VICTOBER 2025 discussion

Victober is over! It's gone so fast.

How did everybody do - what did everybody read?

I managed to read 8 novels, 2 epic poems/novels in verse, 2 short story collections and 14 other individual short stories. My favourites were The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope and The Young Pretenders by Edith Henrietta Fowler :)

I had a great Victober! 🥳 My first one, too. Thank you to all of the hosts for great challenges this year!

My final report:

1. Chronic illness or disability representation:
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

2. Bildungsroman / Coming of age:
- Jane Eyre

3. Short story:
- Sheridan Le Fanu: Carmilla
- Robert Louis Stevenson: Olalla, The Bottle Imp
- Charles Dickens: The Great Winglebury Duel, The Steam Excursion, The Black Veil (these three were written before the Victorian era began but published as one book in 1839 so I’m counting them) plus some of his ghost stories: The Signalman; The Trial for Murder; Mr Testator’s Visitation; The Ghost in the Bride’s Chamber
- H.G. Wells: The Stolen Bacillus, A Slip under the Microscope
- Oscar Wilde: all five fairy tales from The Happy Prince and Other Tales collection (The Happy Prince; The Nightingale and the Rose; The Selfish Giant; The Devoted Friend; The Remarkable Rocket)
- Arthur Conan Doyle: three stories from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches)
- Wilkie Collins: A Terribly Strange Bed

4. Book with screen adaptation:
- Jane Eyre (2011 film)
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 film)
- Terror In The Crypt (1964 Carmilla adaptation, even though a lot was changed from the novella)
- The Copper Beeches (1985 episode from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes TV series starring Jeremy Brett)

5. Poetry:
- Emily Bronte poems from The Night is Darkening Round Me Penguin Little Black Classics collection
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
- The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
- Limericks from A Book of Nonsense collection by Edward Lear
And three individual poems:
- On The Death of Anne Bronte by Charlotte Bronte
- In a London Drawingroom by George Eliot
- The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

What I particularly liked is that I ended up reading very different works that showcased how diverse Victorian literature was. More traditional prose & poetry, sci-fi, gothic, vampires, ghosts, crime & murder, drugs, fairy tales, evil genies in a bottle, nonsense literature… Looking forward to Victober 2023 now! 🤓

Hello,

Firstly, thank you Katie, Kate, Ange, Lucy, Marissa, Petra and Rosamund for hosting Victober 2022.

I was able to read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and watch the 1960 movie adaptation (Petra's challenge).
I thought Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen was from Victorian period but she was from a previous era (Georgian era).

I really liked H.G. Wells' writing and I want to read more of his books and watch the movie adaptations.
There is one movie in particular, A Trip to the Moon (1902) by Georges Méliès which was very familiar to me because of Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight, Tonight video - #Nostalgia :).

I finished Agnes Grey and am slowly making progress on Pickwick Papers and Mayor of Casterbridge. I enjoyed participating. Thank you for hosting!

Chronic illness or disability: Our Mutual Friend by Dickens
Coming of age: Mary Barton by Gaskell
Novel with Adaptation: Mayor of Casterbridge by Hardy plus the 2003 adaptation
Poetry: A Child’sGarden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
This has been a delightful month and a huge thank you to everyone for all the fabulous Victober videos!!

Poetry/disability: poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dover edition; I'll finish rereading The Ring and the Book
short story: A chapter in Cranford; I couldn't make it through a couple of other Gaskell stories
Coming of age/novel/screen adaptation: not quite finished rereading Jane Eyre and listening to the '83 BBC adaptation on youtube.
Group read: The Mayor of Casterbridge

I don’t know how to edit my previous comment, but A Childs Garden of Verses is written by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have read 4 novels and 2 collections of poetry and have completed two of the challenges:

- Sonnets from the Portuguese and other Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (poetry challenge)
- Thomas Hardy: Poems, selected by Tom Paulin (poetry challenge)

- Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (my favourite read this month)
- Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (disability challenge)
- Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
- The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (just finished today, maybe I'll watch the movie this evening)

I am also halfway through Shirley by Charlotte Bronte, which I am listening to on Audible and will finish later

I very much enjoyed my first Victober. Big thanks to the organizers!

