Litwit Lounge discussion

What a great idea! I need a challenge right now, and eager to read more of the classics. Thanks for starting this. :)

Hope you enjoy it as much as me; I think that is my favorite Dickens novel. Loved the movie, too!

Charly, I really want to read a lot more of the classics, so I'd love to take up your challenge (and one of these years, I will!). But though I expect to have a normal amount of time again for reading by 2012, I have a backlog of five new books I've promised people (mostly Goodreads friends) that I'd read and review. So for me, 2012 probably isn't going to be the year for a classics challenge. :-(

Hmmm! Well, Charly, I'll bite the bullet and take on a challenge of six for 2012, just so as not to be a party-pooper. :-)

I agree, Charly --the more classics read, the better! Most likely I won't even read six, but I'll enjoy reading however many I do, and this will give me a good excuse to try to work them in. :-)

I finished Jane Eyre. I'm trying to get more classics in now that I have so much time on my hands. They have been on my shelves way too long.

I'm in. I have so many classic books on my bookshelves that I'll get around to someday. Now I'll have more incentive. Thanks Charly.

Just started The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Me, too, literally! Just got all my Christmas books out of storage the other day and trying to finish up A Christmas Carol this afternoon.

I'm afraid the next one will not be so short. On to East of Eden...

I can do this! I've just finished Anna Karenina and am reading it through, again, to try and catch everything. I find it helps to read through a book once just to get the story and then, if I sense there's more to the book, read it again more carefully.

Charly, I think you read too fast for us to keep up. I'm having a hard time getting my reading done this time of year, but then I make a lot of presents. Come Jan. I'll do better.

Just began East of Eden.

Wow! look at you go at those classics. ;) What did you think of Nickleby?

Very well said, Charly. I enjoyed the movie, too. :)

I gave up on Hunchback and switched to Jules Verne. Starting with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Then drifting through my many bookshelves I found The Good Earth by Pearl Buck (remember doing a project on that book as senior in high school), Green Mansions, The Satyricon, Taras Bulba, Dante's Inferno and others. I may need a 24 month challenge.

I haven't started yet --my schedule still isn't to the point where I can get back to actually reading whole books, though I'm hoping it will be in a couple of weeks. Not sure what I was thinking when I took on a six-classics challenge for 2012; this definitely isn't the year for me to do it! (2014 will probably be better.) But still, I'm hoping to at least get a couple of classics in this year. :-)

No problem to start slow and work at it. I've always wanted to read my classics but always seem to pick up something else. So I'm glad Charly brought up this challenge to get me going. But I doubt I'll make it will all the doctor appts., Mom in residence assistance after her hip surgery from falling, and so many requests for my knitting and crocheting projects. But I'm making more time for reading and less TV. After football it will be just Netflix specials.

I actually do the lion's share of my reading while I'm pedalling on a stationary bike for exercise. (Ever since I discovered, years ago, that one can read while doing this, I've been very conscientious about physical fitness. :-) ). For the last several months, I haven't been able to do much of this, but I'm hoping to get back to a daily regimen of it in a couple of weeks.

I'm not doing too good with this -- yet. The last couple months have been difficult, however, time with the classics is always well-spent. I still have East of Eden to be read as I have only gotten a couple chapters in before coming to a halt.

Reggia, I really liked East of Eden.
Enjoying 20,000 Leagues and (Gasp) had started Paradise Lost. Really interesting if you read it slow.

Glad to hear that, Syra! It's a larger book than I've been reading the last few years... I will stick with it.

I think I need to slow down and pick one book. Right now I'm reading 4 at once and starting to get them mixed up, esp. the mystery series' (Tess Gerrittson, Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, etc.). My feeble mind is having a hard time trying to keep all their pi's straight (who has a cat, who has a dog, who is married, etc., which crime did which one do.....AAAHHHH). And my meds don't help any either. I need more surgery but am scared to death to try again after the last fiasco of screwed up anesthesia and not waking up for 3 days.

I read one mystery, two classics (Jules Verne & John Milton) and one fantasy on cd my son got me for Christmas (Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin).

Charly, you are putting us all to shame. Bravo!

Sorry, you're stuck with me for now! :p LOL, just teasing... it would be great to hear from others; if you're out there reading this, please join in!

Really enjoying East of Eden. It's been a very long time since I was so enthralled with a story. :)

Reggia, so glad you like E of E. It reminds me of the old Gone With The Wind, Showboat...the books that draw you into another time and place and make you feel you are glad you dropped by.

Syra, you're so right... it really is pulling me "into another time and place"; it's one I've never been to but is becoming more and more familiar. I am going to have to speed up my reading to be finished by Sunday for discussion. Again, I'm so happy to have a story pull me in as I had really been slacking on the reading (quite unlike me).

