Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

2022 is beginning to draw to a close. Let's reflect on our favorite books for the year.

What have been your favorite classics, old and new school? What have been your favorite non-classic reads?

Ooh, fun! I didn't read that many classics this year. I gave up after I got my first row or column bingo. It's been a tough year, and reading classics was mostly just too much effort for me. Anyway, from what I have read.

Favorite classic: The Call of the Wild
Favorite non-classic: The Sentence
Favorite non-fiction: The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music

My Favorites Read in 2022

Classics:
Ross Poldark by Winston Graham
The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
The Trees by Conrad Richter
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis


New Books:
Violeta by Isabel Allende
Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende
Dragon Springs Road by Janie Chang
The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay

I'm sure you can tell that Fantasy if my favorite genre.

My favourite classics have been Le deuxième sexe, I, by Simone de Beauvoir, and Lady Susan, by Jane Austen.

Top 3 Old School:
The Betrothed Manzoni, Alessandro 1840
The Maias Eca de Queiros, José Maria de 1888
The Faerie Queene Spenser, Edmund 1590

Top 3 New School:
To the Wedding Berger, John 1995
Patience & Sarah Miller, Isabel 1971
Life And Fate Grossman, Vassily 1960

Top 3 Post-2000:
1Q84 Murakami, Haruki 2009
2666 Bolaño, Roberto 2004
The Hummingbird's Daughter Urrea, Luis Alberto 2005

All these are rare five stars from me:

Favorite classic: Night by Elie Wiesel.

Favorite non-classic: Still Alice by Lisa Genova, 2007. Reading for me is about thinking with another persons head - seeing the world from a different perspective. This is exactly how it is done.

Favorite short story: Katania by Lara Vapnyar (can be read free online).

Favorite non-fiction: Two Against the Ice by Ejnar Mikkelsen. I read the original in Danish Farlig tomandsfærd. No fiction writter could have written this so well. Was adapted as a movie Against the Ice (2022). The movie is very different from the book. If you have only seen the movie, it is well worth reading the book.

Tough! For today, I'll pick:

Two Old School:
Bleak House
Uncle Vanya

Four New School:
The Razor's Edge
Sometimes a Great Notion
The Weary Blues
Strange Fruit

Two newer books:
Never Let Me Go
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Hmm. I see a trend. A very bleak trend! Obviously, I do like a tragic story.

I didn't start my challenge until September, so I don't have a lot from which to choose:
Favorite classic: Around the World in Eighty Days
Favorite non classic: Fairy Tale

@J_BlueFlower, I love polar exploration stories. Sadly, I don't yet know Danish, so I will probably pick it up in English. I see it's already on my TBR! :D

@Katy, that Shackleton one looks great, too!

LiLi wrote: "@Katy, that Shackleton one looks great, too!"

I also picked up Two Against the Ice: A Classic Arctic Survival Story and a Remarkable Account of Companionship in the Face of Adversity to read, just haven't gotten to it yet.

old: Persuasion by Jane Austen

new: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

non: Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Three five star reads in New Classics:
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Age of Innocence byEdith Wharton

a four star read in Old Classics:
The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy by Mark Miodownik

Two five star reads in non-classics, non-fiction:
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by María Rosa Menocal
Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik

Although I've read Hesse's Siddhartha, his Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend floored me. Talk about striking at the heart of morality and religion.

Silk was another gem I discovered this year. In addition, Anne Carson's An Oresteia ranks extremely high in my favorite reads ever.

What can I say, I have a weakness for flamboyance and melancholy in my reads.

@LiLi, @Katy, and other polar explorations lovers:

My favorites in polar exploration:

1. Farthest North (Fram over polhavet) by Fridtjof Nansen. These men must have been some of the most isolated people in human history. Away from civilization for 3 years. No connection to the outside world, not even one way commutation telling where they were. And even if they could, nobody could reach them. Nansen must have been one of the most multi-talented people in history. He was explore and scientist.... but evidently he could also write on a level with a good professional author.

2. In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic by Valerian Albanov. Collected by Jon Krakauer. Important: Get the 2001-version with the epilogue. 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.

It was a 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.

3. Two Against the Ice. As mentioned above.


If you are really, really mad about polar exploration:
The Expedition: Solving the Mystery of a Polar Tragedy by Bea Uusma. She is extremely thorough, and I believed she actually solved the mystery. If you want to read about Salomon August Andrée's attempt to fly to and over the north pole in a balloon there is The Flight Of The Eagle by Per Olof Sundman. A novelization of the story of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897.

Nansen actually met Andrée. And so did Ejnar Mikkelsen: In 1896, he walked 500 km from Stockholm to Gothenburg to convince Andrée to take him on his balloon flight. He was 15 at the time!

