Five classics I have never read but want to in 2020
Being a book lover and a literature student (In Oxford of all cities) i always feel embarrassed when people bring up canonical novels i have never read. It makes me feel like i'm somehow suddenly illiterate or ignorant for having never read more than one Jane Austen. Even though I'm only twenty years old and realistically have many many more decades of reading ahead of me, although my visual impairment may suggest something to the contrary, the failure of my self asserted book lover status adds a greater level of inadequacy to me and my shelves. I've come to the not so revolutionary conclusion that you really should just read what you want and not struggle through Kafka or Chaucer simply so you can say that you've got that in your repertoire. If you like YA vampire narratives then hell, read all the blood sucking faux romances you want. Irrespective of this, i still WANT to read as many classics in my life as i can because I've found, sporadically, i do actually tend to enjoy them. Mostly.
I've decided to make 2020 the year i read wider, not greater in quantity. To help me achieve this 'wideness' i decided period was a good place to begin and so here are five classics I've added to my literary bucket list.
One- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
This 1868 text is written by a female author I've long since been aware of but have never chosen to read. Despite being about women for women in a period in which the women was most definitely oppressed, I've chosen to remain in my ignorance and read authors like Dickens over her. I'm ashamed its taken a film adaptation starring Emma Watson and tweets by Phillip Pullman to get this text on my serious 'To be read' pile. I've been a bad reader in this instance. With a Christmas setting and a plot of sibling chaos I'm certain this is one i'll enjoy-I owe you an apology its taken me so long.
Two-Emma, Jane Austen
Naturally, I've read Pride and Prejudice and, not so naturally, i despised it. Darcy is NOT a romantic inspiration by any means. This has put me off reading Austen's other works despite having owned several of her novels for years now and, I have heard many times that Emma is amongst her best. The protagonist is the age i am now so perhaps this is the best time to read the text. Hopefully this silly fact will be enough to make me pick up the text this year and counteract the off putting title matching the name of a girl who hurt my feelings back in year eleven at school.
Three-Moby Dick, Herman Melville
I mean, its literary two quid on Amazon, There's no excuse here. It's got a plot worthy of Shakespeare and angsty teenage boys. Pinocchio in puberty would adore this book. Admittedly, i had no interest in reading this one until my first year of University when a professor i adore spoke about the infamous opening line and ever since she left my Uni my education experience hasn't been the same. Maybe if i read it she and everything she taught me and inspired within me will magically return? Here's to hoping. Hell, Maybe i'll take a leaf out of Melville's book and enact revenge on whoever let her go. Just kidding, but this does sound very different to anything I've ever read and thus is the genuine basis for its appeal.
Four-Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Again, two quid on Amazon. This one has been on my radar since i was fifteen and my mum told me how dark the film version is and, as someone whose favourite books are Lolita and The Bell Jar, I've naturally been drawn to it ever since. My dissertation follows similar themes of a lack of feminism and double standards, this one sounds simultaneously thought and stress provoking and that, to me, seems a near perfect cocktail. Plus, you gotta read Hardy before you die right? it's like a right of passage.
Five-The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jazz. Romance. Wealth. America. Basically a dark Gatsby two and who on earth wouldn't want that? I was once told Gatsby is the most common answer given when writers are asked whats one book you wished you could have written. It could full well be bullshit but i am definitely under the spell of Gatsby so this one is a read that really inspires me and when better to read it than the second roaring 20's we've just entered? I'm a sucker for darkness and pessimism in a novel and, i'm a sucker for Fitzgerald so what could go wrong?
I've decided to make 2020 the year i read wider, not greater in quantity. To help me achieve this 'wideness' i decided period was a good place to begin and so here are five classics I've added to my literary bucket list.
One- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
This 1868 text is written by a female author I've long since been aware of but have never chosen to read. Despite being about women for women in a period in which the women was most definitely oppressed, I've chosen to remain in my ignorance and read authors like Dickens over her. I'm ashamed its taken a film adaptation starring Emma Watson and tweets by Phillip Pullman to get this text on my serious 'To be read' pile. I've been a bad reader in this instance. With a Christmas setting and a plot of sibling chaos I'm certain this is one i'll enjoy-I owe you an apology its taken me so long.
Two-Emma, Jane Austen
Naturally, I've read Pride and Prejudice and, not so naturally, i despised it. Darcy is NOT a romantic inspiration by any means. This has put me off reading Austen's other works despite having owned several of her novels for years now and, I have heard many times that Emma is amongst her best. The protagonist is the age i am now so perhaps this is the best time to read the text. Hopefully this silly fact will be enough to make me pick up the text this year and counteract the off putting title matching the name of a girl who hurt my feelings back in year eleven at school.
Three-Moby Dick, Herman Melville
I mean, its literary two quid on Amazon, There's no excuse here. It's got a plot worthy of Shakespeare and angsty teenage boys. Pinocchio in puberty would adore this book. Admittedly, i had no interest in reading this one until my first year of University when a professor i adore spoke about the infamous opening line and ever since she left my Uni my education experience hasn't been the same. Maybe if i read it she and everything she taught me and inspired within me will magically return? Here's to hoping. Hell, Maybe i'll take a leaf out of Melville's book and enact revenge on whoever let her go. Just kidding, but this does sound very different to anything I've ever read and thus is the genuine basis for its appeal.
Four-Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Again, two quid on Amazon. This one has been on my radar since i was fifteen and my mum told me how dark the film version is and, as someone whose favourite books are Lolita and The Bell Jar, I've naturally been drawn to it ever since. My dissertation follows similar themes of a lack of feminism and double standards, this one sounds simultaneously thought and stress provoking and that, to me, seems a near perfect cocktail. Plus, you gotta read Hardy before you die right? it's like a right of passage.
Five-The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jazz. Romance. Wealth. America. Basically a dark Gatsby two and who on earth wouldn't want that? I was once told Gatsby is the most common answer given when writers are asked whats one book you wished you could have written. It could full well be bullshit but i am definitely under the spell of Gatsby so this one is a read that really inspires me and when better to read it than the second roaring 20's we've just entered? I'm a sucker for darkness and pessimism in a novel and, i'm a sucker for Fitzgerald so what could go wrong?
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