Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

It is almost time to begin planning for next year. I have already had a few people ask for places to search for inspiration. What better way to learn about possible books to read in 2022 than to browse Top Ten lists from our Catching Up On Classics members? Please list your favorite ten books you read during the year 2021. Of course you may need to adjust your list to include December reading. My list would be:

1. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
2. A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert
3. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
4. The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue
5. The Scarlet Plague by Jack London
6. Death of a Spaceman by Walter M. Miller Jr.
7. Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson
8. Tracks by Louise Erdrich
9. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
10, Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven


A few of these titles are short stories, not full-length novels, but I chose my favorites. I did read more women authors than the list would indicate, but these were my favorite stories so there is not a clean 50/50.

These titles do represent four different languages (read as translated into English) and three different centuries.

1. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

2. Project Hail Mary

3. Scott Alexander …And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes, Meditations On Moloch (download a little collection of short stories: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcod... )

4. How to Actually Change Your Mind

5. In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic

6. The Expedition: Solving the Mystery of a Polar Tragedy

7. Regeneration

* 8. A Rose for Emily

* 9. I, Claudius

* 10. The Metamorphosis

* 11. The Unbearable Lightness of Being

* 12. Memoirs of a Geisha

* 13. Far Goriot

(I couldn't count to 10).

* = from our bookshelf.

Scott Alexander: I have been reading a lot of Scott Alexander this year. The two listed are short (50 pages or so) and both 5-star. Highly recommended specially if you like The Martian or Ted Chiang.

Polar adventures are almost like another planet: The life conditions are so different from what we live under. I have a life long fascination with people in extreme environments. Two of the best books happened to be read this year: In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic is an excellent story in itself. In 1912 Albanov's ship was frozen fast in the pack ice due to an incompetent commander. For more than a year they drift with the ice, and then Albanov decides to leave the ship. His only map is the one found in Fridtjof Nansen's Fram book! The map is inaccurate map and full of dotted lines where the archipelago was still unexplored. I read Fridtjof Nansen's Fram book with great joy (5 star). It was an extra joy to read Nansen trough Albanov’s eyes. I enjoy book club readings. But here my book club fellow happens to be a person in another book - and his life depends on reading Nansen’s book and map correctly.

I read both Project Hail Mary and In the Land of White Death as ebooks. After finishing reading I bough physical copies to press them into family's and friend's hands.

Favorites are feeling right now like the ones that are most memorable, that I'm glad I read. So here's my list as of today:

Classics
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (play)
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen (Stories)
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun

Newer
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Optic Nerve by María Gainza
The Tradition by Jericho Brown (poetry)

Honorable Mention (re-read of my favorite book with the group)
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

here are current top 9:

Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, The Sterne, Laurence 1759
American Psycho Ellis, Bret Easton 1991
Paradise Lost Milton, John 1667
Hangover Square Hamilton, Patrick 1941
La Regenta Alas, Leopoldo (aka "Clarin") 1884
Riders In The Chariot White, Patrick 1961
The Long Ships Bengtsson, Frans T. 1941-45
Nova Swing (Empty Space#2) Harrison, M. John 2006
Matterhorn Marlantes, Karl 2009

I will add/possibly revise by year end...

As I look back, I have read a lot of great books this year.

Classics:
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurer
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
So Big by Edna Ferber
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Winter of our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron. (BEST of YEAR)
The Compete Stories of Truman Capote
The Way West by A.B. Guthrie

Best Series: The Big Sky Series by A.B. Guthrie

Contemporary Novels:
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O’Neal
Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles

Note: I am currently reading The Storyteller’s Secret by Sejal Badani. At only 10% in I have a feeling that this book may make the list, too.

So far (last updated 11/25/2021):

Memories of the Future - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1929)
The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford - Jean Stafford (1969)
The Book of Salt - Monique Truong (2003)
The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village - Samuel R. Delany (1988)
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol (1842)
The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings - Octavio Paz (1950)
Hons and Rebels - Jessica Mitford (1960)
Gate of the Sun: Bab Al-Shams - Elias Khoury (1998)

Everything else is going to have to duke it out until 12/31/2021.

