April's 2015 Classics Challenge

[April]

Here are my twelve (plus 2)

3 after 1900
The Beautiful and Damned Read
Mrs. Dalloway
Voyage au Congo, suivi de Retour de Tchad

3 before 1900
The Symposium Read
Great Expectations Read
Metamorphoses

6 wildcards
Dracula
The Scarlet Letter
Phineas Finn
The Portrait of a Lady
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
L'Œuvre au noir

2 alternatives
A Pale View Of Hills
Midnight's Children

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

I read Great Expectations with this group this year.

I was surprised at how funny CD is.

I had been afraid to tackle good old CD for years.

[Sarah]

Yay! Someone besides me is doing The Beautiful and Damned. Dracula is a lot of fun, you have a great list here.

[Moray]

I re-read Midnight's Children recently and it was just as astounding the second time around.

[April]

I'm glad to hear that others have enjoyed reading them. Some of the books have been sitting around at home for some time and I thought this would be a good opportunity to see what they're really like.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Mrs. Dalloway is on my list. I have only read one other by Virginia Woolf and haven't made up my mind about liking her as a writer. I hope this decides it. The first time I found the writing challenging and the story interesting.

Of the two on your list I have read Great Expectations and Dracula, both are great. I am always nervous starting a Dickens book, but so far I've enjoyed all I've read. Happy reading.

[Aleta]

I have Midnight's Children home from the library right now, the only book I've read of Rushdie's is 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' which I really enjoyed.

I read Symposium in high school and it's highly recommended! An easy, but very interesting read that gives one a great understanding of a lot of European Romantic (as in the Era/Movement, not the genre) novels. Hope you enjoy it :)

[Sandy]

Have read several of your selections. Absolutely love The Palliser Novels and Trollope's sense of humor. Very nice list. Of course I would recommend reading Phineas Finn first.

[April]

I now have a week off work and would love to get started on this lot before Thursday. I shall have to find something else on my shelves to keep me going until then.

[Gergana]

I have read "Mrs. Dalloway" and loved it. (well, more liked it than loved it) "Great Expectations" is...great. And I found "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" in my parents' basement so it's on my TBR.

[Sarah]

I agree, April, I'm dying to get to mine.

[Laurie]

I also cannot wait to get started. I am starting with War and Peace, and I have come up with a reading plan for a 3 month read to make it less overwhelming.

I just finished Mrs. Dalloway yesterday and it was okay. I am not a huge Woolf fan, but I look forward to reading A Room of One's Own this year.

[April]

I started with Great Expectations. So far it's much funnier than I was expecting.

[Laurie]

Glad to hear you are enjoying Great Expectations. I plan to read it sometime this year. Can't wait.

[April]

I'm almost halfway through Great Expectations and I'm still enjoying it, despite already being sick of Mrs Pocket having only just met her.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

I read Great Expectations last year and enjoyed it very much. I have been amazed by the Dickens books I have read so far. I am always putting off reading his books because of his reputation of being a difficult writer. Great Expectations was my third and all have been much better than I expected. I still confess some nervousness when it comes to others I want to read like David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Tale of Two Cities. We’ll see.

[Julie]

I absolutely love Dickens - I've been putting off several of his books since they are so long, but I always find that when I do read them, they have great characters that I come to love :-)

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

I enjoyed Great Expectations when I read it last year with this group. I thought it went on a little too long though. I started to get tired and wanting it to wrap up.

[April]

I was put off Dickens, because I read Our Mutual Friend as a teenager and I just couldn't get into it. I lost track of who all the characters were and it seemed to go on forever.

[Moray]

Our Mutual Friend is one of my favourites. I've found that I tend to prefer the slightly less well known Dickens (OMF, Little Dorrit)to the more famous works (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and my most loathed David Copperfield)

[April]

I may change my mind by the time I get to the end, but I'm certainly thinking about reading more Dickens in the future.

[April]

Finished Great Expectations. It was a bit of a slog after Pip arrived in London, but picked up towards the end. I'm beginning to see why people like Dickens, but I was very relieved to get through it.

It's hard to imagine the impact this would have had on its first readers as we're all so familiar with Dickens' characters and the way that he wrote about them that they seem like parodies.

Whilst I won't be in a hurry to read another Dickens, I'm relieved to find that this wasn't the trial that I'd expected it to be.

I've just realised that most of my choices are quite long, which wasn't terribly clever. I think I might read Voyage au Congo, suivi de Retour de Tchad next.

[Laurie]

April wrote: "Finished Great Expectations. It was a bit of a slog after Pip arrived in London, but picked up towards the end. I'm beginning to see why people like Dickens, but I was very relieved to ..."

I plan to read Great Expectations later this year, so I was interested to see your impression. I read Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers and Hard Times in the last few months, and each one has parts that are something of a slog. It seems like long books are almost inevitably like that regardless of the author. But I enjoy Dickens on the whole and want to read all of his novels that I haven't read in the next couple of years.

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

I read Great Expectations last year with this group after avoiding CD altogether for years.

I agree that the book could be a bit of a slog. I was ready for it to end before it did. The early part of the book when Pip was still in his village was more entertaining than his London experiences. But then things picked up when Provis turned up.

This book did not sustain my attention and engagement at a consistent level throughout the book.

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

I read Great Expectations last year with this group after avoiding CD altogether for years.

I agree that the book could be a bit of a slog. I was ready for it to end before it did. The early part of the book when Pip was still in his village was more entertaining than his London experiences. But then things picked up when Provis turned up.

This book did not sustain my attention and engagement at a consistent level throughout the book.

[Desertorum]

I´m having some difficulties to get through David Copperfield. I liked it pretty well in the beginning but now in the middle it´s been slow for my taste (even the writing is nice)…trying to get through…

I also realised I have some long books in my challenge, but I really want to give them a shot and this challenge gives me a kick about them ;) (I think I have 3 over 1000pages and many around 500 pages. But for the balance there is couple short and probably easy reads.)

[April]

Since I'm struggling with Gide and therefore well behind target I've started The Beautiful and Damned in the hope that I'll find it an easier read. I'm carrying on with Voyage au Congo, suivi de Retour de Tchad, but I recognise that it will be slow going.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

I've read a couple of books focusing on the Congo. For me the best was King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, very detailed. Hope things get easier.

[April]

I finished The Beautiful and Damned this morning. It's certainly great literature, but I found the last third of it very hard-going and disturbing.

I would never have thought that there could be so much to write about such empty lives, but Fitzgerald wrote it beautifully.

[April]

Today I started The Symposium. This is very short, so shouldn't take too long. There are a lot of notes, though, which might make it slow going. I might read it without referring to the notes, just to get the feel of it, and then go back and read the notes.

[Pink]

I have had The Beautiful and Damned on my tbr list for so long, but every month I put it off for some reason.

I hope you enjoy The Symposium, I haven't read that one, but what I have read of Plato I really enjoyed and found much easier to understand than I expected!

[April]

I have finished The Symposium. I can't say that I enjoyed it, but that says more about me than about the book itself. Philosophy is not something that I find very approachable and I found the arguments difficult to follow. It's short enough to pick up again in the future, which I expect I will do.