#ClassicsCommunity 2021 Reading Challenge discussion

How did your classics reading go in March? Share what you've read here! What was your favourite? How about your least favourite?

What would you particularly recommend?

I just got back into reading seriously just before the pandemic so I’m currently reading 3 classics which are all great and I finished 1. I am currently reading the age of innocence which I adore but I find it needs the right mood because so little happens in the plot which is certainly made up for by the incredible characters. I read a few pages of Don Quixote and I am so hooked on the writing. Finally I am reading Fahrenheit 451 which I’ve just started and it’s quite good so far, Dystopian novels are perhaps my favorite genre.
My least favorite read I tried this month was pride and prejudice. Austen for me is an author I adore but I simply would rather not read her books but enjoy the gorgeous language on occasion.

In March I read four books: A Tale of Two Cities, The Borrowers (children's classic), and Agatha Christie's Sparkling Cyanide, and I finally finished reading The Three Musketeers!! A favorite is hard to pick out of this stack of books because they were all so good. The Borrowers was a re-read for me and I've the seen the wonderful movie, too. I loved The Three Musketeers! And, I really enjoyed Mr. Jarvis Lorry's character in The Tale of Two Cities. And Agatha Christie is hard to beat. So, I recommend all these books! :)

My favorite read this month was The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. My least favorite would be The Red Pony by John Steinbeck’s: I didn’t not like the books, it just wasn’t my favorite. I am currently reading The Cranford Chronicles u Elizabeth Gaskell to keep the mood light in these stressful times.

I read Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse and loved it! Well, I knew I loved Jeeves and Wooster already (I started watching the television adaptation when I was 12), but it was so nice to be reminded of how funny his writing style is. I may have even made my friend a convert, as I was reading bits out loud to her on the train.
I also read Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery. It was very sweet and comforting, and her descriptions of teaching are spot on!

I read Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea both by L. M. Montgomery and Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. I absolutely adored Anne of Avonlea! As I'm not a native English speaker I'm only now discovering English children's Classics. I'll definitely be continuing this series cause I can't wait to see what Anne is gonna be up to. I think Anne might just take the spot right next to Little Women of favorite children's Classic

In March I read:
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (started in February)
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Inferno - Dante
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
1984 - George Orwell
My favourite among these was definitely Steppenwolf, dethroning The Picture of Dorian Gray as my favourite novel of all time. It so elegantly encompassed many of my deepest thoughts and most bitter inner conflicts, keeping me utterly enthralled the entire time (I had to read it all in one sitting).
My least favourite among these would have to be The Turn of the Screw. I can understand its importance within the catechism of literature, but it felt far too clunky for a story of its theme. I simply couldn't enjoy it.
I'm really looking forward to digging into some of the other classics on my shelf in April!

The classics I read this month were:

Books 5-10 in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace, which I've loved reading! I'm sad the series is finished.
"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, which is one of my least favourite books I've EVER read. I hated the characters, they were all so immature and stupid.

"The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas. I had this on my shelf since 2013 so I'm really proud of myself for finally finishing it.

"4:50 From Paddington" by Agatha Christie

In March I read And Then There Were None, A Little Princess and almost finished The Arabian Nights.

I decided that in March I’m going to read only books written by women. I ended up with:
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (a 3.5 stars read for me, I think my expectations were too high);
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski;
Saplings by Noel Streatfeild (I loved this one!);
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell;
Middlemarch by George Eliot
... and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte which I’m currently reading but, sadly, I don’t find quite entertaining.

I think the best of all these is North and South, but the most complex, of course, is Middlemarch, which I ‘m definitely going to read once again.

For March I’ve read:
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (which was a reread)
The Girls by Emma Cline
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
This Side of Paradise by Fitzgerald (which easily became a favorite, it was absolutely beautiful)!
Peter and The Sword of Mercy (a retelling of the Peter Pan story)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

For March I read:

The Rubber Band by Rex Stout
The Red Box by Rex Stout
Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout

I'm not sure if they can be considered "classics", as they're all conventional works of genre fiction, but they are old. All of them were written in the 1930s and are considered to be part of the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction". The first one in the list was disappointing, but the other two made up for it, though the last was set in West Virginia and had some black characters in it, so you can imagine that the language used about them wasn't always in harmony with contemporary sensibilities.

