Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

It is almost time to begin planning for next year. What better way to learn about possible books to read in 2020 than to browse Top Ten lists from our Catching Up On Classics members? Please list your favorite ten books you read during the year 2019. Of course you may need to adjust your list to include December reading. My list would be:

1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier New School
2. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham New School
3. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 21st Century
4. Heidi by Johanna Spyri Old School
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Old School
6. The Memoirs of Two Young Wives by Honoré de Balzac Old School
7. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes New School
8. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith New School
9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee New School
10. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. New School

Honorable mention:
Siddartha by Hermann Hesse New School
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by anonymous Old School
Candide by Voltaire Old School

I rated each of these 5 stars. Two were rereads, Jane Eyre and Heidi, but the rest were new to me. It was a good year for reading. What does your list look like?

PS Here I am already adjusting my list. I must add another Honorable Mention to the end. I finished The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger yesterday (5 stars) and cannot get poor Holden Caulfield out of my mind.

Nice discussion starter, Lynn. Mine would have to be:

Doctor Zay - Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley
Journey into the Whirlwind - Evgenia Ginzburg
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA - Brenda Maddox
From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia - Pankaj Mishra
Century of the Wind - Eduardo Galeano
Disobedience - Naomi Alderman
Force Of Circumstance - Simone de Beauvoir
Petals of Blood - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh

I had the exact number of five stars this year to come up with ten works, which is quite amazing considering that I only gave out three or four five stars last year. My reading choices seem to be improving.

I'm still new to classics, so I read a lot of well known works this year:

1. Paradise Lost by John Milton Old School
2. The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot New School
3. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Old school
4. Hamlet by William Shakespeare Old school
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald New School
6. Berserk, Vol. 1 by Kentaro Miura 21st Century
7. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo New School
8. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck New school
9. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Old school
10. The Stranger by Albert Camus New school

Most of them were new to me though, so it's been a good year. I only reread Of Mice and Men and Dorian Gray for school, but they were enjoyable. Hope to read a few more that top the list before the year is out :)

Aubrey wrote: "Nice discussion starter, Lynn. Mine would have to be:

Doctor Zay - Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley
[book:Journey int..."

As always you provide an interesting list with many books I have not been introduced to yet. I am glad you had this many 5 star books!

Revas wrote: "I'm still new to classics, so I read a lot of well known works this year:

1. Paradise Lost by John Milton Old School
2. The Hollow Men by [author:T.S. El..."

Nice list filled with impressive authors. Thanks for posting.

Lynn wrote: "Nice list filled with impressive authors. Thanks for posting."

Thank you and Aubrey as well, being able to find more great, obscure works is extremely valuable as a newer reader.

Edit: And your lists are nice as well, obviously :)

I've been sort of crabby with my ratings this year, so I'll just list a few of the books (and one story) that stuck with me this year. In no special order:

The Alienist - New School
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - 21st Century
As I Lay Dying - New School
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation - Old School
The Prince - Old School
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - New School
An Artist of the Floating World - New School

I'm reading The Stand right now, and I guarantee it'll be a best read.

in the order I read them:
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - Alan Sillitoe
A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Norwood - Charles Portis
Use Of Weapons - Iain M. Banks
Fatherland - Robert Harris
Life: A User's Manual - Georges Perec - BEST ONE OF AN EXCELLENT BUNCH!
Towards the End of the Morning - Michael Frayn
The History Of Luminous Motion - Scott Bradfield
The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati

honourable mentions (nearly made the cut) to:
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Milkman - Anna Burns
A Rage in Harlem - Chester Himes

I have 10 books and one short story with 5 stars so far this year.
Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison
The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race - Jesmyn Ward
Lanny - Max Porter
Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss
A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn
You Will Not Have My Hate - Antoine Leiris
March: Book Three - John Lewis
A Woman of Independent Means - Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

And the short story
The Happy Prince - Oscar Wilde

I'll include a short story as well.

The truly superlative:

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by Aeschylus
and the title story for The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullers

Especially enjoyable:

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Book of Genesis by Robert Crumb


And to round out a top ten:

Stoner by John Williams
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
Samuel Johnson by Walter Jackson Bate

A bit longer than 10 since I wanted to include some books from our shelf (marked with a *)

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells non-fiction
* Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (read in Danish) new school / non-fiction
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky 21st Century
* Chess Story by Stefan Zweig new school
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski 21st Century
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert non-fiction
* Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré new school
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer 21st Century
Mærk Verden: En beretning om bevidsthed (The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size) by Tor Nørretranders new school / non-fiction
* Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie new school
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood 21st Century
* The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury new school
* Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin old school

My ten favorite books of 2019 (so far) - several contemporaries on my list..

