Cecrow's Batch List

This is the only way I can conceive how to do this: in batches of ten, since I'm a slow reader and I also read a lot of non-classics in between. I'll knock these off slowly but surely.

Batch #1
The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Howard's End - E.M. Forster
Washington Square - Henry James
Dubliners - James Joyce
Magister Ludi - Herman Hesse
Barnaby Rudge - Charles Dickens
The Epic of Gilgamesh - Anonymous
The Vicar of Wakefield - Oliver Goldsmith
Middlemarch - George Eliot

Alright, so I'm doing the old "let's challenge the definition of classic" thing here ... on the one hand we've got Homer, and on the other we've got ... Anne Tyler??? I'm sticking her in here not on the grounds of "oh gosh, people will be reading and praising her centuries from now!" but more like "I'm only going to read this because its praises have been sung ever since publication, it appears often on must-read lists, some how-to-write books cite it as a perfect example of such-and-such ... okay fine, I'll read it."

I don't even know Anne Tyler's name, never heard of her, so my own "hmm, I'd not have thought that a classic (yet)..." was over Things Fall Apart. :P

A few of these are on my shelves (6, I believe, though Middlemarch may also be, with my husband's uni stuff, I know he had to read it), but I've read only two of those (Dubliners, which I think was in my TBR?, and Dostoevsky) so far, plus Things Fall Apart back in college. I love Dostoevsky, and Achebe is excellent as well.

I like this method of yours, I might consider throwing my hat in with that route as well. *ponders*

Muriel Spark is another recent one, too. Camus I think seems a little more secure by now. But Tyler ... 1980s, yeah, I'm pushing the envelope past its tolerance there, I think, lol.

Hahaha, it's okay, I doubt anyone will throw you out of the group over it. ;P

I guess if they do, you'll know you'd best not sign up! lol. It's funny, I didn't even think of Tyler not belonging til I after I posted it. Then somehow it became less work to defend her presence than to just edit my list? Whatevers.

LOL I often do things that seem "less" to me that when I actually think about it I'm like ...that's probably pretty stupid, but, that's how I prefer to do it so... hahahahaha

Is there anyone out there that actually agrees on the definition of 'classic' anyway? Wikipedia says "A classic book is a book accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy, either through an imprimatur.....or through a reader's own personal opinion". So, if you consider it a classic Cecrow, then it is :-)

Yikes! We'd best not spread that notion around, else any group devoting itself to "classics" will just turn into Book Talk, lol. But this is good of you to say and I feel securely not-kicked-out now.

There, solved my problem in a case where two wrongs make a right. I forgot to include a Hesse novel I intend to read just before Tyler, so that's an easy replacement. Hesse is 20th century too, but several decades earlier.

The Old Curiosity Shop

When I read Dickens, it feels less a solitary experience than with other novels. Some corner of my mind imagines the enormous readership of the original serializations and places myself among it, eager to consume the next week's episode just like a television drama. I was happy to find an edition that features the original illustrations, adding something to this experience (although it's peculiar how little care was taken to make the same characters look the same, from one plate to the next.) I've been reading him in the order he wrote, which makes this his fourth I've tackled. It's my least favourite so far, since the lack of focus is strongly evident and it's not even episodic to compensate like Pickwick was, but that's of no matter really. Whatever the scene and characters, he never fails to write them brilliantly.

http://www.librarything.com/work/2256/reviews/111586187

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Knew I'd get around to it eventually! It's a book about loneliness and isolation, but not a depressing one. The mood that reminds me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or maybe To Kill a Mockingbird, where plenty of hardship happens but at least some of them learn from the experience and the final note is a positive one. There's four central characters with their own stories that overlap and intersect, all of them feeling alone for different reasons but having that much in common.

The young author is almost as intriguing as her novel, from what I'm able to gather of her story. She was sadly before her time, an outsider in an era when outsiders had no acceptance or place in society, someone who felt forced to conform. When she writes about the lonely heart, especially with the character Mick (a 12-yr-old girl), I sense an enormous amount of herself coming through onto the page. But she's just as good at writing the perspectives of a black doctor, a deaf-mute, a drunk communist - the range of characters is impressive, and what's really amazing is the author's empathy for them considering her upbringing in the 1940s American South.