I haven’t had a great reading year. Life has been interfering, but I have read some great books. In no particular order they are:

War and Peace, 1869
The Deerslayer, 1841
The Warden, 1855
Wives and Daughters, 1866
Washington Square, 1880
The Fountainhead, 1943
Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War, 1956
Tarzan of the Apes, 1912
Angle of Repose, 1971
The Snow Child, 2012

The best short story was A Horseman in the Sky

My top 10 so far are:
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Odyssey by Homer
The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Laurie wrote: "My top 10 so far are:
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by [author:Bryan Stevenson|4..."

Glad to see Haushofer's 'The Wall' on your list, Laurie. That one's a real beaut.

Matt wrote: "...I also want to mention a last book in the Shannara series The Last Druid by Terry Brooks. Shannara is the series that I can easily point to that made me fall in love with reading and become a lifelong reader. I’ve read these books for over 30 years! With The Last Druid being the final book in the series, I said a goodbye this year to some very fond reading memories and am turning the page (so to speak) as a reader on to new things...."

Me too!

How cruel to expect me to narrow this down to ten, but:

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
Over By The River, And Other Stories by William Maxwell
A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor
Let Me Tell You About a Man I Knew by Susan Fletcher
The Way West by A.B. Guthrie Jr.
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
The Long Home by William Gay

Matt wrote: "Enjoying reading everyone’s lists!

My Top 10 are:
1. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
2. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fit..."</i>

So glad to see [book:Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics on your list. It was just gifted to me by a friend and I am looking forward to reading it.

My Top 10 in no particular order but very difficult in choosing:

The Land Breakers by John Ehle
Stoner by John Williams
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
The Way West by A.B. Guthrie Jr.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Kentucky Straight: Stories by Chris Offutt
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The great thing about these posts is to glean fresh ideas for books to read!

I'll go with a mix of old and new:

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
Possession by A.S. Byatt
The Street by Ann Petry
Half a Lifelong Romance by Eileen Chang
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
A Sin of Omission by Marguerite Poland
Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Troy by Stephen Fry (do the audio if you can)
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

Carolien wrote: "I'll go with a mix of old and new:

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
Possession by A.S. Byatt
The Street by [author:Ann ..."

'Possession,' 'The Street,' 'Half a Lifelong Romance'...can't go wrong! :)

Old school
The Fat and the Thin by Émile Zola
Felix Holt: The Radical by George Eliot
Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

New school
Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Comedians by Graham Greene

Short stories
Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen
The Priest and the Devil by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Once Upon a Time by Nadine Gordimer

Terry wrote: "The great thing about these posts is to glean fresh ideas for books to read!"

Absolutely! I'm really enjoying everyone's lists.

I have rated 9 works at 5 stars this year:
Old New York: Four Novellas by Edith Wharton
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
A Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse;
and 4 from the 9 volume Forsyte Chronicles by John Galsworthy:
The Man of Property&Indian Summer of a Forsyte
The White Monkey and A Silent Wooing
Swan Song and
Flowering Wilderness

My 10th favorite is hopefully still to be read this year.

I am stingy with my 5-star ratings but these are the ones I had this year:

Klara and the Sun
The Girl with the Louding Voice
Project Hail Mary
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Strong 4-star books were

Raft of Stars
The Overstory
Writers & Lovers
The Mountains Sing
Miss Benson's Beetle
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Project Hail Mary on three of the top 10 lists.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Project Hail Mary on three of the top 10 lists."

Too bad a 2021 publication isn't going to be very helpful for folks looking to plan out their reading of the classics.

It is nice if this helps with the planning, but that isn't the sole purpose. If a 2021 publication is one of your top 10 reads of the year you should feel free to list it. I hadn't been planning to read Project Hail Mary any time soon, but if this many people I respect like it that much, I might have to push it up the line.

Aubrey wrote: "Too bad a 2021 publication isn't going to be very helpful for folks looking to plan out their reading of the c..."

There is always the Free Space in Bingo where you can read whatever you want, classic or not.

Project Hail Mary will be on my list too. I just haven't gotten around to posting yet.

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Elizabeth and Her German Garden, and the Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Janelle wrote: "Old school
The Fat and the Thin by Émile Zola
Felix Holt: The Radical by George Eliot..."

