Book Discussion: Classic Books, which ones have you read?

 Hello, Readers! I hope everyone is doing well and survived Monday. The husband left me unsupervised in Half-Priced Books over the weekend, so I ended up with all these pretty classics. 

I'll be honest: I mainly bought the collections because they were pretty. I am not a big classic reader, as I'm sure you know if you've read this blog before. However, I thought that having these on my shelf might prompt me to read them. The thought was their short; I own them, so why not read them? So far, I'm starting with Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne.

As I discussed these books with a friend, we started discussing the classics we've read. I have read more than I initially thought I did. However, I've also tried to read some and not finished them. Typically, I try to acquire a book from Project Gutenberg (which I typed as Project Glutenberg. This probably means I need to sleep, and I'm also very used to typing gluten.) For those unfamiliar with Project Gutenberg, it is a charity that aims to provide an online library of free books. The books provided have an expired U.S. copyright, so it is typically older volumes of work. The entire project is run by volunteers. You can learn more about the project here.

One of the features of Project Gutenberg is that as a user, you can see the most popular downloads. So last night (or Saturday, I can't remember), I downloaded the previous 30 days. There are definitely some classics that I've read that aren't on here, but I wanted to go through the list and see what I've read or at the very least attempted to read.

I'm curious to know which of these books you've read. Which ones did you like the most? What on here do you want to read? For me, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Pride and Prejudice were among my favorites on the list. I plan to work through several others, like the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.  

Do you find this post interesting, and would you like to see more of them? If so, please let me know in the comments! I always look forward to commentary (as long as it's not spam or phishing, I try to block those if I can.)

Top 100 eBooks on Project Gutenberg last 30 days -8/21/2022

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Read

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - Read

History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew Dickson White

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Persuasion by Jane Austen

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Ulysses by James Joyce

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson

Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Did Not Finish

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman- If I have to reread this, I will gouge my eyes out. Three times is enough, thank you very much.

The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka- Read

The Iliad by Homer

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete by Mark Twain- Read

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - I did not finish

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain- Read

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar Wilde- I can't remember if I've read this. I have definitely seen the play, however.

Emma by Jane Austen

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie- Read

A Doll's House : a play by Henrik Ibsen

Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne-Read

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The Republic by Plato

Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem

Old Granny Fox by Thornton W. Burgess

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum- Read, and surprisingly dark for a children's story.

A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The King James Version of the Bible

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Odyssey by Homer- I started to read but did not finish. I've always intended to read it all the way through, however.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens- I did not finish; I may try to get through it another time.

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Dubliners by James Joyce

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Moby Multiple Language Lists of Common Words by Grady Ward

Japanese Girls and Women by Alice Mabel Bacon

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

A Pickle for the Knowing Ones by Timothy Dexter

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving- I think I read this? Can't remember… It may be DNF.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi

Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

Josefine Mutzenbacher by Felix Salten

The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

金雲翹傳by Qingxincairen

Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine

Second Treatise of Government by John Locke

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

An Index of The Divine Comedy by Dante by Dante Alighieri

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll- Read

The Happy Prince, and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde

Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare- I've read some of his plays, if that counts.

Anthem by Ayn Rand

The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

 

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 

Goodreads Summary: In this historic romance, young Elizabeth Bennet strives for love, independence, and honesty in the vapid high society of 19th century England.

Goodreads Rating: 4.26 stars with over 3 million ratings

Genre listing: Classics, Romance, Fiction, Literature, British Literature

Goodreads Challenge: 46/60

2020 Reading Challenge: #7 a book from Project Gutenberg (Find the full challenge here) Get ready for 2021's challenge (here)

Book Review:

Merry Christmas Eve, readers! I am off work for the next four days, and I am super excited. I plan to read at least one more book and do a final for one of my classes. Just an FYI about the 2021 challenge. There was an issue with the PDF printable version that I published. I'm not sure what's going on with it, but I took my link for the pdf down and replaced it with Tress's. Sorry for any inconvenience. You can find her post about the challenge (here). 