Bjørneby 5 stars
Os mod jer 5 stars
Det forsømte forår 5 stars
Babettes gæstebud 5 stars
Og hver morgen bliver vejen hjem længere og længere 5 stars

Kindred 4.5 stars
The Lost Man 4.5 stars
Offrens offer 4.5 stars

Bön för Tjernobyl: En framtidskrönika 4 stars
Picnic at Hanging Rock 4 stars

Edit - just finished my top read of the year Dark Matter 5 stars

I only have nine 5-star books on my list for 2019:
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Diaries of Adam and Eve, and Other Adamic Stories - Mark Twain
Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places - Colin Dickey
Lethal White - Robert Galbraith
The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith
Jane Steele - Lyndsey Faye
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

It's interesting to look back and remember why they were 5-star!

1) Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)
2) Vernon Subutex 2 by Virginie Despentes (2015)
3) Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853)
4) The Years by Annie Ernaux (2008)
5) Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (1842) (Guerney translation)
6) Nada by Carmen Laforet (1944)
7) Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (1835)
8) Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)
9) Manservant & Maidservant by Ivy Compton-Burnett (1947)
10) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

A few more obscure recommendations from my reading of Polish classics:
Laments by Jan Kochanowski (1580) (poetry; Heaney & Baranczak translation)
The Journal of Countess Françoise Krasinska by Klementyna Tanska Hoffmanowa (1825) (Onesuch Press edition)
The Morality of Mrs. Dulska by Gabriela Zapolska (1906) (play)

Translations/editions are mentioned where there are several and I am recommending that specific one.

For part of the year I have been concentrating on books/authors I'd been meaning to read for 25+ years, so again a lot of well-known classics here.

Oh, I can't wait to pour over everyone's lists. Great idea, Lynn!

Here's mine, all five stars:
Best of the Best:
The Street by Ann Petry
The Sea and the Bells by Pablo Neruda
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Sula by Toni Morrison
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Almost made the top list:
We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
Rounding out the favorites:
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Loving your categories, Kathleen!

Kathleen wrote: "Oh, I can't wait to pour over everyone's lists. Great idea, Lynn!

Here's mine, all five stars:
Best of the Best:
The Street by Ann Petry
[book:The Sea and the Bells|9..."


Thanks. I love lists. They help me find new things, but more importantly they remind me of things I had forgotten. I am interested in the last two you listed (essays I guess?) by Wilde and Orwell.

The Trial - Franz Kafka
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Sweet Talk - Stephanie Vaughn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
H is for Hawk - Helen Macdonald (nonfiction)
Zeitoun - Dave Eggers (nonfiction)

I love end of year lists!

Here are my top ten in the order I read them. Apparently, I was very generous with my ratings this year, I had to pare my 5 star list down a lot.

Becoming
Dracula
The House of the Spirits
Career of Evil
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Educated
My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton
The Calculating Stars
The Secret History
Rebecca

These are my Top Ten in 2019 (so far!):
1 Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
2 Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
3 Bleak House by Charles Dickens
4 It by Stephen King
5 Becoming by Michelle Obama
6 The Library Book by Susan Orlean
7 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
8 To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Ellis
9 Stoner by John Williams
10 The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

Honorable Mention:
The Diary of a Nobody by George & Weedon Grossmith
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

Sam wrote: "Loving your categories, Kathleen!"

Thank you, Sam! Your list has one of my forever favorites: The House of the Spirits. And I'm anxious to get to Becoming.

Lynn wrote: "..I am interested in the last two you listed (essays I guess?) by Wilde and Orwell.
."
Lynn, the Wilde is an essay but the Orwell is fiction based on some of his real experiences. Both great!

I have been reading for pleasure this year and I have some notable favorites. They are in no particular order,

1) Jude the Obscure, Hardy
2) The Auto Biography of Benevuto Cellini, Cellini
3) The Alchemist, Ben Jonson
4) The Boys in the Boat
5) If Beal Street Could Talk
6) East of Eden
7) Ulysses, Joyce
8) Eugene Onegin
9) Pere Goriot
10) Wide Sargasso Sea

It took me years to read Jude the Obscure because I had heard it was depressing. It has become my favourite Hardy book.

Some of my favourites this year are, in no particular order:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon
An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy
Deafening by Frances Itani
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Terris wrote: "These are my Top Ten in 2019 (so far!):
1 Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
2 Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
3 Bleak House by Charles Dickens
4 It by Stephen King
5 Becoming by Michelle Obama
6 The L..."



I am glad you liked Shadows on the Rock. I really loved that book.

I just love how Willa Cather makes me feel when I read her writing! I’m going to try to read more of hers this year. :)

My top 10 books until now for 2019:

1. Gone with wind
2. The starless sea
3. The seven deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
4. Shades of magic (trilogy)
5. Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine
6. Niebla (trilogy)
7. Burial rites
8. Caravan
9. Circe
10. The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Aubrey wrote: "Nice discussion starter, Lynn. Mine would have to be:

Doctor Zay - Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley
[book:Journey int..."

Thank you for this rich, full-of-potential list, Aubrey. There is a lot here to chew on. :-)

Kathleen wrote: "Aubrey wrote: "Nice discussion starter, Lynn. Mine would have to be:

Doctor Zay - Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley
[b..."

Ha ha, thanks, Kathleen. Most of these wouldn't qualify as classics, but they are definitely quality.

see a couple of mentions for Stoner
I have it on my 2020 radar
and we might be reading in January if it wins the New School Poll...

