally cherish.
Best represented authors?
Jane Austen
The Brontes (we have covered all their significant works)
Books missing by represented authors?
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Ruth
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Unrepresented authors?
Paul Scott
Marilynne Robinson
Rohinton Mistry
Wallace Stegner
Nevil Shute
Perhaps suggest a couple of books that would make the grade.
Conclusions?
I am drawn toward the older books. I was surprised how many of the true classics we have managed to read as a group. I think the group has helped me to reach for some of the newer ones.
What does this list say about you?
My list of favorites reads like a college syllabus of books you "must" have read. Still, I read them because I love them and they are classics for a reason.
Ila wrote: "Unrepresented authors 1. Mikhail Sholokhov
2. Magda Szabo
3. Nevil Shute
4. Fernando Pessoa
5. Marguerite Yourcenar
6. Hermann Broch"
Herman Broch's The Sleepwalkers is one of my most favorite novels ever. It's so good, and if you can get your hands on a copy, do so.
And Fernando Pessoa was demigod amongst mere mortals. It's crazy to think that a genius like that lived during the 20th century. His contribution to Portuguese was greater than Joyce's was to English.
I have a feeling I completely misunderstood this topic's context. I'll redo my answer at some point.
Aubrey wrote: "I have a feeling I completely misunderstood this topic's context. I'll redo my answer at some point."me too!
although I understood it the other way!
maybe we should have two threads - one for Group Bookshelf and one for Personal Bookshelf!
I don't have the spare hour needed for a thoughtful answer, but would just like to exclaim on how many new books I'm always discovering through the threads like this. The best and the most dangerous side of Goodreads, this.
Darren wrote: "Aubrey wrote: "I have a feeling I completely misunderstood this topic's context. I'll redo my answer at some point."me too!
although I understood it the other way!
maybe we should have two thread..."
It looks like about half the people did it on their own bookshelf.
I couldn't tell with yours Darren because most of your favorites are on our bookshelves and all the underrepresented ones aren't. I think that says that this is most certainly the right group for you!
Sara wrote: "Best books on the shelf?The Count of Monte Cristo
Anna Karenina
Middlemarch
East of Eden
Pride and Prejudice
[book:Moby-Dick, or, t..."
I stopped at 20 Sara and could have put 10 more probably! I'm not familiar with any of your unrepresented authors except for M. Robinson. I must investigate!
just to be clearI answered with reference to the Group bookshelf
which is what I thought the OP intended
but I got confused when people started referring to their own bookshelves, and thought I'd misunderstood
that is all.
;o)
Darren wrote: "just to be clearI answered with reference to the Group bookshelf
which is what I thought the OP intended
but I got confused when people started referring to their own bookshelves, and thought I'd ..."
oh- gotcha.
I blame the vagueness of the original question and I’m happy for whatever context to be placed on the questions that the questioners chooses😀Basically I come to praise the bookshelf not to bury it; but I like the idea that there are areas for improvement.
Book Shelf, take two.Best books on the shelf?
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Beloved - Toni Morrison
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Villette - Charlotte Brontë
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Books that give the shelf charm?
Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Persuasion - Jane Austen
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
Best represented authors?
Anything in the best books section/books missed +
Mary Ann Evans
Alice Walker
Kazuo Ishiguro
Franz Kafka
Books missing by represented authors?
The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
Daniel Deronda - Mary Ann Evans
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Castle - Franz Kafka
Everything by Woolf not already included
Unrepresented authors?
Sigrid Undset - Kristin Lavransdatter
Imre Kertész - Fatelessness
Murasaki Shikibu - The Tale of Genji
Machado de Assis - Epitaph of a Small Winner
Nella Larsen - Quicksand,Passing
Ann Petry - The Street
Carson McCullers - The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Richard Wright - Native Son
(I could go on, but this is a healthy amount.)
Conclusions?
I have an agenda, and I'm not afraid to show it.
Mod
The Count of Monte Cristo
Anna Karenina
Middlemarch
East of Eden
Pride and Prejudice
Mob..."</i>
[book:Crossing to Safety would make my top 100 list. Hope you will check out Wallace Steger.
Pillsonista wrote: "Ila wrote: "Unrepresented authors 1. Mikhail Sholokhov
2. Magda Szabo
3. Nevil Shute
4. Fernando Pessoa
5. Marguerite Yourcenar
6. Hermann Broch"
Herman Broch's The Sleepwalkers is one of my ..."
Thanks for the heads-up. My library actually has a copy of The Sleepwalkers, and I hope I read it sometime soon.