I had been attempting to read something for the Project Gutenberg slot for a while, but I honestly couldn't bring myself to read a classic. I thought that maybe if I went with one I was already familiar with from movies, it might go better. I adore the Pride and Prejudice movie with Keira Knightly, so I thought this would be a good option. (Side note, if I refer to 'the movie' in this post, it will be this version of it.)

Being familiar with the story helped, but some parts were overly dry and formal, making it hard to read. This is typically what makes it so I can't get into classics. Once the story progressed, it was a lot easier to get into, but it was a rough beginning for me. I'm not really going to dwell too much on Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. That was all as expected for me, and I enjoyed it. 

I was delighted to get a more in-depth look at the character's personalities than what I had previously known. The scenes pretty much read like I'd expect them to, though maybe not in the order I was expecting them. Obviously, there were some scenes in the movie that weren't in the book. I was really pleased to see that one of my favorite lines in the film was directly from the book. 

"If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure." -around 97% of the book.

I don't know why, but this line just amuses me. 

One thing I was really surprised at how much more ridiculous Lydia was in the book. In the movie, it was incredibly underplayed and glazed over how much of a scandal it was. There's a good chunk of the story dedicated to all of the things that had to be done to find her and Wickham and cover up their running away. I feel like, in the end, they kind of got Karma for just being awful. Somehow, Mrs. Bennet was even more vapid and ridiculous in the book. I pretty much just had to roll my eyes during her scenes. I don't really feel like she cared about whether or not her daughters were happy in their marriages (which, I get is part of the times) but just cared about how their marriages made her look. 

It took me a little bit to get into the story because of the formal wording, but I really liked the story. Because of my love of a movie version of it, it felt familiar. Truthfully, I'm mostly just in this for the sly snark like this:

"I must trouble you once more for congratulations. Elizabeth will soon be the wife of Mr. Darcy. Console Lady Catherine as well as you can. But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give."

Book Review of Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Goodreads Summary: Peter Pan, the book based on J.M. Barrie's famous play, is filled with unforgettable characters: Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up; the fairy, Tinker Bell; the evil pirate, Captain Hook; and the three children--Wendy, John, and Michael--who fly off with Peter Pan to Neverland, where they meet Indians and pirates and a crocodile that ticks.
Goodreads Rating: 4.1 with over 200,000 ratings
Genre Listing: Classics, Fantasy, Fiction, Children's book, Adventure
Get the book: Amazon, Book Depository
Goodreads Challenge: 3/30
2018 Reading Challenge: 1. A book from Project Gutenberg (You can find the 2018 reading challenge list here.)

Book Review:

First things first, a little info on the challenge topic for this one. If you've never heard of Project Gutenberg, I highly recommend you check it out. You can do so by visiting https://www.gutenberg.org/. Project Gutenberg is mostly running on donations and volunteer work where they digitalize, proofread, and catalog works with expired copyrights so that users can obtain them for free. I believe they have audiobooks as well as e-books on their massive online library. Be sure to give them some love for the fantastic work they do! 

I decided to go with Peter Pan because I know the story (Thanks, Disney!), so I thought it'd be easier to get through. I'm really not big on classics. I have a tough time reading them. I'm not sure if it's the language used, or what. I try to read one a year, but it doesn't always happen. I can see why Peter Pan is a classic though. For the most part, I really enjoyed the story. However, I'm not sure if it's because I already loved the story through various movies or not. Hook is one of my all-time favorite movies, seriously. Looking back, they actually did an excellent job of tying it into the original story. 

So, I had no idea that this was initially a play. I may be living under a rock. I know that plays of Peter Pan had been made, but I guess I always assumed it was a book and plays were adapted from it, not the other way around. Knowing that, makes sense of what I thought to be a weird style of narration for the story. I enjoyed it, it was whimsical, and I liked how everything had a personality, but there were times where I felt like it rambled on and lost me. For it being a children's story there were a lot of times where I had no idea what was going on because of this narration. 

Speaking of it being a children's story, this is actually really dark when you get into it. There's a meme going around, and when I first saw it, I thought oh that kind of makes sense. I've posted it below, but in a way, it's kind of true. I don't necessarily believe that the lost boys were dead because they eventually grow up. But I'm pretty sure that Peter Pan is actually dead in it. It doesn't really say it, but I definitely felt like it was implied throughout the story. Sorry to for the spoiler and for any childhoods I just ruined. 