Shackleton:
The most known book by far is Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. Also noteworthy is Endurance by Frank A. Worsley. The main difference is that Lansing was a journalist and writes a second hand tale. Worsley was actually there! He was captain of the Endurance. Personally I liked Worsley's book better, but I did not finish Lansing's.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "@LiLi, @Katy, and other polar explorations lovers:

My favorites in polar exploration:

1. Farthest North (Fram over polhavet) by Fridtjof Nansen. Thes..."

I have this one, and will look into the others. I love reading these types of books.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "@LiLi, @Katy, and other polar explorations lovers:

My favorites in polar exploration:

1. Farthest North (Fram over polhavet) by Fridtjof Nansen. Thes..."

This slew of info is invaluable to me! And I'm getting it for free! Thank you, J_BlueFlower.

Favorite classics:
The Old Curiosity Shop
The Reivers
Under the Greenwood Tree
Blindness

Favorite new-classics:
Pied Piper
The Queen's Gambit
Goodnight Mr Tom
The Commitments and The Snapper

Favorite new non-classics:
Project Hail Mary
Cutting for Stone
The Lincoln Highway

Favorite non-fiction:
Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

I'm very stingy with my 5 stars. These are all a strong 4, except as noted.

Old Classics:
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street
Candide
The Death of Ivan Ilych

New Classics:
The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton
The Third Policeman
Mrs. McGinty's Dead

Short Stories:
The Library of Babel *****

Post 2000:
The Great Silence *****
Stories of Your Life and Others

Non-Fiction:
This Craft of Verse *****

Klowey wrote: "..... Stories of Your Life and Others"

An excellent collection. I also much liked the short commentary of the background of each story. I hope other authors will do the same.

The title story "Story of Your Life" was published in 1998, so it would be a candidate for a short story nomination. The movie was really good too, even with the changes that was made.

I absolutely loved The Last Chronicle of Barset that closed out a superb series of books for me.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage was a fantastic non-fiction read, and I keep promising myself to do more of that.

In a Summer Season
That Distant Land: The Collected Stories
The Siege
The Winter People
Annie Dunne

All five-star reads for me.

Books I very much enjoyed in 2022, not necessarily favorites, but solid reads.

Old School
The Pilgrim's Progress
Mary Barton
The Old Curiosity Shop

New School
The Jungle
Sounder
The Moviegoer

Short Story
Youth: A Narrative
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Barn Burning

After 1999 (New)
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
A Gentleman in Moscow

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Klowey wrote: "..... Stories of Your Life and Others"

An excellent collection. I also much liked the short commentary of the background of each story. I hope other authors will do th..."

Ah, good.
I also really enjoyed the Notes on the stories and how Chiang came to write them. Have you read Exhalation?

Klowey wrote: " Have you read Exhalation?"

Yes, yet an excellent collection. He really goes for quality over quantity.

I am a great fan of fiction dealing with laws of nature or at least written by someone who understands them (like The Martian). Here we also have two of the stories deals with free will. A pretty hard topic for a short story - or any fiction. It is not just a character thinking about free will, but a premise of the story that displays many facets. One of the stories was printed in Nature. Yeah, Nature!! That would give you an idea of the level of thinking going on here.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Klowey wrote: " Have you read Exhalation?""

Do you know of any new work has has written not included in these two collections?

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Klowey wrote: " Have you read Exhalation?"

Yes, yet an excellent collection. He really goes for quality over quantity.

I am a great fan of fiction dealing with laws of nature or at least written ..."

I have only read The Great Silence so far. Really looking forward to this new collection. I don't know off the top of my head anything not included in his two books, but if I come across one I'll comment.

Wow some great reading already listed on here! My top 3 lists…

Favourite 2022 Old School
The Idiot
The Vicar of Bullhampton
Persuasion

Favourite 2022 New School
If This Is a Man • The Truce
Fools of Fortune
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Best 2022 non-classics
The Island of Missing Trees
The Trees
Off Target

MY TOP 10 (or 12) FOR 2022 (Non-Categorized)

1. South Riding by Winifred Holtby
2. Buried Alive by Arnold Bennett
3. The Town by Conrad Richter
4. The Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin
5. Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson
5. Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute
7. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
8. The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith
9. The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
10. Remembering Laughter by Wallace Stegner
10. The Jealous One by Celia Fremlin
10. Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico

I love this thread, Katy! This will be a great resource for next year's reads.

