Back to the Classics 2017

[anolinde]

Kicking off the year with a reading challenge courtesy of Books and Chocolate. The goal is to read 12 classics, each fitting into a different category.

1. A 19th century classic - Lady Susan (Complete)
2. A 20th century classic - Little House in the Big Woods (Complete)
3. A classic by a woman author - Villette (Complete)
4. A classic in translation - The Iliad (Complete)
5. A classic published before 1800 - The Aeneid ( Complete)
6. A romance classic - Jane Eyre (Complete)
7. A Gothic or horror classic - Northanger Abbey (Complete)
8. A classic with a number in the title - The Three Musketeers (Complete)
9. A classic about an animal or which includes the name of an animal in the title - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Complete)
10. A classic set in a place you'd like to visit - The Fellowship of the Ring (Complete)
11. An award-winning classic - To Kill a Mockingbird (Complete)
12. A Russian classic - Anna Karenina (Complete)

A mix of new books and rereads - I never liked many of the "classics" that I had to read in school (soooo many old dudes pontificating about their lives and having terrible opinions about women), but I think this is a decent list. We'll see how I manage with Anna Karenina, which will be my first Russian classic! (Well, this one time I had to read some sections of The Brothers Karamazov for class, but I didn't understand 90% of what was happening, so that doesn't count.) Also looking forward to seeing if The Aeneid improves upon rereading.

Update 12/21/17: I've completed the challenge! (For Karen: my contact information is anolinde at gmail dot com.) It went surprisingly well - the standouts for me were Anna Karenina (which I thought would be insanely difficult but was actually very engrossing, minus Levin, fuck him), Jane Eyre (which was beautifully written), and The Three Musketeers (which I had no idea would be so funny??).

I won't be doing this challenge next year, since there aren't that many other classics I'm eager to read (and I'm also doing, like, three other reading challenges), but I'm glad I did it this year. I'm even reading a "bonus" classic now - War and Peace! Which unfortunately is not as good as Anna Karenina, but hey, before this year I would never have considered picking it up, so at least I've expanded my reading horizons.