Reading the Classics discussion

and (both not classics, haha) as well as attempting . Hopefully Of Mice and Men is better than the Grapes of Wrath, which I didn't enjoy very much :P

I'm reading for this group. and for myself.

Connie wrote: " and (both not classics, haha) as well as attempting . Hopefully Of Mice and Men is better than..."

I loved Of Mice and Men! I first read it back in my sophomore year of high school and because of that, didn't enjoy it as much but after a quick re-read I fell in love. It's probably just because I'm an over-emotional teenager, but I honestly cry each time I read it.

Starting listening to Rebecca today.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens. I have so much trouble focusing!

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, for the first time. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Joy;

I thought Pickwick Papers intermittently amusing, but mostly a bit of a slog, up until Sam Weller shows up. After Sam shows, I really enjoyed it.

Anne;

I always thought I had problems focusing on Bleak House because I was reading it while dealing with a newborn. Maybe I should reconsider....

Loraine:

I ended up quite enjoying Uncle Tom's Cabin, but I read a lot of stuff of that era and it does suffer from... well, I'm not sure what to call it. While on the one hand the author firmly believes in the ideals of service, and in that sense does not see people of the servant class (or slave class, in this case) as inferior or lesser beings, at the same time there's some weird classism going on.

I suspect it's no worse than much of the classism going on now, it's just that it's a different flavor and takes some getting used to.

Paradise Regained by John Milton
I was pleasantly surprised, and moved, by Paradise Lost, which I finally finished last month.

Jessica, I see that you recommended 'The Old Jest'. I looked it up and remembered that she is a very far out relative of mine: a great uncle's niece. This is not so strange as Ireland is such a small country. Thanks for bringing her to my attention as I have never read anything by her.

Reading currently Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope and Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. There are other ongoing books, but I am slipping behind badly. Difficult time of year for reading!

Just finished War and Peace.... No comment... Now I am reading 84 Charring Cross Road. A novel in letters! So wonderful!!!

Christine wrote: "Just finished War and Peace.... No comment... Now I am reading 84 Charring Cross Road. A novel in letters! So wonderful!!!"

Amazing book! One of my favorites.

Just finished Death in Venice.

Hilary wrote: "Jessica, I see that you recommended 'The Old Jest'. I looked it up and remembered that she is a very far out relative of mine: a great uncle's niece. This is not so strange as Ireland is such a s..."

An Irish friend of mine was very enthusiastic about her as well when we spoke about this, although The Old Jest is so old (and so out of print) that she had never heard of it. It's worth finding on ABE Books, and the movie is quite nice as well.

Read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on the plane from Warsaw to Chicago.

Enjoyable, but I have never read a book before where I agreed so explicitly with every comment made in the Penguin Introduction.

Reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Jessica said;
I have never read a book before where I agreed so explicitly with every comment made in the Penguin Introduction.

This made me chuckle. Then, even though I was pretty sure my copy is something else, had to go check. Not Penguin. Sadness.

Agree with you that it's an enjoyable book. :)

In other news, just finished In Harms Way:The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of its Survivors, which I enjoyed considerable. Prior to that was Patricia A. McKillip's The Book of Atrix Wolfe, which was pretty good.

Picked up Robert Fitgerald's translation of The Odyssey yesterday, and will probably tackle that tonight. But first I have to read Book One of Ovid's Metamorphosis for a class my eldest and I are doing. Unless I keep stalling on it, that is. *sigh*

It's been years since I read any Patricia McKillip book besides The Riddlemaster of Hed triliogy, which I keep hoping will come out on the Kindle. Was it good?

Halfway through Dante's Inferno and I am taking a rest break with James Thurber and "My Life and Hard Times."

That history book sounds good, I am about to start Doris Goodwin Kearns "The Bully Pulpit"

I enjoyed Atrix Wolfe, but I have yet to read a Patricia McKillip I didn't enjoy, and I wouldn't say it's her best. It's also the only one I started once and thought it was going into a typical fantasy cliche, and abandoned it -- on re-starting it this time, I was not nearly so concerned that she'd go that route, and I'm not even sure why my past self thought she would: I think I was just in a mood.

My favorite McKillip remains The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, which some people don't like because the language is so stylized, and others don't like because they think it's the usual story about a beautiful, perfect sorceress and feel betrayed when their heroine turns out to be profoundly flawed. I'm good with formal prose and don't like heroines whose only flaws are that they can be emotionally wounded and/or that they can't please everybody, so I loved it.

Eldest and I were going to do Dante's Divine Comedy this year, but then I said, "Well, we really should know the Aeneid for this." And then I got a textbook that covered the Aeneid along with Homer's two epics where the only thing we hadn't read was Theogony, which is quite short. Except the first discussion session expects you to compare Theogony to the first book of Metamorphosis, which we haven't read yet.... *sigh*

Are you enjoying the Inferno? My first extensive exposure to it was a Marvel comic where a group of heroes were essentially taking the same trip. I don't even remember which heroes were going (the Avengers? the Defenders?), but the imagery of what they were experiencing seems to have deeply imprinted on my brain, so I'm wondering how it's going to mesh with the original. Makes me glad I read The Christmas Carol long before I saw the eight million cartoon versions of it. :p

I read a modern English version first before I read the Longfellow edition. I love Longfellow, so I was happy to dive in. You can only read it a Canto or so at a time, though, your eyes start crossing after a bit.