My faves of 2022 so far (all 5 stars)

>b>Old school
Paradise Lost
Gone with the Wind
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
The Kreutzer Sonata

New School
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Trustee from the Toolroom
The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War
West with the Night non fiction
Eye of the Needle
The Good Old Boys
That Distant Land: The Collected Stories
The Winter of Our Discontent
The King's General
The Gospel Singer

Non-classics
Peace Like a River
The History of Love
Men Without Women
Sing, Unburied, Sing
The March

Old School
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Persuasion by Jane Austen



New School
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War by Howard Bahr
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
The Time of Man by Elizabeth Madox Roberts
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe nonfiction


Non-Classics
That Distant Land: The Collected Stories by Wendell Berry
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

Some of my 5star reads this year

Old school
Germinal by Émile Zola
The Bright Side of Life by Émile Zola
L'Assommoir by Émile Zola
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo

New school
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
Les Belles Images by Simone de Beauvoir

Short stories
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin
Mother Savage by Guy de Maupassant
Lying Awake by Charles Dickens
Odour of Chrysanthemums by D.H. Lawrence
The Drowned Giant by J.G. Ballard

Well i'm glad some of had a good reading year cause mine was pretty tepid :P .

Honestly this will be a short list, cause i only had one new 5-star read this entire year and it was an extremely rare feat for non-fiction,
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
I'll also say my reread of Lord of the Rings was, heartening, is the only appropriate word.

There were a few 4-star reads but not really strong 4-stars. Top ones being:
Gallantry: Dizain des Fetes Galantes by James Branch Cabell (1907)
West with the Night by Beryl Markham (1942)
The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist (1944)
Mary Poppins in the Park by P.L. Travers (1952)
Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett (1996)

Only 5 total Old School reads now that i look at it, perhaps that contributed to the lacklustre nature of the year ;) , although the few i read weren't great.
Anyway i was finishing off a lot of things, and read a lot of sci-fi, which i don't think really worked for me; so now that that's over, next year should be much better.

I've had a lot of diversity in my reads this year, not all of the books were great ( there was even a book that I didn't finished nor plan to finish and that's rare! ) but some of them were for sure! Five books I read this year and loved are:
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
- The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
And non classic The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

Irphen wrote: "I've had a lot of diversity in my reads this year, not all of the books were great ( there was even a book that I didn't finished nor plan to finish and that's rare! ) but some of them were for sur..."

The first four of those I very much enjoyed Irphen! I haven't read the last one yet.

This thread is very bad for my TBR! So many great books to get to listed here!

I'll add:

New School:
The Long Ships (if anyone needs a book for the Adventure category in the 2023 Bingo, I highly recommend this!)
The Age of Innocence
Anne of Green Gables
We
If Beale Street Could Talk

Old School:
The Moonstone
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
A Doll's House
The First Violin

Not classics:
The Island of Missing Trees
The Winter Sea

Carolien wrote: "This thread is very bad for my TBR! So many great books to get to listed here!"

I share your angst at the damage this thread is doing to the TBR. You have listed some of my favorite books in your list, and now I have to check out "Long Ships".

Thanks for great suggestions, everyone. I love to read about what others like.

I read some really great books this year but will name five that are sticking with me:

Old School:
Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) entertaining

New School:
Parnassus on Wheels (1918) fun read
Xingu (1916) - hilarious social climbers' book group
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (1971) - realistic, poignant

Not yet a classic:
The Siege (2001) - haunting

Annette, I also read "Parnassus on Wheels" this year and enjoyed it. Now I'm looking forward to reading "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" very soon! I've heard good things, and you've just confirmed them!

Terris wrote: "Annette, I also read "Parnassus on Wheels" this year and enjoyed it. Now I'm looking forward to reading "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" very soon! I've heard good things, and you've just confirmed ..."

Parnassus is a bit like running away with the circus, eh? And Mrs Palfrey..., a Booker Prize Short List book, was easy for me to relate to - I know quite a few women in that situation.

I had a great year of reading in 2022...so many good books! Some favorites:

Old School
Zola: The Fortune of the Rougons - Not really one of my top books of the year, but enough to hook me into the Rougon-Macquart series. I'm eager to read more in 2023.
Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin - I listened to the audiobook from Amazon Prime Classics. It was a bracing companion on my long runs.
Balzac: Old Man Goriot - This one was great. I definitely will continue with more from the Human Comedy.

New School
Morrison: Beloved - I was late to the party on this one, but oh, so good.
Achebe: Things Fall Apart
Isherwood: Goodbye to Berlin - Paired with Christopher and His Kind, an interesting view of the rise of Naziism in Germany "from the sidelines."
Dennis: Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade - Who doesn't wish they had had an Auntie Mame?


2000 and after
Fosse: The Other Name: Septology I-II - A local bookseller recommended the series. It was so good!
Haber: Saint Sebastian's Abyss - This is by the bookseller who turned me on to Fosse.
Everett: The Trees - Oh, so good. I'm eager to read more of his books in 2023.
Miller: The Song of Achilles - I was late to the party on this one, too. Another great listen while running.