Take care, all, and do join in!

Just reread The Importance of Being Earnest; it is rare that I do rereads but this is very short, and very funny! Now I have it on my Kindle so I can pull it up and read a page or two anytime I need a laugh.

Charly, I noticed that after reading Jude the Obscure, you noted, as advice to other readers, "Don't do it!" :-) I already read it back in my college days, so it's too late for me to take your advice; and personally, I don't know if I'd absolutely advise people not to read it. But I agree that it's a depressing read, with no upbeat features about it --definitely the most depressing of Hardy's major novels. It's not his best work, IMO.

Yes, Charly, your second sentence is a pretty good one-sentence description of that book! I agree that I wouldn't advise it as a person's first introduction to "the classics" --or even as a first introduction to Hardy. (A lot of his work has a dark, pessimistic streak, but it's not usually this bad.)

Does anybody think it would be too much of a stretch to ascribe "classic" status to Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel Jamaica Inn?

Well, I think I'll count it. It's been around for over 75 years and continues to be read, and has been adapted on film at least twice; and Du Maurier appears pretty consistently in standard reference works on British literature. So it will rank as my first classic for our challenge! :-)

Thanks, Charly!

Jude is the most depressing?! LOL, I don't know what to make of that after having only read Tess and Far From the Madding Crowd, both also depressing stories.

Well, after having abandoned East of Eden a few months ago, I have returned to it. :) Oh, and it is most definitely not the book's fault I stepped away. :p I am way behind this challenge as it's my goal to read 1 classic a month.

Reggia, I'd say that Tess of the D'Urbervilles is Hardy's second most depressing novel. (Trust me, Jude the Obscure manages to be worse!) IMO, for Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and The Return of the Native are his more upbeat books; they all include a fair amount of tragedy, but they have some leavening of hopefulness.

I officially list myself as a "fan" of Hardy, and I can appreciate his work although I don't rank it as highly among my favorites as I do that of several of his contemporaries. (Some of his short stories, especially "The Three Strangers" and "The Distracted Preacher," appeal to me more than some of his long fiction does.) Interestingly, though, one of my dear friends, an English professor here at BC, is an ardent Hardy fan, much more so than I am. (I'm not sure why; he's the only really avid Hardy fan that I know!)

That could explain it, Charly. :-)

Well, I'm finally on the scoreboard for the challenge with one (arguable) classic read. :-) But I doubt if I'll achieve my stated goal of six; circumstances seem to be shaping up against it. However, when I go to Florida in June for a library conference, I plan to take Dumas' The Three Musketeers along to read on the bus; and The Last of the Mohicans is on my schedule for later in the summer. (That'll be a reread; but I last read it as a nine-year-old kid.)

Of course, the collection of British short fiction I'm reading currently isn't a classic itself. But, having been published in the 1930s, all of its contents are old enough to be of classical vintage; and it does include a number of recognized classics and classic authors.

Okay, in honor of Mother's Day, I'm returning to my unfinished Joan of Arc biography. Not so sure that it's a classic but the author, Mark Twain, is. (hmm, is that bad grammar? oh well!)

Yay!! :-D

Not sure if I want to commit myself to a challenge, life has enough challenges on its own. But maybe I'll just muddle along and see how much I get read.
Do the scarlet pimpernel books count as classics? If so, I'm at 3 and a half.

The "Scarlet Pimpernel" character was created by Baroness Emma Orczy, a Hungarian-born aristocrat living in England (and writing in English). The first novel of the series, The Scarlet Pimpernel, was originally published in 1903. I'd certainly consider that one, at least, a classic.

This year I've read a couple of the other Scarlet Pimpernel books. Some of them are as good as the first, but others not quite. I think of them as classics, but my idea of a classic may be a bit looser than others.

In this group, we pretty much let people use their own definitions of "classic." I haven't read any of the books in this series; but it seems to me that if the first one is a widely-recognized classic, one could make a very logical case for regarding them all as classics. (There are, of course, some classics that are more prestigious than others; it might help to think of "first tier" and "second tier" classics.)

Thanks for your comments guys. I'll count them as classics and have a think about challenging myself to a few more this year.

I just started The Three Musketeers last night! Of course, I'm still just reading the introduction; but I hope to get a lot of reading done on my Florida trip, on the bus and in bus terminals. :-)

I've learned to do the same, Charly. Just because it's a classic doesn't mean I need to know the whole story (or its construction) before I read it! Oops! sorry for shouting. :p

Starting on The Buccaneers.

While on my bus trips to and from Florida, I finished The Three Musketeers. This evening, I started James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans --which I've read before, but back in 1959!