Some good choices, Janelle, although I wasn't aware of The Fat and the Thin until I found out it was an alternate name for one of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series I know better as The Belly of Paris or its French name Le Ventre de Paris.
Zola's books in that series often have alternate titles such as L'Assommoir aka The Drinking Den aka The Gin Palace aka The Dram Shop aka Gervaise aka Meyhane aka The Drunkard

Brian wrote: "Janelle wrote: "Some good choices, Janelle, although I wasn't aware of The Fat and the Thin until I found out it was an alternate name for one of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series I know better as The Belly of Paris or its French name Le Ventre de Paris."
I mention all the names in my review, Brian. I even have a hardback copy from the fifties where it’s called ‘Savage Paris’ .

Janice wrote: " Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Elizabeth and Her German Garden, and th..."</i>

An excellent selection of classics! One reason my list doesn't show many classics is that I read so many in the past as a literature major and somewhat recently in GR groups. Now I am reading things like [book:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Shirley, which while interesting, are not in my top 10 reads for the year.

Janelle wrote: "I mention all the names in my review, Brian."

Nice review, I may have to add this book to the Zolas I plan to read someday, as:
1) Zola's food descriptions sound as vivid as his descriptions of the clothing products that so enhanced the story in my The Ladies' Paradise; the 'cheese symphony' sounds intriguing
2) the story features, albeit in a smaller role, Claude Lantier, the star of The Masterpiece, and son of Gervaise, from L'Asommoir and brother of the stars of The Beast Within, Germinal and Nana;
3) the recent Oxford World Classic translation is by the talented Brian Nelson. the translator of The Ladies Paradise edition I liked.

Robin P wrote: "Janice wrote: " Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

[book: Elizabeth and Her German..."

Thank you. :) I have just started reading classics in the last few years and am really enjoying them. I had no idea there were so many!!! I would like to read Shirley and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall someday. :) I'm not sure if in the new year I will read a classic and something else that is not a classic each month.

Andersonville is currently in pole position to bag the 10th spot in my list, but I'm also planning on reading Jungle Book before year end, so maybe they'll be fighting it out between them!

Matt wrote: "Enjoying reading everyone’s lists!

My Top 10 are:
1. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
2. The Beautiful and the Damned by .."

I couldn't help but notice that you share a link to a book called The Beautiful and the Damned rather than the actual book title The Beautiful and Damned

Sorry, I'm really being a pedant, but the second "the" is important as it makes the book seem like its about two groups of people, the good looking The Beautiful and the bad-acting The Damned, rather than the one group of people Fitzgerald is describing who are both Beautiful and Damned.

While the GR blurb to The Beautiful and the Damned also uses the incorrect title, at least the actual book cover uses the correct title.

Jillian ❀‿❀ wrote: "@Brian: I corrected the title."

Wow, Jillian, you are The Quick and The Powerful - I mean The Quick and Powerful.
I'm actually not so much of a pedant that I needed it corrected, as it is fun to see how often there are incorrect titles on books or a wrong author name - and some actually published incorrectly. Thanks!

Bob wrote: "I haven’t had a great reading year. Life has been interfering, but I have read some great books. In no particular order they are:

War and Peace, 1869
The Deerslayer, 1841..."

Wow you have some great books, but a number of them are really, really long!

Classics:

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs
The Silver Mine by Selma Lagerlöf (short story)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro


Newer ones:

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Girl at War by Sara Nović
Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis
Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman (historical novel)
The Yield by Tara June Winch
What Was Said to Me: The Life of Sti’tum’atul’wut, a Cowichan Woman by Helene Demers
Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (graphic novel)

Those were most of my 5 star reads, so here also some of my 4 star Classics:

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende
The Third Man by Graham Greene
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Tess of the d Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Maurice by E.M. Forster
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Hunger by Knut Hamsun

and others. :)

In a vaguely correct but not exact order of awesomeness.
1) Figures of Earth by James Branch Cabell
2) Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis
3) Ulysses by James Joyce
4) We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
5) Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl
6) The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea, Anton Wilson
7) Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
8) The Doctor of Souls by W. Kobold Knight
9) The Last Man by Mary Shelley
10) The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Michaela wrote: "Classics:
The Silver Mine by Selma Lagerlöf (short story)"

Sounds like an excellent nomination possibility for short story. We do not have anything by Selma Lagerlöf on our shelf.