Image found on Google

Despite being dark and creepy, part of me kind of wants to dive into the psychology of Peter Pan. The main character is (probably) dead and is flying around getting other children to follow him because he's lonely. He can fly and take them to a magical world both of which stop happening when they get older and stop believing. He forgets everything all of the time, has no concept of time, can sustain on make-believe food, and is desperate to find a mother that he believes he ran away from. In all actuality I think it mentioned he fell and cracked his head, furthering my opinion that he actually died. I just made a comment to my husband that Classic Children's stories are creepy, and he said they were told to terrify children. Not sure if it's actually true or not, but I'd believe it.

For the most part, I enjoyed the story, once you get past the whole narrative rambling and creepy dead main character thing. I actually thought that that Neverland was whimsical, and I liked Tinkerbell and Nana's characters. Is it a classic I'm going to read over and over again? No probably not, but it is one more book I can say that I've read in my life, and probably a classic everyone should read. I can't say that I loved it by any means, but it was entertaining. 

Book Review of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Goodreads Summary: Blessed with—or doomed to—eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less of a blessing than it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.
Goodreads Rating: 3.86 stars with over 186,000 ratings.
Genre Listing: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction, Classics, Children
Get the book: Amazon, Book Depository
Book Haul: June 2017 Book Haul
Reading Challenge: #38 a book that was turned into a movie

Housekeeping things

So, apparently, my reading challenge has been discussed in some reading circles, and that makes me excited. I'll be honest I bit off way more than I could chew with this one. 50 books is a lot, and when I created it, I was thinking of very specific books on my shelf. Kind of made it difficult. I've been asked to do one again for 2018, and I will be doing that. However, I am going to cut it down to 30ish books. I also desperately want to schedule when I'm going to read books. I'm also going to try and do a general reading update soon.  I'm still not currently accepting requests from authors, and I'm sorry for that. I just honestly do not have the time to promise that I'm going to read a book at a certain time. 

I'm going to be trying to make this blog a priority again so let me know what you want to see on here. Discussions, books you want me to read, updates. Either just let me know in the comments, on Goodreads, or the blog's facebook page. I hinted around on there that I *may* start writing short stories and posting them on here as well. That's still the plan, I just have to sit down and put the words to screen. I have something in my brain I think you all will really enjoy. 

Tuck Everlasting Review

I can not express how excited I was to find this book. I was in love with the movie when it came out (holy crap that was 15 years ago, I'm getting old). If you haven't seen the movie, it stars Alexis Bledel and Jonathon Jackson. I remember seeing it in theaters with a group of friends. I'm pretty sure they all thought it sucked, but I thought it was magical and whimsical. (Okay, probably not whimsical... I probably didn't use that word at 15.) 

This probably goes without saying, but there are some serious differences between the book and movie. The book is only about 150 pages or so. It's an effortless read, and I loved how everything was worded in it. It's descriptive, and I felt like it gave life to the scenery. I was really impressed with how well everything done in just a few pages. It starts off describing this awful hot and humid summer to the point where you can just feel how sticky it is. Have I told you all I'm a sucker for details? Only about a million times? Well, I'm still a sucker for details. 

This is where the movie and book start to differ. In the book, Winnie is ten going on eleven, and it's more about her and the Tuck family. In the movie, however, she's a teenager, and the movie is about a romance between her and Jesse if I remember correctly. This was a completely weird difference for me since I watched the movie long before I knew it was a book. I went into it thinking Winnie was going to be in teens falling in love with Jesse and she's ten. Awkward.

Because of how short the book is it moves very quickly, so there isn't a lot of time for the relationship between Winnie and the Tucks to develop. They kind of instantly just accept each other. Winnie, for the most part, accepts their secret as the truth (she does have some doubt, but she more or less goes along with it) and they accept that she's just not going to tell a soul. Just like that their friends. In a way, it kind of makes senses though. Starting out, Winnie is incredibly lonely she really only has her grandmother and her parents. I think that because the Tucks have had to isolate themselves for so long, they are also experiencing that same loneliness, and so when the Tucks meet Winnie, they cling to one another and form this bond. 