Lindenblatt,
What do you think about Shirley? I read it for a major school project and it's quite interesting. I reread it from time to time.

I managed to read more than I had planned. I enjoyed Victober very much, thanks to all the hosts!
1. Chronic illness/disability:
- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
2. Bildungsroman/Coming of age:
- Olive by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
3. Short story:
- The Lifted Veil by George Eliot
- In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu
- The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde
- Half a Lifetime Ago by Elizabeth Gaskell
4. Screen adaptation:
- The Mayor of Casterbridge (2003)
- The Canterville Ghost (1975)
- Die Frau in Weiß - a German television adaptation of The Woman in White from 1971
5. Poetry:
- Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- some dear poems of Anne Brontë
Group read:
- The Mayor of Casterbridge
My favourite by far was The Mayor of Casterbridge.
I've also read the first half of The Pickwick Papers and watched the first half of the BBC mini series from 1985.

Thanks to everyone for hosting. I managed to complete the challenges and read some additional novels.

Disability rep. Dinah Mulock Craik The Little Lame Prince

Poetry: The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear

Coming of Age: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland although the draw was the Tove Jansson illustrations in my edition

Short story: Lot No. 249 Arthur Conan Doyle

Book and screen: Trilby and the film Svengali from the early 1930s

I also read The Half Sisters by Geraldine Jewsbury; Miss Meredith by Amy Levy

I skipped the group read, the Hardy was a set text at school along with Jude, Tess etc and not ready to revisit his work yet. But enjoyed following the discussion.

Lisa wrote: "Lindenblatt,
What do you think about Shirley? I read it for a major school project and it's quite interesting. I reread it from time to time."

Lisa, so far I quite like it, especially the character of Caroline and her friendship with Shirley. I am undecided yet about Robert Moore, which may also be due to the weird French accent the narrator has given him. I am relieved, though, that the novel focuses less on the social issues of industrialization than, for example, Gaskell's North and South (in fact, not much has happened at all). It's too early to say if I will ever re-read it (in any case, re-reading Villette would come first), but are you coming back to it for the various interhuman relationships or the social issues?

Lindenblatt,
I'm glad you like it. What chapter have you reached?
I probably like both the relationships and the social issues, which inform one another, I think . . . not so much industrialization, but other issues.
Lisa

Lisa, it´s chapter 16 in the Audible app, which might be different from the printed version. They have just set up the scheme to help the poor and now Shirley is "dealing" with the three curates, specifically Peter Malone. I am really looking forward to continuing it now :)

Lindenblatt,
Oh, the curates . . . LOL!!!!!
Lisa

Katie wrote: "My favourites were The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope and The Young Pretenders by Edith Henrietta Fowler"

So glad you enjoyed The Three Clerks! I read The Vicar of Bullhampton and loved it.

Thanks to all the hosts and all the fantastic content, both here and on booktube. I had a fantastic Victober and finished:
1. Chronic illness/disability AND
2. Bildungsroman/Coming of age:
- The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby Penguin Popular Classics , Dickens
3. Short story:
-3 stories by Elizabeth Gaskell: Cousin Phillis; Lizzie Leigh; Half a Life-Time Ago
4. Screen adaptation:
- The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde; (a play instead of a novel) and watched both the 1986 BBC adaptation with Joan Plowright as Lady Bracknell and the 2001 movie with Colin Firth and Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell
5. Poetry: None, but I read instead:
--The Vicar of Bullhampton, Anthony Trollope
--A Pair of Blue Eyes, Thomas Hardy
--Miss Marjoribanks, Margaret Oliphant
--a nonfiction read: Eminent Victorians, by Lytton Strachey (biographies of 4 "heroes" of the Victorian era)
--and I dipped in and out of The Portable Victorian Reader, edited by Gordon Haight. This is a collection of excerpts from fiction and nonfiction during the era. Included were excerpts by Thomas Carlyle, Disraeli, Queen Victoria, Dickens, George Eliot, Trollope, Thackeray, and many, many others. I've read about 25% of the 600+ pages of selections and hope to read more from it next Victober.
And finally:
Group read:
- The Mayor of Casterbridge--listened to this an audiobook, read by Tony Britton and it was heart-wrenching. Britton did the voice of Henchard exactly as I imagined it.