And some I don't need to read again...
Mann: The Magic Mountain - I remember loving this in college, but, man, was it a drag to reread.
Tokarczuk: The Books of Jacob - l loved Plow/Bones; this was a slog
Bulawayo: Glory - The critics loved this; me, not so much.

JP wrote: "Miller: The Song of Achilles - I was late to the party on this one, too. Another great listen while running...."

I just read The Song of Achilles this week and devoured it in two days. Definitely one of my top reads this year!

Heather L wrote: "JP wrote: "Miller: The Song of Achilles - I was late to the party on this one, too. Another great listen while running...."

I just read The Song of Achilles this week and devoured ..."

Have to agree, The Song of Achilles was so good on audio.

JP wrote: "I had a great year of reading in 2022...so many good books! Some favorites:

Old School
Zola: The Fortune of the Rougons - Not really one of my top books of the year, but enough to ..."

That's worrying, I just brought Book of Jacob today for £20! :S

Very mixed year, tons of utter dreck, many more DNFs, and it seemed to get worse towards the end of the year. Still, there were some gems:

Poetry and Plays
Selected Poems by T.S. Eliot - of mixed variety, but at its best (Pruffrock, Hollow Men, Waste Land, Whispers of Immortality) he was unbeatable
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - astonishingly bleak and strangely hopeful at the same time
Fear and Misery in the Third Reich - stark portrayals of life under fascism by a refugee of it, small scenes conveying alot of drama.

Sci-Fi:
To Your Scattered Bodies Go - sexist, but brilliantly conceived and amazingly well done
The Sirens of Titan - funny and brilliant, every chapter is like a new novel
The Ministry for the Future - astounding, utopian and realistic, a love letter to humanity and it's struggles to create a better world
Of Ants and Dinosaurs - melancholy and beautiful
City - astonishingly beautiful, agonised mournful vignettes on the decay of civilisations
They: A Sequence of Unease - creepy unease perfectly formed
The Three-Body Problem - astounding epic of science and philosphy

Non-Fiction:
Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
The World, the Flesh & the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul
In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures
Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought

Classics Pre-1900:
Heart of Darkness - vivid, shocking, brutal amazing depiction of colonialism

New School Classics 1900-1999:
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West - a long slog, but by the end it transcended into an absolute classic
The Name of the Rose - one of the top five, a masterful book constellating the entire social dynamics of feudalism in a murder mystery in an abbey, a brilliant, multifaceted maze of a book
Nightmare Alley - criminally, criminally underrated. Honestly one of the best noir books ever, a stunningly bleak and raw look into alcoholism, despair, and the many facets of deception and trickery apparent in American life, from the carnival barker to the millionaire mystic
Under the Volcano - very hard read, incredible passages of boredom, but has grown on me significantly. Fantastically evoked, crazed, hallucinogenic depictions of the spiralling of an alcoholic under the growing threat of WW2. Hard but rewarding in the long term,.

Post 1999:
Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead - a total suprise, a wonderfully written ecological revenge thriller.

Worst:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror - terrible
Two Tribes - terrible
The New Populism: Democracy Stares into the Abyss - terrible
King Solomon's Mines - racist garbage
As I Lay Dying - unreadable trash
Fahrenheit 451] - perhaps the worst book i've ever read
The Alteration - shockingly appallingly wasted premise
River of Teeth - terrible
Picnic at Hanging Rock - ungodly boring
The Trouble with Being Born - the reactionary dribblings of a hysteric
The Life of Insects - disappointingly boring

My one favourite book I've read this year is The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
So full of beautiful wisdom. It's a classic from 1972

Nike wrote: "My one favourite book I've read this year is The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
So full of beautiful wisdom. It's a classic from 1972"

I have read many glowing reviews for this book this year, Nike. I must get it on my list for next year.

Nike wrote: "My one favourite book I've read this year is The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
So full of beautiful wisdom. It's a classic from 1972"

That is an amazing read. I loved it too.

Lori wrote: "Nike wrote: "My one favourite book I've read this year is The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
So full of beautiful wisdom. It's a classic from 1972"

I have read many glowin..."

Would this work for the classic humor category?

Annette wrote: "Thanks for great suggestions, everyone. I love to read about what others like.

I read some really great books this year but will name five that are sticking with me:

Old School:
Around the ..."</i>

[book:Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is one of my all-time favorites. I like many of Elizabeth Taylor's books - they're all very realistic.

Lori wrote: "...Would this work for the classic humor category? ..."

I wouldn't say it is humor.