Incidentally this book puts a spotlight on the safety-conscious society we live in today. Incredible things they let kids do in that time and place without blinking: buy cigarettes and beer, climb to the top of a construction site, play with a loaded gun on the front porch ... nobody bats an eye.

http://www.librarything.com/work/18244/reviews/112125189

Dubliners

I've tried my hand at fiction and short stories are tough. You have to put a lot into relatively few words, maintain focus, strip it down to the bare essentials but still generate emotion in the reader, create 'aha' moments, watch your symbolism ... This is a truly brilliant collection. Not only did Joyce write fifteen good stories, he also unified them under an expanding theme of speaking to those who dream big but never pursue the actions necessary to make those dreams a reality (on a personal note: ouch.) They begin intimate and progress to public; begin with childhood, and grow to old age. Within such a wide range it would be natural to expect some disunity and yet these are all sewn together, portraying the same lesson imparted again and again at all ages and to all people: live, don't merely exist. I don't think Joyce is saying the lesson can't be learnt, only that we too often don't choose to, relaxed as we are in our various comfort zones until opportunity has long since passed us by.

http://www.librarything.com/work/3483/reviews/112164653

Howards End

I knew next to nothing when I picked this up except that it was the author I much admired for "A Passage to India" and is highly praised. How great it is when you're fifty pages into a book and think to yourself "this is one of my favourite novels of all time"! It's a book to love for the way it's written - the fantastic way he lays out a metaphor, lets it go, then reels it in again, and chapter endings that are just bang on. And the unanticipated humour! A writer's writer to be sure. He may be my new favourite author now after having read his two best-known novels. He knows things, little tricks, that sing to my instincts and feel exactly right in the way that he uses them; an echo back to a metaphor, or the recalling of an earlier innocuous thought at a critical moment that conveys an idea more clearly than any simple statement could do. I had to grow into him, could not have appreciated him a dozen years ago and perhaps not even five, but now I can't see how anyone will beat him in my esteem. He did for the theme of compassion in just over three hundred pages what it took Steven Erikson a full ten thousand to say ...

http://www.librarything.com/work/17951/reviews/112590414

Wow, you are flying along!

It's easy when I don't pick titles I know I'll have to force myself to read, lol

Washington Square

Something's changed in my reading habits these past few years. I used to require giant armies clashing or at least some punk waving a magic sword around to get a thrill from what I'm reading, but now I can read this story about a betrothed and her father clashing over the intentions of the groom-to-be (does he want her or her money?) and find that every bit as gripping, if not more so.

I've been warned multiple times how horrific Henry James is to read, and I'll admit he's verbose, but having only sampled his shorter fiction I haven't hit a wall yet. This is another tidy little story that moves right along, with great characters.

http://www.librarything.com/work/8526/reviews/112980523

The Glass Bead Game (aka Magister Ludi)

Here's a novel for anyone who loved their school days and could have continued them forever. In the future world envisioned by Herman Hesse you are encouraged and enabled to, if you demonstrate sufficient academic prowess. The novel's central character does exactly that and achieves the pinnacle, where he then contemplates whether he can continue to live in blissful isolation or whether he has some obligation to fulfill towards the society that has made it possible for him to enjoy this life. I've not read anything else by Hesse and in a way I've "skipped to the end" here, because this novel represents the conclusion of his thought process along these lines. I won't say what his conclusion is, but I was impressed by the back-and-forth arguments that score solid points for both sides of the debate. Outside of this question there isn't a lot of suspense to be had, but as an intellectual read it was buffet for the brain.

