The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

This area is to be used to recommend authors for future projects, I.e. reading all or a particular segment of their works consecutively..

Deborah -- three that immediately come to mind as possibilities:

Sir Walter Scott -- "The Waverley novels." (Not certain would want to include all of them -- don't know his work well enough to have an informed view.) He also did a four book series: "Tales of My Landlord," but it looks to me as if only one or two of that series might have interest?

Anthony Trollope -- "Chronicles of Barsetshire." Appears to be six novels.

Anthony Trollope -- "Palliser novels." Also appears to be six novels.

We have also talked previously about an Honoré de Balzac series: "La Comédie humaine."

At this point, my own TBR tumbles over to the extent that I have neither personal preference nor urgency about any of these, although I shall probably continue to indulge in selected individual volumes of the Palliser series.

Lily you've got us off to a great start. Thanks.

Deborah -- I have been listening to a Teaching Company Course on the evolution of the English novel, and it strikes me that a four-book sequence of Joseph Conrad's books would be very informative looking forward to modern literature:

Heart of Darkness (1899)
Lord Jim (1900)
The Inheritors (with Ford Madox Ford) (1901)
Nostromo (1904)

That, however, would be a pretty dark sequence, and I'm not sure many of us would be up to it as a continuous piece.

I love Conrad, but you're right. He can be very dark.

I also would like Trollope's Palliser novels.

In addition:

Austen project
Twain project
Dumas project
Hardy project

(This is when I realize how much I love the modernists: Woolf project! Forster project! Hemingway project! But yes, I know that is outside of our time frame).

Lol. I would love the Woolf project.

Maybe Natsume Soseki? Some of his big works were Botchan, I Am a Cat, Kairoko, and a trilogy (Sanshiro, And Then and The Gate). Kokoro is also popular, but it falls outside of the group's timeline.

Doing Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley together would also be fun.

Love the Shelley, Byron, and Mary Shelley combo. You are all coming up with great ideas.

Deborah wrote: "Love the Shelley, Byron, and Mary Shelley combo...."

I like that one, too! Been considering for a long time that we have been missing Byron.

I was gonna throw in Trollope and Hardy but you guys beat me to it. :)

If we do Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, we could also include Puddin' Head Wilson. I think they make a kind of trilogy. Not really, but they all come from the same home town.

It looks like we have many productive years ahead of us:-)

Zulfiya wrote: "It looks like we have many productive years ahead of us:-)"

[g] Our own personal Fadiman:

The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classical Guide to World Literature, Revised and Expanded by Clifton Fadiman

I just finished the first of the Palliser series (Can You Forgive Her?) and it was a long but easy read. I'm planning on finishing the series. What also might be fun is reading G.A. Henty. I've read two of his so far and quite enjoy them. Granted, he wrote for boys periodicals, adventure type stories, but they are short, full of history and good story telling. Just an idea.

I would love to do the Palliser series or the Barchester Chronicles.

I'd like to do Hardy's Wessex novels. I'm doing the Brontes on my blog right now for 2014. Just finished Agnes Grey, just started Wuthering Heights.

Oops, thought this was the other thread about where we want to go with this group so didn't read back far enough. Dumas project and the Shelley, Byron, Shelley combo also appeal.

Shelley, Byron and Shelley? Sounds fabulous.

I'd also like to do a J.M. Barrie project.

Jo wrote: "Shelley, Byron and Shelley? Sounds fabulous.

I'd also like to do a J.M. Barrie project."

Seconded!
Another couple of greats IMHO would be Dumas and Zola. Emile Zola in particular is an author I don't often see featured in book groups. It can be a little heavy at times, but his study of people and society is surprisingly modern for its times!

Ian @ Collectiblecat.com
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Ian, we are running a roman fleuve project, dedicated exclusively to Zola and his Les Rougon-Macquart cycles, so we are trying to do our best :-)

Anything by Halldór Laxness, Iceland's nobel prize. Preferably World Light or The fish can sing!
Please!

Also, Fathers and sons by Ivan Turgeniev.
Anything by Miguel Delibes, preferably El Camino (The road).

Maria of Spain, the authors that you proposed are wonderful writers, but unfortunately we will not be able to consider them for contention. This group has time limitation on the reading material (1800-1910), and both Halldor Laxness and Miguel Delibes were 'unlucky' to contribute to the twentieth century literature.