I'm also hesitant at considering P. G. Wodehouse a classic writer, but somebody else was reading him so I suppose it counts. I read two of his books in March:

The Jeeves & Wooster Omnibus (containing, in the following order, The Mating Season, The Code of the Woosters, and Right Ho, Jeeves)
Meet Mr. Mulliner , which I finished last night while catching up on the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Mozart's Così fan tutte. Comic stories seemed like they'd go well with a comic opera. The version I read was a PDF file downloaded from Internet Archive, so the edition linked here isn't the exact thing I read, but it's close enough in terms of pagination and the IA scan was probably the source of it.

Both of these I wouldn't hesitate to recommend. The Mr. Mulliner stories are hilarious and this collection of Jeeves and Wooster novels combines my three favorite ones in a single edition.

Other than that, I read:

Emma by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Jane Austen: A Life by Carol Shields
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
The Duchess of Malfi: Seven Masterpieces of Jacobean Drama edited by Frank Kermode

Aside from Shields' biography, which was highly speculative and filled with swipes at Austen's writing, I would recommend any of these books. Emma was so delightful that it made me want to read more Austen, hence my reread of Persuasion. The recent movie wasn't bad either, though I thought a few of the roles were miscast. The Duchess of Malfi is an excellent collection of Jacobean plays, including the title play which is my favorite non-Shakespeare play (by John Webster) and the reason I picked this volume up. And Around the World in 80 Days was as delightful to me as an adult as it was when I last read it at the age of six. Somebody had left the 1984 Bantam Classics edition in my 1st grade classroom and I read it because back then I read anything and everything that was to hand. When I saw I wouldn't be able to finish it, I left it there and convinced my father to buy me that edition (back then a fairly recent edition, so it wasn't hard to find).

Also, I've not finished it yet, but I intend to have King John by William Shakespeare read before the end of the month. I had been participating in Ian Doescher's Shakespeare 2020 Project, but a period of depression caused me to drop out, and now that it's passed I've dropped back in again.

I read ‘Our Mutual Friend’ by Charles Dickens. Really enjoyed it. And I read the fourth book in Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire Series - Framley Parsonage. Loved how it brought in some of the characters from earlier in the series, including a very satisfying outcome for Doctor Thorne. In April I’m looking forward to reading the fifth book - The Small House of Allington.

This month I have read Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. I had higher expectations for this one and was quite disappointed. I am used to classics and can easily manage some difficult writing style and themes, but this book was really tough one for me. First half was so slow and boring that I considered to put it aside. However, when some romance kicked in it got more entertaining and interesting.

The other one I started in March was War and Peace. I am really enjoying this one and looking forward to part 2

I read Père Goriot and The Lily Of The Valley by Honoré de Balzac.

I definitely enjoyed these two and I plan to read Lost Illusions next.

I read two classics but only finished one. The one I finished was my first modern classic of the year Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I started The Odyssey too. I bought a cloth bound edition since I knew the library copy would take a long time to read.

I kinda fell behind on all my group reads this month because I was too stressed but I did read a few short classics which I enjoyed. I've read Lord of the Flies by William Golding and I loved its idea but hated the way it was written. I also read Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson which I absolutely loved. And Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott which I actually loved more than the first book.
I've also recently read Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, which I'm not sure if it counts as a modern classic or not but goodreads count it so I will count it as well 😋and this was probably my favorite of them all!

In March I read Little Men and Jo's Boys, both by Louisa May Alcott. They're the two sequels to Little Women, which I read last year and loved. And then I saw the new movie and loves that too. So I decided to continue on with the series. I didn't like them as much as Little Women, but they were still sweet stories I really enjoyed reading.

I finally read A Tale of Two Cities. My review is posted on the Buddy Read site for the book if anyone is interested.

Let's just say AToTC is not Dickens' finest hour.