Doing something a little different this time; instead of linking to my review, here's the LT review that inspired me to read it:
http://www.librarything.com/work/12943/reviews/13875857

The Epic of Gilgamesh

A name I'd heard often and somehow associated with Beowulf, but these stories are separated by about 3,000 years. So I was a little off. A much closer association lies with the Book of Genesis and Homerian epics. Gilgamesh was a mythological figure from Sumer, considered by history to be the first civilization. It's a story about grappling with the acceptance of mortality, and in that sense is still inescapably relevant today. If you appreciate Greek mythology, this reads like more of the same but with its own pantheon of gods. It also has the virtue of being very short, but good editions will also have the facinating story of its rediscovery in the 19th century after being lost for two millenia.

http://www.librarything.com/work/6136605/reviews/114566682

You are almost through your list. I wish I had time to get back into mine :-(

I'm very scheduled when it comes to my reading (it's kind of ridiculous, really.) Although I'm about to go a bit out of order, Vicar before Barnaby.

Gilgamesh! Our (human kind's) first novel! If that's not a TBR classic, I don't know what is...

The Vicar of Wakefield

Unless that's a giant bowl of green Jello, I'm going to pass on the dinner invitation. Having a taste would be like reading this book, I suspect: curiosity satisfied, but not really worth it. Written in the 1760s, here is the tale of a countryside vicar who falls upon hard times in the footsteps of Job and ... no, that's pretty much it. You've heard the Job story, so you know this one. It's also a satire of its times, so that living in the 18th century is strongly recommended for a full appreciation.

The Vicar of Wakefield gets a mention in a ton of 19th century classics so I presumed it was something worth reading. It is, for the sake of sampling some English literature history - if you can tolerate a well-disguised climax that occurs halfway through, a whole lot of sermons, and such an avalanche of coincidences that even Dickens would say yeah, that's too much. There were a couple of funny bits, but today's newspaper probably rates the same number. I still love the classics but I didn't love this.

Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty

Reading Dickens in publication order means I'll be tackling three titles in a row that I'm assuming are his least known works, because I'd never heard of them before (Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son). To me that looks like a slump period, but apparently all of these titles did very well in their day. It was interesting to learn that Dickens' idea for Barnaby Rudge preceded Pickwick and might have been written/published first if other circumstances hadn't prevailed. The delay was a lucky one, given political events leading up to 1841 that made at least his British audience ripe for a tale about mobs, rioting and Protestant extremism.

I didn't know much about Barnaby Rudge going in, beyond that it was a "political" and "historical" novel. I wouldn't call it a political novel in the typical sense, although the history it portrays does revolve around a political event. The Gordon Riots happened in London about sixty years prior to this novel being published in 1840; it's like an American writing today about events of the McCarthy era. These riots were spurred by Protestant extremists who oppposed ammendments that would improve the rights of Catholic citizens in England, if I've gathered correctly.

Barnaby himself is the novel's weakness, a muddle-minded young man who is characterized imperfectly as his cognitive ability slides up and down to suit the plot. He's Dickens' third variant on the helpless innocent motif, following Oliver and Little Nell, and frankly I'm getting tired of it. I can't think of Barnaby's necessity to the story beyond being a mere symbol, except that Dickens had a tried-and-true formula and he was sticking to it.

At least Barnaby's pet raven Grip is fun; I had no idea they could learn to talk the way a parrot can. Dickens had just lost a pet raven that he modelled Grip after, and its portrayal in Barnaby Rudge inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write a certain poem ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/charles-dickens-bicentennial-and-h...

Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life

Any book that takes more than a month to read starts making me feel antsy, so I have to say I'm glad that's done. Middlemarch is similar in my experience to War and Peace and Moby Dick: good all the way through, but forcing me to read below my usual pace and keeping me always conscious of how very long it was. There's no enormous whale or explosive warfare; it only recounts the story of a small community but in which seemingly every citizen plays a role. Some characters are more central than others but none command the whole story. I was having trouble getting a grip on it until I compared it with The Casual Vacancy: small town nonsense, nobody's life flowing smoothly, lots of headstrong people making unwise choices. George Eliot prevails upon us to sympathize with every single one of them and see that no lives are without their tribulations that at least explain if not justify their actions.

This wasn't Henry James territory, but I had to read many bits a couple of times. It's chock full of great quotable wisdom that I didn't want to skim over, it had some scenes that really grabbed me, and I liked how it all wrapped up. I definitely admire it, and I think I liked it, but I can't say I fell in love. For all of its great points to ponder I found it a little slow and dry, and I don't imagine I'll visit again.