12 by 12/12 Classic Challenge

[Reggia]

Your "classics read" list is looking awesome, Charly!

[Reggia]

I hope so, too! And, I would love for us to do a group classic read.

[Werner]

Between now and the first of the year, I have enough reading commitments (group reads in my other groups, planned buddy reads, etc.) to keep me busy. But I'd be open to taking part in a group read any time after that.

[Reggia]

Yes, we did speak of it once before... and Dickens seems like a good choice. :)

[Werner]

During December, my Goodreads friend Jackie and I are planning a buddy read of The Skin Map. But I've read Dickens' A Christmas Carol before, and could join in a group discussion of it then.

[Janelle]

Does it matter if we have read it before?

[Reggia]

I agree with short for the holidays. Plenty of time for other nominations.

[Janelle]

Sounds good to me

[Werner]

I'm now reading by Charles Barbara, translated into English by my Goodreads friend Krisi Keley. Written in 1855, it's thought to have been one of the influences on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

[Werner]

In defining "classics," how do we feel about modern collections of stories by a 19th-century author, if the author is someone noted for his/her work in the short format? Obviously, the collection itself doesn't have "classic" status --but it's certainly arguable that the individual stories which compose it do, individually or collectively. And does it matter if the genre of the stories happens to be one (ghost stories) that's consigned to outer darkness by the modern critical clerisy that supposedly guards the the eternal purity of the "literary canon" against anything that's (shudder) "popular?"

When I'm temporarily between books selected as common reads in the groups I'm in, as I expect to be later this month, I often fill in the time with a short story collection. One that I have an eye on is Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu, which is in the collection at the college library where I work.

[Werner]

In case my own opinion wasn't telegraphed enough in the message above, I personally think that collections like Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu should count as classics! :-)

[Werner]

In this particular case, Charly, we're not talking about separate books of a series or omnibus volume, which I'd agree should be treated individually. Rather, we're dealing with a lot of individual 19th-century short stories (well, actually the Le Fanu collection also includes one whole novella, Carmilla --but I've read that already and don't plan to reread it now) collected in modern times in one book. None of them will have individual Goodreads records, unless they've ever been published as stand-alone "books" or e-stories.

[Werner]

Sounds good, Charly; that's what I'll do.

[Reggia]

Indeed! it looks like you met the challenge. :-D

[Janelle]

Well done Charly!

[Werner]

Finished Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu yesterday!

[Reggia]

Congrats on meeting your challenge, Charly! I hope to do the same this coming year. In the meantime, we can all still work read towards the Litwit Lounge 250!

[Werner]

Yesterday, I finished Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories, by 19th-century American Realist pioneer Rebecca Harding Davis; and today I completed Lysistrata, by the classical Greek comic playwright Aristophanes. Yay! This means I've completed my personal goal of reading six classics in 2012, and added one more to it. :-)

[Reggia]

Werner, Charly -- congrats to each of you for meeting your goal! I will not be attaining mine but am setting forth the same goal to read 12 classics in 2013.