I loved them all!

I had such a fantastic time participating in Victober for the first time! Will definitely do it every year from now on! And as many others have already said, thank you so much to the 5 hosts and their fantastic and inspiring prompts. This has been such a wonderful community of readers to have discovered and joined.

I had a wildly busy month which didn’t allow for as much reading as I would have liked, but I still got to within 60 pages of the end of Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, for Kate’s challenge on disability representation. So sad to not quite have been able to finish it “officially” in the month of October, but will definitely finish up this week! What a phenomenal book—such an underrated Dickens, and one of my new favourites of his!

I also got in a few Elizabeth Gaskell poems for Ros’s challenge, as well as a few Gaskell short stories for Marissa’s challenge. All excellent, and I’m so glad to have discovered them.

So, until next Victober…!

Chronic illness or disability:
Wilkie Collins - The Law and the Lady, and The Moonstone

Bildungsroman and adaptation (seen in the past, not during Victober)
Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist

Short story:
George Eliot - Scenes of Clerical Life
Henry James - The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories

Poetry:
I am not at all a poetry person, so I read a few random poems that were mentioned in the thread and that was plenty for me

Readalong:
Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge

Alex’s challenge:
Middle-grade fiction set in Australia during the Victorian Era, written in Australia during the Second Elizabethan Era:
Amelia Mellor - The Grandest Bookshop in the World, and The Bookseller’s Apprentice
(NB: these were not planned reads, but I was out one day and needed something to read; the library was closed so I went to a bookshop and found these, and I loved them)

Favourite: The Moonstone
Least favourite: The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories

This was a blast! I read:

The Withered Arm, Hardy (short story)
Drawn Daggers, Pirkis (short story)
The Cry of the Children, Browning (poetry/essay)
Goblin Market (and others by), Rossetti (poetry)
The Old Nurse’s Story, Gaskell (short story/disability)
Sleepy, Chekhov (short story)

Currently finishing:
Cranford, Gaskell (coming of age/adaption)

I didn’t strictly follow my planned reads. However, I ultimately met my “new to me” authors and and enjoyed every single reading. Can’t wait to finish Cranford then watch the BBC collection!

Jessica, the BBC Judi Dench adaptation of Cranford is probably my second favourite classic adaptation ever (BBC P&P 1995 is of course my favourite).

This month I finished Dickens' Bleak House (disability + coming of age), North & South by Gaskell (coming of age + disability), The mayor of Casterbridge (group read), Lord Arthur Saville's crime by Oscar Wilde (short story) and How Lisa loved the king by George Eliot (epic poem). I also started Wuthering Heights, which might be my favorite, will continue it in Nov. I loved everything I read, for different reasons, I especially enjoyed the group reading discussions. I didn't watch any movie adaptation yet, would love to watch the Bleak House 2004 mini-series, Dickens could have been a director, love his collection of memorable side characters. Anyway, many thanks to the hosts! I participated just to get myself into some sort of reading rhythm, I consider that mission accomplished.

