Archive: 2020 Reading Classics Challenge Prompts

[Katie]

I just finished a re-read which I'm going to count as Classic by a Woman, A Provincial Lady in Wartime.
So relevant for these days!

[Katie]

A quick read to follow that, Where Angels Fear To Tread by EM Forster, for Classic by an LGBT author.

[Katie]

Finished "My Antonia" which I'm counting as "new to me author". I loved it but I would really like to find literature not "written by the victors" if anyone has suggestions.

[Jean]

I did a summer readalong of Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, which I'm counting for a classic written by a woman. https://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2020...

[Katie]

Jean wrote: "I did a summer readalong of Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, which I'm counting for a classic written by a woman. https://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2020..."
That's the one that Jane Austen mentions in Mansfield Park (or is it Northanger Abbey?) isn't it?

[Jean]

Katie wrote: "That's the one that Jane Austen mentions in Mansfield Park (or is it Northanger Abbey?) isn't it? ."

Yes, Northanger Abbey! Catherine and Isabella talk about it quite a bit, wondering what could be behind the 'horrid black veil,' and the novel pokes affectionate fun at the Gothic genre. I found out that one scene in NA is a direct take-off of a scene in Udolpho. :)

[Katie]

Jean wrote: "Katie wrote: "That's the one that Jane Austen mentions in Mansfield Park (or is it Northanger Abbey?) isn't it? ."

Yes, Northanger Abbey! Catherine and Isabella talk about it quite a bit, wonderin..."

I remember reading this as a teenager and feeling like I'd been let into a huge secret!

I've just started To Kill a Mockingbird, it is a re-read but I haven't read it for years, I'm counting it as Set in a country other than the one I live in.

[Katie]

Finished To Kill a Mockingbird. Just one more to read.

[Katie]

And finally started Classic in Translation: A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen.

[Katie]

Final book read. Very powerful. Of course the treatment of women as dolls has not changed!

[Jean]

Here, at long last, is my non-fiction pick: The Golden Bough by Frazer. It took me forever, but now I have read this giant tome of dodgy anthropology! http://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2020/...

Just the poetry selection to go, and I'm reading T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Been meaning to do that for probably 10 years.

[Sue]

I managed to complete 10 of the 12 challenges this year (with one book being used for 2 prompts), as follows:
1 over 500 pages - Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
2 by a POC and/or with a POC as the main character - Pavilion of Women by Pearl S Buck
3 takes place in a country other than where you live - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
4 in translation - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
5 by a new to you author - Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym
6 book of poetry
7 written between 1800 &1860 - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
8 written by LGBT author and/or with LGBT main character - Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
9 written by a woman - Tiburon by Kylie Tennant
10 novella
11 nonfiction - Walkabout: Exploring one of the world's last frontiers of adventure by Charles & Elsa Chauvel
12 has been banned or censored - Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

[Jean]

Here's my final post. I did read Four Quartets, but I didn't do the several-readings-plus-analysis that I wanted to do -- only about half of what I would like. So I don't have a post for that one. But here it is: https://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2020...