Best books on the shelf?Hamlet
Middlemarch
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Beloved
Madame Bovary
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
To the Lighthouse
Lolita
Great Expectations
Books that give the shelf charm?
Matilda
Treasure Island
Silas Marner
Candide
The Importance of Being Earnest
Catch-22
The Princess Bride
Best represented authors?
Austen, Dickens, Faulkner, Hardy, Hemingway, Morrison, Twain, Wharton...actually I don't have a bone to pick with most of the authors represented on the list.
Books missing by represented authors?
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Unrepresented authors?
Perhaps suggest a couple of books that would make the grade.
Cormac McCarthy - Suttree, Blood Meridian
Don DeLillo - Lots of them
Haruki Murakami - Wind Up Bird Chronicles in particular
J.M. Coetzee - I haven't read many of his, but the ones I have are pretty darn good.
John Kennedy Toole - Dunces should be on the shelf just to see the wide variety of opinions.
Flannery O'Connor - The Complete Short Stories
Conclusions?
What does this list say about you?
Based on my reading habits I am probably a dirty, old man who eats frozen meals alone and doesn't get out enough.
Nente wrote: "I don't have the spare hour needed for a thoughtful answer, but would just like to exclaim on how many new books I'm always discovering through the threads like this. The best and the most dangerou..."Yes...me too.
I can't select just a few...
GR is a great for that.Especially if you are in some great groups with great recommendations you trust.Let the TBR multiply.
I'm cleaning up books, so:YOURS FOR THE ASKING:
Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean by Alex von Tunzelmann.
PM me ("ALLEN") with your mailing address.
Best, ALLEN (Smalling, Chicago)
CasterbridgeBlood Meridien
Flannery O’Connor
I love those choices!
I just finished The Mayor of Casterbridge today and it was great!
Mayor of Casterbridge seems like a massive step forward in Hardy’s confidence as a writer after Far From The Madding Crowd and on his way to Jude the Obscure, which is again astoundingly confident writing; to the extent that it’s an unblinking affront to late Victorian moral rectitude. Some of the faults of Madding Crowd; like the use of literary quotes as if he’s copying George Eliot and the caricature of ordinary folk, as if he’s distancing himself from his own people; have been resolved in Casterbridge; so it feels like Hardy’s first fully formed ... and full on! ... work. I love Madding Crowd btw and The Woodlanders feels like a re-go at the theme and is really good; but my case would be if Tess and Jude are on the shelf then Casterbridge and the monumental Michael Henchard would fit neatly with them!😀———
Although CASTERBRIDGE isn't "modern" by today's lights, its take on alcoholism is still very relevant, according to a counselor friend of mine.
Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)
Books mentioned in this topic
Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean (other topics)Beloved (other topics)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (other topics)
Madame Bovary (other topics)
Middlemarch (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Haruki Murakami (other topics)J.M. Coetzee (other topics)
Flannery O'Connor (other topics)
Don DeLillo (other topics)
Cormac McCarthy (other topics)
More...
Choose as many as you want; your choice of the outstanding books.
Books that give the shelf charm?
Maybe not even the best by a certain author; just something you personally cherish.
Best represented authors?
Books missing by represented authors?
Unrepresented authors?
Perhaps suggest a couple of books that would make the grade.
Conclusions?
What does this list say about you?
—————-
Best books on the shelf?
Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert
Jane Eyre- Charlotte Brontë
Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Jude the Obscure- Thomas Hardy
Books that give the shelf charm?
Shirley- Charlotte Brontë (Shirley is a terrific, fearless character)
Far From The Madding Crowd- Thomas Hardy (over ebullient dogs, bloated sheep; plot by animal is very Hardy)
David Copperfield- Charles Dickens (really it’s Betsy Trotwood ... “Janet! Donkeys!” Best set of characters)
Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury (Don Quixote also has a book burning sequence; the idea is close to the heart of a book reader)
The Trial- Frank Kafka (astounding world building; the 20th Century in a book)
Best represented author(s)?
Charles Dickens
Books missing by represented authors?
The Mayor of Casterbridge- Thomas Hardy
Adam Bede- George Eliot
Kim- Rudyard Kipling
Lord Jim/ The Secret Agent/ Typhoon- Joseph Conrad
The Rainbow- DH Lawrence
Favourite unrepresented author(s)?
Emile Zola- Germinal, Therese Raquin
Graham Greene- The Heart of the Matter, The Power and the Glory
Christopher Isherwood- Mr Norris Changes Trains, A Single Man
Conclusion- I am very English; possibly to a fault🤪