Thank you, Katie, Kate, Marissa, Ros, and Petra! My Victober wrap up:

Katie: Bildungsroman:
- David Copperfield Charles Dickens
- The Half Sisters Geraldine Jewsbury

Kate: chronic illness or disability representation:
- Life in the Sick-Room: Essays Harriet Martineau
- Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1845-46, vol. 1
- David Copperfield
- The Half Sisters
- Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope
- The Pied Piper of Hamelin Robert Browning

Marissa: Short Works:
- “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” “The Sphinx Without a Secret,” and “The Model Millionaire” by Oscar Wilde
- The Diary of a Nobody George and Weedon Grossmith (novella)

Ros: Poems:
- Goblin Market Christina Rossetti
- The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Home Thoughts From Abroad, and Rabbi Ben Ezra Robert Browning
- Collection: Sonnets from the Portuguese Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Petra Adaptation
- David Copperfield 1999 miniseries with Daniel Radcliffe and Dame Maggie Smith
- The Barretts of Wimpole Street 1934 film based on a play based on the Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett

I enjoyed all the reading and watching. Only a few of the poems were rereads. I developed a love for Anthony Trollope and Christina Rossetti. Next year, I will continue the Barsetshire series and the Letters of RB and EBB. See you next Victober!

I had such a great Victober this year! Huge thanks to all hosts.
My wrap-up:

Kate's challenge:
Olive

Katie's challenge:
Great Expectations - I also watched the 1998 modern adaptation, starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Marissa's challenge:
The Lifted Veil
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
The Phantom Coach

Petra's challenge/ Group read:
The Mayor of Casterbridge - I watched the BBC adaptation with Ciaran Hinds.

Ros's challenge:
Goblin Market
The Poetry Of Emily Jane Bronte

Also finished The Beetle by Richard Marsh, and a nonfiction book about Victorian times Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners.

My favourite reads were 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' (I really enjoyed reading this with the group), as well as my reread of 'Great Expectations'.
My least favourite was 'The Phantom Coach', though it's not a bad story by all means and I liked it. I just found it a bit predictable, since this trope has been used many times by now.

I had a lovely Victober, and as always didn’t read as many books as I’d have liked too! I’m just going to pretend November is Victorian as well and continue reading.

Author with a disability Challenge: Lady Connie [1916] by Mrs Humphrey Ward, was written 15 years too late to be a Victorian novel but I read it anyway. I was attracted by the setting of Oxford University and my impression that it would be a lighter novel than ‘The Manxman’. It’s set in the 1880s and Ward was herself a Victorian writer, so it has a Victorian feel to it. I enjoyed reading it, Ward’s style, efforts at writing dialogue and descriptions and characters were fine, and it wasn’t either moralising or needlessly bleak. It reminded me of Trollope novels, in the silver fork aspect of the some characters having private incomes, titles, estates etc… but this is not true of oxford academic characters. It has a gentle romance plot line, and it’s cosy – also quite Trollope like qualities. I’m not sure about reading Robert Ellsmere , her most well know novel; I think I might find the religion too heavy and over my head. Instead, I might try a more minor one and see if I like it as much.

The other novel I read was The Manxman [1895] by Hall Caine ( I was right was it was a bildungsroman). I was impressed with this book. It’s a long 500 page saga that makes you feel wrung out by the end of it. It was funny and heart string pulling and descriptive of the Isle of Man- makes you want to visit it. In criticism I think he’s not so good at writing women as Trollope, but he’s not so bad as Dickens. I don’t want to attempt to describe the plot as I think it’s better read not knowing what will happen next. I will say that as I am quite unfamiliar with Manx dialect, I took a little time to get used to it. However, I thought that Lorna Doone and Sylvia’s Lovers were much more difficult for that. Hall makes the effort to explain Manx terms in the text, as I don’t imagine contemporary readers will have been up to it either. I can see why he was so popular, it’s great to find a new writer I like, especially if they’ve written lots of other books.

I read a collection of Wilkie Collins short stories: The Bitter Bit, and other stories of which the title story and ‘A terribly strange bed’ were the best.

