Sandy's 2015 Classics Reading Challenge

[Sandy]

Old School (Pre 1900)

1.The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
2.Bleak House by Charles Dickens
3. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
4. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
5. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells 01/21/15 3 stars

New School

6. The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott
7. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
8. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
9.Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 02/09/15 3 stars

Random Picks

10. The Mitford Girls The biography of an extraordinary family by Mary S. Lovell
11. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
12. A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster by Wendy Moffat 3 stars 01/26/14
Alternates
1. The Warden by Anthony Trollope
2. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

[Pink]

Oh someone else for Gulliver's Travels, yeah! Lots of good books on your list, I loved The Mitford Girls, but am yet to read any fiction by Nancy...next year maybe

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Non-fiction, Science fiction, a good mix of classics old and new. You have put together a very nice challenge. I have read several and of those my highest recommendation goes to Of Human Bondage, I thought it was great. Enjoy!

[Tytti]

My first choice of your picks would be The Master and Margarita.

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Love, love The Raj Quartet! I'm on the third in the series.

[Alissa]

of human bondage is on my list too!!

[Laurie]

I had no idea that Twenty Thousand Leagues was part of a series. I just finished All the Light You Cannot See and in it, TTLUtS plays a significant part. A blind girl, Marie-Laure is given the book to read by her father but the book has to be abandoned before she finishes it when they flee Paris during the Nazi occupation. She is able to finish it later and shares it with others in some interesting circumstances. It made me want to read it.

[Sandy]

Laurie wrote: "I had no idea that Twenty Thousand Leagues was part of a series. I just finished All the Light You Cannot See and in it, TTLUtS plays a significant part. A blind girl, Marie-Laure is given the book..."

I also read All the Light You cannot See and forgot about TTLUS being discussed in it. Thanks for the reminder.

[Sandy]

When you put into context that War of the Worlds was written in the 1890's prior to the invention of airplanes, it is pretty amazing that Wells came up with this story. It focuses more on humans and their reaction to the invasion versus the Martians.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

War of the Worlds and Time Machine have been my favorite books by Wells, especially Time Machine.

[Sandy]

A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster is not your typical biography. The book's focus was on homosexuality during the 1800s an 1900s. The fear of being imprisoned was pervasive and caused much repression. I particularly found the section dealing with the publication of the book Maurice interesting. The book was published posthumously due to Forster's fear of being outted since the book was about a homosexuality. Now I need to add the book to my TBR list. It was sad to see how Forster's homosexuality negatively impacted his life.