Saturday, 19 December 2009

So I said I was done with challenges....


I had picked my 6 challenges for 2010, I had decided 6 at one time and no more then I read Eva's post, knowing I was weak willed, and saw a challenge I couldn't resist! Grrr!!!!!

Our Mutual Read is a Victorian reading challenge offering participants different levels of participation. I'm going for Level 2: 8 books, at least 4 written during 1837 - 1901. The other books may be Neo-Victorian or non-fiction. I'm also participating in the Short Story Mini Challenge:read 12 short stories written or taking place between 1837 - 1901 and post a review.
I guess in comparrison to most people I have read a lo of Victorian Literature but as an English Literature graduate I feel I should have read so much more. And I'm not going to kick myself too much for participating as I will use it to help me with the 1001 list.

Here is a potential list, I have starred 4 that I definately want to read.
Victorian Literature - Old and trusted friends:
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy*
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens*
Adam Bede – George Eliot
Born in Exile – George Gissing

Victorian Literature - Those I've been meaning to get to:
Hunger – Knut Hamsun (Been on mount tbr forever)
A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Warden – Anthony Trollope
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
Endymion - Benjamin Desraeli
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

Victorian Literature - A second chance:
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I must give this another try after a teacher killed it)
Almayer's Folley - Joseph Conrad
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde (A reread)*
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson

Neo-Victorian:
Affinity - Sarah Waters (I love this lady's work)*
The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber (I loved this and would love to reread it)
A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
The Court of the Air - Stephen Hunt

Non-Fiction:
The Madwoman in the Attic - SM Gilbert (a critique of the representation of women in Victorian fiction)
What the Victorians Did For Us - Adam Hart Davis
The London Underworld in the Victorian Period: Authentic First Person Accounts by Thieves, Beggers and Prostitutes - Henry Mayhew

Short Stories:
Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling
The Yellow Wallpaper and other stories - Charlotte Gilman Perkins

Victorian Children's Stories:
Something from my CS Lewis Anthology
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell (which to my shame I have never read)
The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
The Water Babies - Charles Kinsley

My Reads:
Short Stories:
Amy Foster - Joseph Conrad
The Imaginative Woman - Thomas Hardy
The Boy's Veto - Thomas Hardy

2 comments:

Eva said...

Your list makes me want to start mine all over again! LOL

Ok, so since I'm clueless about Dickens, you said you'd recommend Little Dorrit? That sounds good. Are there any of his books that you think someone who loved A Tale of Two Cities should *definitely* try out?

katrina said...

I haven't read that one, sorry Eva.