I finished off reading a biography of Oscar Wilde by Phillipe Jullian during October. The writer was a French illustrator (he illustrated Vita Sackville-West’s books among others - all very Aubrey Beardsley inspired). His writing is far better than the usual biography writer level, and he was very knowledgeable about not only Wilde, but also the social/artistic group around him. He missed out most of the trial and name dropped constantly, however, he includes lots of fascinating detail about the people Wilde knew and observations of contemporaries about Wilde. These make his biography very worth reading. The sad thing is that it is possible to know too much. Bosie’s paedophilia, especially his buying of the Algerian boy, make it hard to sympathise with him. Reading the biography means facing the reality of the young age and poverty of the rent boys Bosie and Wilde liked as well as details of the cross-dressing editor of Le Figaro. It puts the contemporary condemnation of Wilde at the time of his trial in context. For all that, his wish for family life with Constance after the trial, her refusal, and his life in Italy with Bosie in the last years of his life, feel like a very sad end for the most brilliant scholar of his generation. I just want to be clear that of course I’m against cancel culture, Wilde’s plays are a part of our cultural heritage, I still love them just the same.

I read David Copperfield and watched the latest movie version. I also read some of In A Glass Darkly and Olive. I then read some Oscar Wilde short stories, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's From the Portuguese. Oh, and The Mayor of Casterbridge. I did not read as much as I expected to and while I enjoyed some of the writing, I did not enjoy others. I am planning on reading Far From the Madding Crowd when I get the chance and watching the movie. This was my first Victober and it was nice to feel a part of a reading community. Thanks!

Alexandra wrote: "Jessica, the BBC Judi Dench adaptation of Cranford is probably my second favourite classic adaptation ever (BBC P&P 1995 is of course my favourite)."

Yes, they are both so well done, and I think there's a reason for it--Sue Birtwistle was the producer on both, and Carl Davis wrote the music for both. Also Heidi Thomas wrote the Cranford screenplay--she's the creator/writer for Call the Midwife.

1. Coming of Age/Bildungsroman - Katie Treasure Island
2. Chronic Illness or Disability - KateNorth and South Margaret befriends Bessy who is a bit of the "saintly invalid" trope. Of course there is Long John Silver in Treasure Island whose lack of a leg doesn't hinder him.
3.Read book - Watch Adaptation - Petra Dracula There are so many adaptions, but my favorite is the Bella Lugosi, what is yours? I also watched the version with Ciarán Hinds
4. Short Story - Marissa The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
5. Poem - Ross Classic Poems for Girls
6.Mayor of Casterbridge I enjoyed it, a much easy read the Tess of the D’Urbervilles

As well as the Mayor, I read Arthur Hugh Clough’s Amours de Voyage for the poetry challenge and The Picture of Dorian Gray for the adaptation challenge. The adaptation I plan to watch is a bit left field (I spent most of last weekend run down and in bed) so will post again later.

I’d planned to read something from one of the British Library Tales of the Weird for the short story and may do yet!

Motivated by Victober combined with time made available by a recent retirement enabled me to complete fourteen books. The highlights of the month were discovering Elizabeth Gaskell and reading Charlotte Bronte's Villette!

Completed books:

Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
The Old Curiosity Shop - Dickens
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
Dr. Wortle's School - Anthony Trollope
Nickolas Nickleby - Dickens
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin (yes I cheated)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Oliver Twist - Dickens
Villette - Charlotte Bronte
Gothic Tales - Elizabeth Gaskell
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Sonnets from the Portuguese - E.B. Browning
The Pickwick Papers - Dickens
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy

Gaby wrote: "I managed to read more than I had planned. I enjoyed Victober very much, thanks to all the hosts!
1. Chronic illness/disability:
- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
2. Bildungsroman/Coming of ag..." Gaby, I'm blanking on The Woman in White. Who has a chronic disability in that book? Unless you count the uncle? Oh, I see. I considered him a hypochondriac so I didn't even count this book in that challenge! I have to go edit my comments to include this one. How funny I missed that!

Daniel wrote: "Motivated by Victober combined with time made available by a recent retirement enabled me to complete fourteen books. The highlights of the month were discovering Elizabeth Gaskell and reading Char..."

Wow, you read a lot of chunky books!

r

Let me add my thanks to the BookTubers and Mods for Victober. This is my first and it has been so much fun. Victorian lit is my jam anyway, so I added a personal challenge to the mod's challenges, which was to read authors I've never read or books by familiar authors I've never read. I finished 19 books in October and I carried A Noble Life and The Three Clerks into November.


