What book are you reading?

[peppermint]

Originally Posted by Halo_in_reverse

I've just starte Silas Marner by George Eliot as part of my 25 classics in one year project. This is book 11 of my quest.

This is very interesting to me. Would you list your 25 classics for us?

[Halo_in_reverse]

Originally Posted by peppermint

This is very interesting to me. Would you list your 25 classics for us?

Sure no problem.
Ooops, thought I was further along in my reading list (I'm only on #10). Whew I still have quite a way to go. The ones in italics and bold are the ones that I have read. I started this project back in May of this year. So I'm just about 6 months in at the moment. I may not make all 25 in one year, but I'm seriously trying.


1. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
2. Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
3. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
4. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
5. Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
6. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
7. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
8. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
9. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
10. Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov
11. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
12. Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
13. The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
14. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
15. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
16. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorn
17. Silas Marner - George Eliot
18. The Stranger - Albert Camus
19. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
20. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
21. Madame Bovary - Gustav Flaubert
22. Vanity Fair - Wm. Makepeace Thackery
23. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
24. Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
25. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

[peppermint]

Originally Posted by Halo_in_reverse

Sure no problem.
Ooops, thought I was further along in my reading list (I'm only on #10). Whew I still have quite a way to go. The ones in italics and bold are the ones that I have read. I started this project back in May of this year. So I'm just about 6 months in at the moment. I may not make all 25 in one year, but I'm seriously trying.

Thank you. Maybe I'll do this also!

[Halo_in_reverse]

Originally Posted by peppermint

Thank you. Maybe I'll do this also!

Here's what I've discovered. That I get so much more out of a book when I get to read it for fun and not for a book report or a paper . I'm not searching for every nuance and "important" quote. I can just absorb the book.

Some of these I had to read in college and in high school - but honestly other than the major theme or plot - I couldn't have told you much more beyond that. Now, I'm just enjoying them and can really discuss them at length.

It's been quite the re-education.

[peppermint]

I agree with your, halo! It's wonderful what you're doing. Did you just make the list yourself? I have been reading some of the classics that I never read in HS like Awakening, Bleak House, and Middlemarch. Just decided it was time, but I have to timetable or anything like that.

[sgresident]

you are inspiring me! maybe I will pick up a book from that list as well. I read many in high school and college(many years ago!) and think I would have a different point of view as an adult just reading for pleasure.

[Halo_in_reverse]

Originally Posted by sgresident

you are inspiring me! maybe I will pick up a book from that list as well. I read many in high school and college(many years ago!) and think I would have a different point of view as an adult just reading for pleasure.

Well, I learned so many things from these books that make sense in my adult life. The Movie "Apocalypse Now" was based on Heart of Darkness and a Cure song called, "Killing an Arab" is not about killing an Arab (I thought it was soooo subversive and bad as a kid) - when in fact, actually, it's based on The Stranger by Albert Camus. Funny how things make sense now as an adult.

peppermint, I did indeed make up that list myself. I based it on a little bit of internet research and a little bit of things that I remembered from HS and college.

[peppermint]

I have a fairly long list of books that have been challenged or banned at some time. Many of them are classics - some are juvenile classics like Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. I am slowly working my way through them. While I read a lot of current nonfiction, I tend to prefer older fiction - classics really - or anything that's been banned or challenged.

[Halo_in_reverse]

Originally Posted by peppermint

I have a fairly long list of books that have been challenged or banned at some time.

Please share Maybe my next reading list will be the 25 banned books list.

Oh, and btw, love Ronald Dahl books!

[peppermint]

The list is over 85 books! I can give you an abbreviated list in no particular order. These are the ones I've either never read or read back in JHS or HS.

1. Leaves of Grass
2. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
3. Inferno
4. Heart of Darkness
5. David Copperfield
6. Invisible Man
7. Catch 22
8. For Whom the Bell Tolls
9. Les Miserables
10. Flowers for Algernon
11. Gone with the Wind
12. Song of Solomon
13. The Lovely Bones
14. The Grapes of Wrath
15. A Confederacy of Dunces
16. Brideshead Revisited
17. Native Son
18. Alice in Wonderland
19. Notes from a Small Island
20. The Five People You Meet In Heaven
21. Fahrenheit 451
22. Rebecca
23. As I Lay Dying
24. Lord of the Flies
25. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
26. The Sun Also Rises
27. The Kite Runner
28. Their Eyes Were Watching God
29. Brave New World
30. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
31. Atonement
32. Beloved
33. The Time Traveler's Wife
34. 1984
35. Of Mice and Men
36. East of Eden
37. The Secret Garden
38. Chronicles of Narnia
39. Harry Potter Series
40. Charlotte's Web
41. The Da Vinci Code
42. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
43. Dune
44. The Giver
45. The Diary of Anne Frank
46. A Wrinkle in Time
47. The Count of Monte Cristo
48. Birdsong
49. One Hundred Years of Solitude
50. Love in the Time of Cholera

Would be so fun to have a CD banned book of the month club, don't you think???