Lifetime Classics Challenge discussion

I thought I had created this topic; however, found it missing. Maybe I created it on Shelfari and failed to create it on Goodreads.


1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
3. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
4. The Stranger by Albert Camus
5. Boy's Life by Robert McCammon
6. Dracula by Bram Stoker

Oooh! Two good ones!

The Stranger by Albert Camus
★★★★

The protagonist's name in this French classic is Meursault, a French Algerian. Meursault is estranged from his emotions and morality. He is apathetic about life events. He has friends and a girlfriend; however he is emotionally shallow. During a weekend vacation on the Algerian coast shortly after burying his mother who he had placed in a nursing home, he kills an Arab man. Although Meursault claims it was in self-defense, he finds him accused of murder.

I thought his trial was less about whether he committed the crime or not, but rather on the character of Meursault's humanity. Meursault is the stranger referenced by the title, a man who is a stranger from his self and the rest of society.

I'm reading The Plague right now and so far I like it better than The Stranger!

Dracula by Bram Stoker
★★★

Few today have never heard about the Dracula legend as first introduced by Bram Stoker. Although not the first novel about vampires, this novel is the most famous as evidenced by its impact on the American culture. This epistolary novel, told through letters, journals and recordings, is the story about a member of Transylvanian royalty who seeks a new hunting ground in London only to be hunted by a small group of men led by the physician Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. I found the first half of the novel much more suspenseful; the last half less so and more plodding.