I chose not to participate in the group read, so that challenge is DNF.
Chronic illness or disability: *John Halifax, Gentleman
& Coming of Age* *Olive
*A Noble Life - All by Dinah Maria Craik
The Doctor's Family - Mrs. Oliphant
*The Heir of Redclyffe - C.M. Yonge
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Short Story: Cousin Phillis - Elizabeth Gaskell
Lady Hester - C.M. Yonge
The Rector - Mrs. Oliphant
Poetry: Idylls of the King
The Lady of Shallot - Tennyson
Film Adaptation: DNF, but I did find a great YouTuber
called Bernadette Banner who is
all things Victorian
Miscellaneous: Salem Chapel
The Perpetual Curate
Miss Marjoriebanks
Phoebe Junior - Mrs. Oliphant
Ayala's Angel
Miss Mackenzie
*The Three Clerks - Anthony Trollope
*Martin Chuzzlewit
The Pickwick Papers - Dickens
Phantastes - George MacDonald

My favorites were The Idylls of the King, because it's the first long form poetry I've tried and I loved it, and Phantastes because it's just magical. Everything I read I really enjoyed except The Woman in White (I've just taken it in dislike, hate it with a white hot passion) and Lady Hester which was just horribly sad (also has a disabled child in it). I loved trying new authors and a new genre. I got so many ideas from all of your recommendations. So many of you read The Goblin Market that I must read it. Also, Sonnets from the Portuguese, the Browning letters, and The Half Sisters are now on my TBR, and I won't wait until next year to read them. It's been lovely chatting books with you this month. I'll miss you!

My thanks to the BookTubers and Mods for Victober. I read many a book, poem, essay & short stories & enjoyed them all.

For this year's Victober, I read 7 books in total:
Victorian Bildungsroman / coming of age story: Jill by Amy Dillwyn
Chronic illness / disability: Olive by Dinah Maria Craik
short story" I read The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb and other cases, a collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories
poem: I read Poems Bewitched and Haunted, a poetry collection that doesn't exclusively feature Victorian poetry, but there were some in there
Read a book, then watch an adaptation: I reread Dracula and then watched the Francis Coppola adaptation of it
I also read the group read, The Mayor of Casterbridge.
On top of that, I also read A Study in Scarlet on a whim.
Overall, it was a successful Victober and I want to thank all the hosts for yet another great Victober :)

My final wrap-up for the month. I have included two books that I just didn't quite finish in October, but completed in the past couple days.

All were new to me except the short stories "Carmilla," "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde," and the plays of Oscar Wilde.

My favorite work was The Heir of Redclyffe. I am planning to read more by Charlotte Mary Yonge in the future.

Books with chronic illness or disability
✓ The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte Mary Yonge (1853)

Bildungsroman
✓ Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)

Short Stories
✓ In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
"Green Tea"
"The Familiar"
"Mr. Justice Harbottle"
"The Room in the Dragon Volant"
"Carmilla"
✓ The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other Stories
"The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"
"The Body-Snatchers"
"Markheim"
"Olalla"
✓ "The Waif Woman" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1892)
✓ "The Isle of Voices" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1892)

Book and Adaptation
- did not complete this one

Poetry
✓ A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885)
✓ "Goblin Market" and other poems by Christina Rossetti (1862)
✓ A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear (1846)

Other
✓ Plays by Oscar Wilde
"Lady Windermere's Fan" (1892)
"A Woman of No Importance" (1893)
"An Ideal Husband" (1895)
"The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895)
"Salome" (1895)
✓ Dr. Wortle's School by Anthony Trollope (1879)
✓ Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (1877)

I enjoyed this victober and red a number of books in October :
Poetry :
Some Elizabeth and Robert browning
The lady of Shalott
The jabberwocky
Some novels, novellas and short stories :
- The trumpet Major
- The woman in white
- The Mill on the floss
- Doctor wortle's school
- Uncle Silas
- The gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell
- A dark night's work by Elizabeth Gaskell
- The Moorland Cottage
- Halowe'en Party by Agatha Christie
It was a great reading month even though I couldn't add more books for the challenges.