Never read the Aeneid, love the Illiad though, and was contemplating starting The Odyssey in the fall.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is magical, kind of heartbreaking too.

I may give Longfellow's version a shot. I've got Laurence Binyon's and Henry F. Cary's floating around, and I am also tempted by Clive James', mostly because he translates/changes the hell gate inscription to, “Forget your hopes. They are what brought you here.” On the one hand, he's clearly taking liberties, but OTOH, that is such a great line!

Although I'm not sure which I like best, I like both the Aeneid and the Odyssey better than the Iliad. Might just be my anti-war prejudice, I dunno. Supposedly people highly favor either Greek literature or Roman literature; so far that split isn't happening with me.

Agree on The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, but by the very end the heartbreak is matched with hope, at least for me.

I just discovered The Secret History by Donna Tartt. What a great read!

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the color purple

ham on rye by bukowski

Thanks for the ABE books recommendation, Jessica. I must bear that in mind. :)

I am currently reading Wuthering Heights for the first time, and I am re-reading Jane Eyre. Also, I am trying to find the time, in order to read To the Lighthouse for our summer read. I am really enjoying Wuthering Heights so far, and I love the time period and plot. Jane Eyre is great as well, and I hope to finish these books in about a week's time. Then, I will have to time to thoroughly investigate To the Lighthouse.

I'm reading The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles and I have to say that I'm glad to finally know the source of The Police song Tea In the Sahara.

Stranger in a strange land, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Probably the most pretentious title of any book, ever. I hear the book itself is pretty pretentious too. We'll see!

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Orfeo by Richard Powers

The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham

Mrs Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw

I've read two classic books this summer that I have been avoiding because I heard they were not that good: A Tale of Two Cities and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Both were absolutely amazing! I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to get around to them.

I'm going completely non-classic and working through John Grisham's latest, Sycamore Row, and currently popular Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Also doing Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door, which is sort of a children's classic, does that count? :)

Alana wrote: "I'm going completely non-classic and working through John Grisham's latest, Sycamore Row, and currently popular Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Also doing Madeleine L'E..."

Alana, I haven't read Sycamore Row yet. I have been behind on my John Grisham reading. I have to read The Litigators, Calico Joe, and The Rocketeer first. But I have read all the ones before that and have them in my collection. He is one of my favorite authors. I guess I better do some other reading besides classics, too.

The little novella 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' by R.L.Stevenson. (I was on holiday so have fallen badly behind on other books! :(. )

Just finished Claudius the God, which had its moments but was not as good as I, Claudius. May restart Frankenstein next (got a few chapters in earlier this year before it got sidetracked by a vacation), or may leave that for when I visit my mom's later this month.

Currently reading Animal Farm.

Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope

I am planning to read Alice in Wonderland. Is it a classic??

Absolutely! I love that book!

he (Allah (sic)) does not approve of the taking of life, be it another's or one's own , for he says that life is sacred, "Mulla Faizullah to Mariam", Thousand splendid suns ....According to Quran there are two kind of peoples, sacred muslims and kafirs. Is it ok to kill Kafirs? . people all over the world really want an answer, they are searching for it because we are losing so many kafirs day by day.

You're staying on track better than I have been, Joy. Took Frankenstein to my mom's, never got it out (I was flattened by a bug and got hardly anything read *sigh* -- on the upside, I haven't been that pampered while sick in DECADES :D ), and haven't touched it since. Planned to finish Middlemarch before the group was done with it, have barely started that as well, although I've read it before and liked it pretty well that time.

I'll get going on both of those once I finish at least a chapter each of the stack of non-fic library books that are due the end of next week, so I can decide whether to get them out again. Kind of over-estimated the impact of the holiday season, there.

One of those library books is Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane, which I started this morning and is quite good so far.

Villette by Charlotte Brontë, rereading Persuasion by Jane Austen and struggling with Uncle Tom's Cabin by H B Stowe.

Loraine wrote: "... struggling with Uncle Tom's Cabin by H B Stowe."

I don't blame you. For all it's historical importance, I found it almost unreadable.

Meishuu wrote: "Finally got enough courage to read , and dammit, it's such a waste of time... so infuriatingly bad."

lol wow i haven't been reading mokingjay for the same reason too

Currently i am reading letters, interviews and speeches of sindhi poet Sheikh ayaz. He was aslo vice chancellor of sindh university pakistan. He is most popular poet and writer in sindhi literature .

Last night i completed novel of Rasool memon Ninteem women ( in sindhi language). It is based on history . very good novel recently i have read .

I'm listening to Of Human Bondage audiobook (librivox version) and liking it very much

I am reading Saranga Magzine published by Isakh samejo from hyderabad

I'm listening to a CD of David Copperfield as a reread, but to my dismay I find it is abridged. The set of 5/6 Dickens was bought for me as a present. Could anyone help me with how I could access Librivox or similar. Can I download them unto my phone? In the meantime I can make up the gaps in DC by reading my good ol' paperback! Thanks for any help!