Darren wrote: "see a couple of mentions for Stoner
I have it on my 2020 radar
and we might be reading in January if it wins the New School Poll...
"

I gave Stoner 5 stars! I loved it! Hope you enjoy it too :)

Darren wrote: "see a couple of mentions for Stoner
I have it on my 2020 radar
and we might be reading in January if it wins the New School Poll...
"

It's on my TBR list. I hope it wins.

I hope Stoner wins too. I have been planning to read it for a while.

Rosemarie wrote: "I hope Stoner wins too. I have been planning to read it for a while."

I have voted for it every time it comes up. I think I will just buy it next year and read it without thinking about whether it wins or not.

I feel like I must be a harsh marker as I only have 3 5-star reads this year:
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Galatea - Madeline Miller
Night and Day - Virginia Woolf

I had a few more 4-star reads so I'll round out my top 10 from there:
The End We Start From - Megan Hunter
Fascism: A Warning - Madeleine K. Albright
The Bridge of Beyond - Simone Schwarz-Bart
The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World - Catherine Nixey
The Secret Lives of the Four Wives - Lola Shoneyin
Island of a Thousand Mirrors - Nayomi Munaweera
Night - Elie Wiesel

HAHA! I, too, have ALWAYS voted for Stoner and even nominated it once myself, way back in the day! --Jen from Quebec :0)

I haven't yet determined my top 10 picks, but I found the top 100 picks of the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...

Antonomasia wrote: "1) Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)
2) Vernon Subutex 2 by Virginie Despentes (2015)
3) Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853)
4) The Years by Annie Ernaux (2008)
5) Dead Souls by Nikol..."

I've been meaning to read Vernon Subutex 1 - had it from the library last year but returned before I read it. maybe 2020 is the year

I'll put my 10 here as well:

My two top books.
1. Ragtime 1975
2. Lives of Girls and Women 1971

Closely behind and not in order
3. The Go-Between 1953
4. The first two Neapolitan novels
My Brilliant Friend 2011
The Story of a New Name 2012
5. Tess of the D'Urbervilles 1891
6. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis 1962
7. Wise Blood 1952
8. Under Milk Wood 1954
9. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1962
10. Andy: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol: A Factual Fairytale 2018 - graphic novel

Here are mine:

1 Fateless by Imre Kertész

2 The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullers (Title story only)

3 The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

4 A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

5 The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by Aeschylus

6 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

7 Black Boy by Richard Wright

8 The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

9 The Book of Genesis by Robert Crumb

10 Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

This is very difficult, but I think mine are:

The Seven Sisters Saga The Seven Sisters

Britt-Marie Was Here

The October Man

Meg (guilty pleasure)

Like Water for Chocolate

The House of the Spirits

The Queen and I

The Witcher Saga The Last Wish

Eventide

The Collini Case


I don't count Jane Eyre and North and South, because they were just re-reads of my all-time favorites.

Philina wrote: "This is very difficult, but I think mine are:

The Seven Sisters Saga The Seven Sisters

Britt-Marie Was Here

The October Man

Meg (gu..."

Woohoo for The House of the Spirits!

I’ll have to come up with a list. I only read nonfiction this year and read some wonderful books. I did make time to read To Kill a Mockingbird for the Nth time because I read it every 3-4 years and it is as wonderful each time around.

Brina wrote: "I’ll have to come up with a list. I only read nonfiction this year and read some wonderful books. I did make time to read To Kill a Mockingbird for the Nth time because I read it every 3-4 years an..."

Only nonfiction for a whole year? That is dedication.

Group challenge in another group. No points for reading fiction. Although I explained that next year it’s going back to a 50/50 year for me because in the end it got too tedious.

How did you survive reading only non-fiction?

I read so much at work every day that I mostly cannot stomach nonfiction at all.

I love reading nonfiction, but it's about 70-30 fiction-nonfiction for me.

Well, I love biographies and memoirs and sports books. If a writer can tell a good story, it doesn’t seem like nonfiction. I’m usually between 60/40 either way to 50/50 but I enjoyed my reading year, besides books aren’t going anywhere. I will get to them sooner or later.

Well, in a sense I also love non-fiction. I listen to history podcasts.

Top Ten of 2019
*Note- I am not counting To Kill a Mockingbird or Wait Till Next Year. They are personal favorites that I reread.

1. The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

2. In the Country of Women by Susan Straight

3. The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers by Harry Bernstein

4. Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season by Jonathan Eig

5. Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football by John Urschel

6. State: A Team, a Triumph, a Transformation by Melissa Isaacson

7. First: Sandra Day O'Connor by Evan Thomas

8. The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers by Michael Leahy

9. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan

10. Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

This was tough but here's my list
1. Lonesome Dove
2. The Bridge on the Drina
3. The Vienna Melody
4. Diary of a Man in Despair
5. Call Me By Your Name
6. Brokeback Mountain
7. The Palace of Dreams
8. Amok and Other Stories
9. The Road Back
10. The Book of Disquiet