My very first Victober was a wonderful success!
I completed all of the challenges.

I read
7 novels:
"The Mayor of Casterbridge" Thomas Hardy
~watched 2003 adaptation
"The Warden" Anthony Trollope
"Barchester Towers" Trollope
"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" Anne Bronte
~watched 1996 adaptation
"Aurora Leigh" Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Cranford" Elizabeth Gaskell
"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" Robert Louis Stevenson

Works from 9 poets:
"The Hunting of the Snark" Lewis Carroll
"Aurora Leigh" Browning
"Poems of Currer, Ellis, & Acton Bell" Charlotte, Emily, Anne Bronte
~watched "To Walk Invisible"
6 poems from "Songs of Love and Empire" Edith Nesbit
"A Little While" Dante Gabriel Rossetti
"A Lost Chord" Adelaide Anne Procter
"October" Hilaire Belloc

4 short stories by Charles Dickens:
"A Holiday Romance"
"The Trial for Murder"
"To Be Read at Dusk"
"The Signal Man"

Nonfiction:
"The Last Generation in England" (essay) Gaskell
"Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands from 1848-1861" Queen Victoria

Nothing was a reread, and I really enjoyed everything, but I think "Aurora Leigh" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" top the list.

I will add my thanks to the wonderful hosts for all of their inspiration, motivation, and hard work!

I didn't manage to finish all challenges but I'm still very happy with what I achieved!

For the poetry challenge I read the part with poetry written by english speaking poets (i.e. brittish and americans) from a collection we used when I studied litterature years ago. Not being a big fan of poetry, this was great! I feel like I got to try to read bits of several poets, enough to feel which ones I liked and felt was more for me, so I will definetly read some more.
I also noticed that there are quite alot of poetry in the audio book apps, so this is something I'll put in my plan to read for 2023 :)

For two challenges I read books by Anthony Trollope - The way we live now and Barchester towers. I discovered Trollope when I found the movie adaption to The way we live not about ten years ago and I loved it! However, only two or three of his books are translated to swedish (which I prefer to read in), so when I found a translated copy of The warden I was thrilled. Unfortunally I found it quite slow and not really what I expected.
The books I read for victober I loved! So I feel like I've got to rediscover Trollope! So another plan for 2023 is to re-read The warden and continue with the Barchester chronicles in time.

The mayor of Casterbride I thought was good, but not great. By the end I think I was somewhat annoyed by how static the characters was. The flow of the language was great though.
Still, this was the first time I read anything by Thomas Hardy and I will definetly look up more of his books in the future.

The only book I didn't manage to finish was Elizabeth Gaskells Wives and daughters. I've read it once before and I loved it even more this time. I've taken a break from it and plan to read it at christmas :)

And a great thanks to the hosts! You've done a great job! I love victober and I really hope it'll return next year :)

Hi Victober friends!

I am doing education research on Victober, and you are invited to participate! The research study is called "Informal Learning in an Online Book Club: A Qualitative Case Study" (IRB #2023-067). The purpose of this study is to explore how and why people participate in Victober. This study is being conducted by me, Toni Pilcher, under the direction of Dr. Stephen Yanchar at Brigham Young University. For the purposes of this study, we are looking for participants who fit the following criteria:
• Are 18 years or older
• Identify as women
• Live in the United States
• Speak English as a first language
• Participated in Victober at least once before 2022
• Uploaded videos and made comments on Youtube during Victober 2022
• Are not a Victober host

If selected, you will be interviewed one or two times over Zoom for approximately 60 minutes each about your experience with Victober 2022. These interviews are anticipated to take place in March and/or April. Participants will not be compensated for their time and effort.

If you are eligible and interested, you can message me (Toni) or email me at toni_pilcher@byu.edu. If you are not eligible but are still interested, you can message me anyway. I will do more expansive research later. Also, feel free to share this invitation with other Victober friends!