My top ten this year are:

Classics:
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang by Joyce Carol Oates
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Babette’s Feast by Karen Blixen
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

History/Social Science:
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

Contemporary:
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

Michaela wrote: Classics:



I'm so glad you mentioned

Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival

It's an absolute pearl of a book!

Nike wrote: "Michaela wrote: Classics:



I'm so glad you mentioned

Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival

It's an absolute pearl of a book!"

I agree. I read it last month on the recommendation of a retired University of Alaska-Fairbanks professor. Good themes and writing!

Have had a pretty rubbish year for reading. endless 3 or 2 star books (many of them through bookclubs, dissapointingly enough). Still, here's a rough top 10 for fiction

1) My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
2) Dune by Frank Herbert
3) Moby-Dick or, the Whale by Herman Melville
4) Red Pill by Hari Kunzru
5) Black Orchid by Neil Gaiman
6) Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
7) The Gunslinger by Stephen King
8) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
9) Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
10) Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

from what I've been currently reading, I imagine Wolf Hall will shoot up to no. 1, as I'm loving it.

and for non fiction (because I'm a greedy pig and can't choose only one list):

1) How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm
2) Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century by Andreas Malm
3) Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures by Mark Fisher
4) Debating Empire edited by Gopal Balakrishnan
5) Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging by Jodi Dean
6) Against Austerity: How we Can Fix the Crisis they Made by Richard Seymour

The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-pandemic World by Benjamin H. Bratton will probably be 4 when I've read it.

And my most hated the year

1) Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche*
2) Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia**
3) The Fall by Albert Camus**
4) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson **
5) Grandville Bête Noire by Bryan Talbot**
6) Brodie's Report by Jorge Luis Borges**
7) The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
8) A Universal History of Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges***
9) Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman ***
10) Circe by Madeline Miller***

Depressingly enough this is pretty much my entire reading list for this year. I suck at reading so bad. :(

Not really, you did end up with a top ten of great books, so that in itself is a success.

Here is the list of classics which I read and rated 5 stars, they are all the regular ones, hardly require linking.


1. Catch-22
2. The Master and Margarita
3. Demons
4. The Brothers Karamazov
5. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
6. The Magician's Nephew
7. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
8. All Quiet on the Western Front
9. The Old Curiosity Shop
10. Bleak House
11. Dombey and Son
12. The Count of Monte Cristo
13. Evalina, or The History of a Young Lady's Entrance Into the World
14.Waiting for the Barbarians
15. 1984
16. Four Quartets by T S Eliot
17. Villette
18. Stoner
19. Midnight's Children
20. Letters to a Young Poet
21. Siddhartha
22. The Tenant of Windfell Hall
23. The Pastures of Heaven
24.Prince Caspian

Nidhi, that list is quite an accomplishment for just one year of reading! I hope you have as much enjoyment in 2022!

Nidhi wrote: "Here is the list of classics which I read and rated 5 stars, they are all the regular ones, hardly require linking.


1. Catch-22
2. The Master and Margarita
3. Demons
4. Brothers Karamazov
5. T..."

Really! That is a great list.

Most of my top ten reads for 2021 are surprisingly not the 5-star reads. These are the ones that have stayed with me and will be re-read at some point.

The Top 2

1. The Count of Monte Cristo
2. Gone with the Wind

and then in no particular order

3. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
4. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs
5. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West
6. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
7. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
8. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
9. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
10. Chatterton Square by E.H. Young

Honourable mention:

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
All Done by Kindness by Doris Langley Moore
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
Till Death Do Us Part by John Dickson Carr

Didn't expect to increase my top works this late in the game, but I'm glad to add Gate of the Sun: Bab Al-Shams by Elias Khoury to the mix. I don't see myself acquiring two more vaunted favorites in the last month when it took me eleven months to find eight, but stranger things have happened.

My Top Ten

1. Miss Mole by E.H. Young
2. The Street by Ann Petry
3. A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor
4. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
5. Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
6. A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII. by Sarah Helm

Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning - I read the first 3 books, the Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy, in 2020. After the first book I wasn't sure about continuing but I'm so glad that I did.
7. The Danger Tree
8. The Battle Lost and Won
9. The Sum of Things

10. The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear

My Top 10 of this year so far :
1. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
2. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Anthem by Ayn Rand
4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
5. The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
6. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
7. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
8. The Color Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft
9. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
10. Dracula by Bram Stoker