Turgenev, on the other hand, fits the time frame perfectly.

Well, these are not part of any series, but still, I like the Shelley theme mentioned above, including Mary Shelley's The Last Man
Also I like Guy de Maupassant's Pierre et Jean, so a Maupassant series would be fun.
There is also Benito Pérez Galdós Fortunata and Jacinta Two Stories of Married Women. I think there are many books by this author, but I don't know of too many translated in English - does anyone else know of others?

I would love to reread all of these authors. I haven't read any Hardy but wouldn't mind his works either.

Also the book that all Italians have to read in high school Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed !
Could you imagine our high school teachers assigning a 700 page book today!?! In Canada at least it would never happen (unless there is a high school English teacher out there who would beg to differ with me - that would make me very happy :)).

LOL - I just thought of something, we could do a series entitled 'the Tolstoy of X', seeing as both Galdós and Manzoni have been dubbed the 'Tolstoy of Spain' and the 'Tolstoy of Italy', respectively.

Galdos is also known as the 'Spanish Dickens'. Although that may be more because they were the leading novelists of their respective countries during the same period, than a similarity in writing styles.

Denise wrote: "Galdos is also known as the 'Spanish Dickens'. Although that may be more because they were the leading novelists of their respective countries during the same period, than a similarity in writing ..."

Very interesting! I guess comparisons with Tolstoy and Dickens are practically inevitable for those who were their contemporaries. I wonder if this was the case at the time as well...

I just wanted to say that I am so delighted to have found other people who do their own reading projects; I have been doing them for years & have many lists and spreadsheets and all, but I did not know anyone else did such things.

I have been doing Trollope upon my own and am on the 3rd of the Barchester books right now -- and I have wanted to do Balzac for a long time, but it is so very many books.

And the 'Tolstoy of X' series would be quite fascinating even if that was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I am woefully unread in Italian or Spanish literature.

I'd love a Woolf project too. I can also recommend Samuel Butler's very readable, if long, The Way Of All Flesh, a brilliant study of human nature and very witty. And some Mary Shelley would be very welcome. Or some Thomas Love Peacock.

I would also love Woolf; perhaps a companion group, to do 1910-1945? (Or perhaps such a thing already exists, I have not looked so widely.)

Mike wrote: "Maybe Natsume Soseki? Some of his big works were Botchan, I Am a Cat, Kairoko, and a trilogy (Sanshiro, And Then and The Gate). Kokoro is also popular, but it falls outside of the group's timeline...."

I would love to make a project of Soseki's works! What a great idea.

Lucinda wrote: "Mike wrote: "Maybe Natsume Soseki?

I'd never heard of him before this post, now I've added a couple of his books to my wishlist. Thanks so much:)

I just joined your group, but I would be interested in doing one of the Trollope series (Palliser or Barsetshire) as I've been eyeing them on my own lately.

Linda wrote: "I just joined your group, but I would be interested in doing one of the Trollope series (Palliser or Barsetshire) as I've been eyeing them on my own lately."

Yes, I've been looking at those, too! I've never read any book by Trollope, so I would really like to try a few!

Elsbeth wrote: "Linda wrote: "I just joined your group, but I would be interested in doing one of the Trollope series (Palliser or Barsetshire) as I've been eyeing them on my own lately."

Yes, I've been looking a..."

I've never read Trollope either, but I did see the mini-series of The Way We Live Now and it was great! I have to read the book now. That was how I was introduced to The Forsyte Saga also, saw the mini-series, then read the book.

We're in the process of nominating books for our May read over at

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

so head over to that list and add your wishes.

I would like:
Austen
Bronte's (all of them)

I'd like to read:
Théophile Gautier
Pushkin
Jack London
and Balzac - for instance Droll Stories

I’d like to read something by Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée). I read Moths decades ago and adored it; that one is prohibitively chunky, but she wrote shorter things.

Didn't we have a discussion about Ouida being a model for a character in a book we read? MadgeUk?

Abigail wrote: "I’d like to read something by Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée). I read Moths decades ago and adored it; that one is prohibitively chunky, but she wrote shorter things."

I read Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories and enjoyed it :-)