Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Calling it break-fast because I haven’t read nearly as much the past few years. Busy with life stuff and health challenges but wanting to get back into some serious (but enjoyable!) reading this next year! :)

Challenge #1 - Old & New TBR Challenge

Pre-1800 (Old Old School)
✔️1. The Epic of Gilgamesh (~1200 BCE)
2. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho (~600 BCE)
3. The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon (1002 CE)

1800-1914 (Old School)
4. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
5. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust (1913)
6. Maurice by E.M. Forster (written in 1914)

1915-2005 (New School)
7. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)
8. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
✔️9. Augustus by John Williams (1972)

Too-Long On My TBR Shelf
10. The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1948)
11. Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata (1964)
12. Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima (1967)

Alternatives
A-1. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (1936)
A-2. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (1972)
✔️A-3. The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst (1989)

Challenge #3: Expand Your Horizon with New Authors
✔️1. Augustus by John Williams
✔️2. Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
✔️3. What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
✔️4. Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga by D.O. Fagunwa
✔️5. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
✔️6. The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst


Challenge #6: Group Reads, Buddy Reads, or Moderators Run Amok

✔️1. Augustus by John Williams
✔️2. Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson
✔️3. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
4. Mimsy Were The Borogoves by Lewis Padgett
5. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
6. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
7. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
8. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
9. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
10.
11.
12.


Challenge #8: Travel the World One Continent at a Time

✔️Africa
✔️Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (Mali)
✔️Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga by D.O. Fagunwa (Nigeria)

✔️Asia
✔️ Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq)

✔️Europe
✔️ The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst (United Kingdom)
✔️ Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (Germany)
✔️ Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russia)

✔️North America
✔️ Augustus by John Williams (United States)

South America
Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis (Brazil)
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez (Columbia)
On a Woman's Madness by Astrid H. Roemer (Suriname)

Oceania
Eucalyptus by Murray Bail (Australia)

Most Want to Visit
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Japan)

Challenge #11: Future Classics

Five Great Books that I Expect Will Stand the Test of Time:

2004 — Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke is an excellent English fantasy, and if you also enjoy Regency era literature, you should definitely check it out! Hugo Award for Best Novel (2005)

“They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic – nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one’s head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.”


2013 — The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman was, for me, about imaginary worlds that can feel more real than reality.

“How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine…”


2013 — Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich
2014 — Human Acts by Han Kang
Both written by Nobel Laureates for Literature, each book bears witness, in different ways, to history and to specific human acts. Amazing and, in my opinion, essential reading.


2019 — On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a beautiful lyrical book about complex relationships, about life, about survival, and an immigrant experience in the U.S. I’m surprised it wasn’t nominated for the Pulitzer.

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?
I miss you more than I remember you.”


Potential Future Classics?
2009 — The Museum of Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko
2011 — My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
2014 — The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Reserved

Enjoy your planning! I really liked The Count of Monte Cristo.

Hope the Break-fast is everything you wish it to be, Erin. Looks like some good food on the plate already.

Good luck and enjoy your year of reading! I added The Museum of Abandoned Secrets to my TBR. I’m planning to do a fiction/non-fiction challenge related to Ukraine. I have a few novels to choose from but that one sounds really good, too!

Good luck Erin! These look great

You have some interesting choices, Erin. Maurice has been on my TBR for a long time snd I think I even nominated it once for a Group Read. I hope you enjoy it and I will be interested to read your review.

Thank you Wobbley, Sara, Matt, Pam, Ila, and Terry! Many of these are books I’ve been wanting to read for several years or more now — but with room for some additions from the new moderator challenge! =D I like to savor my books, but I also want to read everything from everywhere all at once! Well, maybe not actually all at once, but it can be overwhelming to choose, lol!