Well, this is the earliest I've ever posted my final wrap-up for the Back to the Classics Challenge! I've managed to fit in a lot of books so far this year, thanks mostly to Covid! I'm very happy to have finally read The Lord of the Rings...and to have enjoyed them so much. They were just the right books to read as we went into lockdown here. I also watched the movies, which I'd put off viewing until I'd read the books.
A pleasant surprise for me out of this list was Martin Chuzzlewit. I've read just about all of Dickens' novels, and wasn't busting to read any of his others but by chance I found this book, had no idea of its storyline, and had never seen it reviewed. I decided to read a chapter and if I found it too rambling I'd give it a miss, but I fell into it headlong and continued. A great read!
A book that made me cry (which doesn't happen very often) was The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A perfect (short) book to pick up for a first introduction to a Russian writer.
Saplings was very different to anything else I'd read by Noel Streatfeild - definitely not for children like many of her other books; a tragic tale of the impact of WW2 on a family.
Sadly, Miss Pym Disposes is the last of of Josephine Tey's crime/detective noels I had left to read. I've thoroughly enjoyed her books.
The only book I didn't really like was The Island of Doctor Moreau. There was a reason it was my abandoned classic!
19th century Classic: Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (1843-5)
20th Century Classic: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957-8)
Classic by a Woman: The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1901)
Classic in Translation: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (1886)
Classic by a Person of Colour: To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite (1959)
Genre Classic: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (1930)
Classic With a Name in the Title: Miss Pym Disposes by Joesphine Tey (1946)
Classic With a Place in the Title: Pilgrim's Inn by Elizabeth Goudge (1948)
Classic With Nature in the Title: The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge (1963)
Classic About a Family: Saplings by Noel Streatfeild (1945)
An Abandoned Classic: The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896)
Adapted Classic: The Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien (1949)
14 comments:
Congratulations on finishing up!
This is an impressive list of books.
I only have a few Dickens books that I have not read that I still want to read. Martin Chuzzlewit Is one of them.
YAY! Congrats! I have not read Death of Ivan Ilyich, but hopefully someday. I did love Doctor Zhivago. I'll don't believe I've read your comments on either, so I will check those posts out.
quality selections, i must say... i've only read 5 or 6 Dickens... the trouble is, i can't recall which ones they were so i'll have to start over! rats!!
well done!!
What an interesting list. I've read a lot of your classis but there are a few I still have on my wishlist. Thanks for the remidner.
Hi Brian, I was pretty pleased with getting this lot done.
Hi Ruth, I don't know why it took me so long to get to Ivan - it's a fairly quick read, & a short one for a Russian author, but powerful.
Hi Mudpuddle, Dickens' plots are so convoluted that by the time you finish one, it's almost time to re-read it.
Thank you, Emma. I've had trouble getting my comments to load on your blog! For a while it was Blogger that I had difficulty with but now it's Wordpress and other non-Blogger platforms. I don't know what the issue is but it's very frustrating!
Hi Marianne, thanks for taking the time to comment. Hope you are well.
Yay you for finishing so early! I've never successfully completed this challenge, but am on better track this year than ever as well. So many of your books are unfamiliar to me, besides one of my favorites, Lord of the Rings--happy to hear you enjoyed that! But I'm sure I'll get to at least some of the others as well...someday... :)
Hi Amanda, earlier in the year we had quite a few of our regular activities closed due to the virus so I did have more to me to read - at least for a couple of months. 🙂
Well I'm glad you finally got to LOTR...though there are more (even amongst classic readers) than you'd think that haven't. Well done.
Thanks, Joseph. I think it was all the hype from the movies that turned me off. Sometimes I just dig my heels in with things like that but I was pleased that I did enjoy the books so much in the end!
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