February will be National Novel Reading Month. It’s a simple
idea. We’ve all got at least one classic book we think we ought to read and have
put off too long. Last year people flocked around the hashtag as they put away
classics; I finally read Jane Austen, and am hoping for better results this
year. I have six titles in mind, and the literary guilt may actually be killing
me.
Check your shelf. Check your conscience. Isn’t there
something long removed from the Bestseller’s List you think you ought to read?
Be it for craft, for history, or some gap in your personal English canon.
#NaNoReMo is about catching up with the classics.
One thing that bothers me about National Novel Writing Month is it isn’t located in a country. “National” is a poor word choice for a program that’s clearly international. Yet it’s popular, so #NaNoReMo will double the dubiousness. Not only can you read it in any nation of your choice, but your classic doesn’t have to be a novel. Want to brush up on Virgil or Ovid? Go for it. The rule is to read a classic.
We’re using a personal sliding scale for "classics." Some people don’t think Jules Verne is a classic author. I don’t like to talk to those people, but they exist, and so they can read someone else. But if you do think he’s a classic writer who deserves your time, then it’s your choice.
One thing that bothers me about National Novel Writing Month is it isn’t located in a country. “National” is a poor word choice for a program that’s clearly international. Yet it’s popular, so #NaNoReMo will double the dubiousness. Not only can you read it in any nation of your choice, but your classic doesn’t have to be a novel. Want to brush up on Virgil or Ovid? Go for it. The rule is to read a classic.
We’re using a personal sliding scale for "classics." Some people don’t think Jules Verne is a classic author. I don’t like to talk to those people, but they exist, and so they can read someone else. But if you do think he’s a classic writer who deserves your time, then it’s your choice.
It begins on February 1st. We’ll be on the honor
system; nobody cheat and start reading now. In advance you’re welcome to hop
onto blogs and Twitter to chat about your potential choices. Our hashtag is #NaNoReMo.
Then join us throughout February as we discuss our progress through our chosen
classics. If it works the cross-pollination of encouragement will increase our
reading lists as well as encourage us to finish reading great works.
I’m actually asking for advice on my choices. Each is too
big to expect to read together.
- George Elliot’s Middlemarch
- Alex Haley’s Roots
- Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables
- Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations
- Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities
- And the book that lost to Austen last year: Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita
I’ve wanted to read them all for years, and have owned a
copy of Roots since 2007. Wolfe and
Bulgakov seem the most likely to entertain, while Les Mis has the greatest mystique with all its hype and plethora of
adaptations. I can’t mention the book on Twitter without someone gushing. And I’ve
never read Hugo, never read Elliot, never read Haley, and was only ever exposed
to Dickens’s Christmas Carol. It’s a
lot of literary guilt.
I read Great Expectations, but didn't care for it. Too much assumed knowledge about class is missing in a 20th/21st century American. I admired Pip for rising up in the world, felt no satisfaction at seeing him return to his "proper sphere".
ReplyDeleteRandom pick: Middlemarch
So you're recommending Middlemarch for no reason? Not even cultural hype?
DeleteI'm missing on a lot of classics myself, Les Mis for example has been sitting on my shelf for years, and I yet can't make myself pick it up.
ReplyDeleteBut for this case I'd go with Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita is a wonderful book, balancing history, irony, humour, sarcasm, romance, fantasy so well it's a joy to read. Great characters, intelligent dialogue, well-told struggle of the author. I personally loved it. Not sure how much I helped here, hope you pick a book without much struggle!
Glowing recommendation, and further tempts me to just make up with Master and Margarita this year. The Russian novelists also have a great history with me, excepting Dostoyevsky. Even he'll get another hearing later.
DeleteI'm glad we're doing this again. I knocked Jane Eyre off my list last year and I'm looking at The Great Gatsby for this February. At least it's a short one to go with the short month.
ReplyDeleteAs for you dear John, I've only read two of the books on your list. I hated Great Expectations and I LOVED Les Mis (yes, I'm one of the gushers), so I toss my hat in for Hugo. Of course, I'm also a Pride and Prejudice gusher (although not a Jane Austen gusher now that I've read more of her work), so you may not want to listen to me.
We definitely have different tastes, but I take your recommendations seriously. I intend to pick up The Outsiders because of you. However, is there anything you think I'd particularly get out of Hugo?
Delete....hold on a sec...still trying to wrap my head around someone saying that Jules Verne isn't a classic author...nope, I can't do it.
ReplyDeleteFrom this list I'd choose Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, only because I know nothing about it; I've never seen an adaptation nor had a discussion about it, so I have nothing but fresh perspective to bring in to the reading.
Pretty much anyone connected to Science Fiction or Fantasy gets challenged by a block of libraries and professors. They annoy me, too, but I'd give people leeway to define classics however they like for their own selections.
DeleteDo you know things about every other book on my list and think they'll all be poor reads?
Not at all poor reads (I've read Great Expectations and seen the Roots miniseries)just that sometimes I like picking up a book that I know absolutely nothing about beyond the premise from the book jacket/back cover.
DeleteMiddlemarch I haven't read but I've heard it discussed a few times at parties. Roots I'll read someday, but The Master and Margarita, working from your list, is where I'd start.
Virginia Woolf: "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" - That's the best praise I've ever heard for Middlemarch. It is one of a handful, a very select few, novels that I consider to be 'real'.
ReplyDeleteI wish I admired Woolf's output more. It would make her opinions on other people's writing more savory. Still, that is a heck of a compliment.
DeleteEliot's Silas Marner and Great Expectations were both read at school. Both enjoyable. I wouldn't tackle Middlemarch myself, but I recommend Eliot. I started reading Don Quixote and I really wasn't enjoying it. I thought "I don't HAVE to read Cervantes! It's not on any reading list." I can't remember much of any Austen I did in college, and there were a couple of books, so I think I'd agree with your assessment. But I also found Wuthering Heights quite painful, I have to admit, when I read it many moons ago. Personally, I'd go for Wolfe coz my American literature knowledge doesn't extend far beyond Twain, Heller, Salinger and Fitzgerald. Are you taking recommendations? Do you read Irish writers at all? Have you read Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor? Or Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt? Or The Master by Colm Toibin, about a period of Henry James's life? My favourite of these is Star of the Sea. (Are these too modern? Given that they're kind of "period" pieces, they might count.)
ReplyDeleteI don't stalk Irish literature, but I'm open to reading more of it. Angela's Ashes is one I've heard many positive things about. However, all the books on the list above are in my possession. I'm requesting assistance in figuring out which of them to knock off. I'm not allowed to buy new books until my reading pile is below triple digits, a condition it got up to about two years ago and is still attempting to recover from.
DeleteThe Master and the Margarita would have my vote. I may have to go back to Faulkener - who I have read, but in such a cursory way it didn't really count.
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the reading pile. I went on a binge between Christmas and New Year (despite being given many fine books) because the local book store was closing down. My unread pile was already very large and is now gargantuan. A challenge.
As someone who loves Hugo so much I considered specializing in him for my Ph.D., I am admittedly biased. Of your list, I've read only Les Mis and Great Expectations, so I will comment on those. Personally I think the themes are somewhat similar between the two, but Hugo handles them better and with more flair. He also manages more threads at once. Both have very slow beginnings, but those beginnings are interesting (and heart-breaking) enough to hold your attention.
ReplyDeleteHugo has the downside of including very long descriptive chapters in order to develop deep extended metaphors and themes that he will revisit to astonishing effect later on during dramatic scenes. I promise it is worth it to read them, but it can be a bit of a slog to get through. In Les Mis, that means he refights the Battle of Waterloo starting with a long description of the terrain, the weather, and the placement of the cannons.
Dickens has the downside of taking largely predictable plot twists, at least in my opinion.
Hugo has the advantage of creating wonderfully vibrant minor characters in addition to the leads, while Dickens tends to leave the mob relatively faceless.
Dickens, being British, will offer slightly more familiar cultural and literary touchstones. Hugo, however, does a good job of explaining his world and the effects of its tenets, even if you won't necessarily understand the currency, the tax system, or possibly certain points in the legal code.
I will say that Hugo offers the most interestingly complicated and human hero and the most ambiguous villain I've ever read. He also gives an image of love that is neither trite nor tragic, though it will rip your heart out at times. In Dickens, romantic love leads only to insanity and tragedy. Filial love turns out better, but not until late in the book.
I've only read two from that list Les Mis, disliked it. But that was probably because it was french class, and needing a dictionary for every paragraph pretty much killed the experience. I can't face this again, even in English.
ReplyDeleteThe Master and Margarita, read this. I didn't like it, but that may have been because the book made no sense to me. Also, it was a Russian translation and reading the notes in the back of the book on secondary meanings of the words was enlightening. Not too enlightening as I was still confused afterward. Still managed to write a decent paper on it though. Still, it is fantasy. So.
I actually found The Hunchback of Notre Dame more compelling than Les Mis. But there you are. Middlemarch is cool to see how Eliot treats time -- slow and steady, almost like watching it unfold in real time.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm going to tackle Pynchon's Mason and Dixon. Can't really remember why I put it down. The use of archaic language is astonishing, as is the amount of research which must have been involved.
My vote goes to Great Expectations and having already gone on a massive fan-girl squeal fest about Wemmick I will leave it at that.
ReplyDeletePlus, it'd be awesome to know that you were nose-deep in those pages while I'm nose-deep in Nicholas Nickleby...
Another vote for Les Mis. One of the best things about it is that you don't just love the protagonist and hate the antagonist; you can understand them both and see how both of them have done wrong and right. When Javert [SPOILER ALERT] meets his end, it isn't something you cheer about.
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to pull out The Once and Future King. February might be the right time to do it.
I vote for Great Expectations. I've never read it, but other Dickens' novels that I've read were awesome.
ReplyDeleteIf you asked for general suggestions, I'd vote for a Tale of Two Cities. Its got everything. Mystery, romance, violence, betrayal, sacrifice, and twists! All during the French Revolution.
Great idea! That might make me finally go and read through the old "Tao Te Ching" (in English translation - would that qualify?). Also, to spread the classic word, I put a note up in the BluePrintReview blog and created an icon, too:
ReplyDeleteFebrurary is National Novel Reading Month
feel free to copy&paste, photo is from my files