The books and movie end *slightly* different from one another as well. I believe in the movie Jesse was the one to go check on Winnie years later, but in the book, it's Mae and Tuck. I definitely liked the book version better. I think it just kind of fit better, and the movie ending was to make it more of a romance story. I really enjoyed the other notable friendship that Winnie made in the book. I thought the friendship with the toad was interesting and proved Tuck's point all along. 

I want more of this story. I want it to come full circle and know what all the characters did once they left each other's company. Where did they go? What did they see? Times like this are when I wonder if I should get into fan fiction. Anyways, if you have a couple hours to kill I recommend spending it with Winnie Foster and the Tuck family. 

Book Review of 1984 by George Orwell

Goodreads Summary: The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of "negative utopia" -a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions -a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.
Goodreads Rating: 4.13 stars with over 1.9 million ratings
Genre Listing: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Literature, Fantasy, Philosophy, Politics, British Literature
Get the Book: Amazon, Book Depository
Book Challenge: #6 A Book that's considered a classic

Book Review:

I finished a classic! Woohoo! I feel like I should get some kind of award when I actually finish a classic. I don't know what it is, but I have a hard time reading them. 1984 by George Orwell was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. At times I found myself completely engaged in it and not able to put it down, but then there were a lot of occasions where I felt like it was painfully boring and I just wanted it to get on with the point. I really didn't find myself getting into it until around 40% and after that my interest in it was sporadic at best. 

Given that this book was produced in the late 40s early 50s, it's actually a bit terrifying. There were definite places that I could draw some connections to modern day. I can also see why this year purchases of it have skyrocketed, but I'm not going to dive any further into that subject. You all can infer what you want from it, and leave it at that.

I thought the idea of Winston's job was really interesting and how there are entire organizations to altering previously recorded information. The workers in the party just seem to go with it and update it as needed and no one but Winston seems to question it. I also found it interesting, and terrifying, that the entire culture was built on hate and fear. The world that Orwell created seems dark and awful, which I suppose is what Big Brother intended. 

The imagery created was something I really enjoyed. I thought that Orwell went into a surprising amount of detail about the devices used, the scenery, and just the every day to day life of an outer party member. The gadgetry almost seemed a little steampunk to me, but given that this would have been 30 years into the future for Orwell, I thought it was pretty incredible that he created it. 

I didn't really get the relationship with Julia, and I really disliked her. She seemed really vapid to me and like she just hated the party because it was something to do, and nothing to do with her actual thoughts. I honestly could have done without her in the story, but I suppose Winston's relationship with her is what progressed him into diving further into his own thoughts. 

The ending surprised me quite a bit. I was expecting something completely different, but I'm not disappointed in the actual ending. It fit really well with the darkness and bleakness of the story, and honestly, I think it made everything a bit more interesting.  The one thing that really threw me off was the chapters that were written from "the book." I felt like they were dreadfully boring, and honestly, I mostly skimmed them so I wouldn't fall asleep.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. I can see why it's a classic. It's not going to be my favorite book ever, but I'm glad I took the time to read such an important classic. I definitely think that it's the backbone and inspiration of a lot of dystopian books that are out today.

Book Review of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Goodreads Summary: Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and a host of other curious creatures come to life as they set out on an exciting quest down the Yellow Brick Road in search of the elusive Wizard. Reset in large, clear type and accompanied by 20 beautiful black-and-white illustrations. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. After a cyclone transports her to the land of Oz, Dorothy must seek out the great wizard in order to return to Kansas.
Goodreads Rating: 3.95 with 169,706 ratings
Genre Listing: Classics, Fantasy, Children's stories, Adventure, Literature, 
Get the book: Amazon , Book Depository

Review:  

Edited 12/1/2016
Oh, my gosh I  read a classic, which is a huge accomplishment for me. I hardly ever read classics. I have a hard time getting through old stories. I started reading this because my friend Leslie invited me to join a group on Goodreads that does certain themes each month. July was classics. It ran for about a week I think. I intended on reading more than one book, but Chris and I were in the middle of moving.

Before I get into my review, I need to talk about my sort of obsession with the Wizard of Oz. My mother instilled this passion in me from a very young age. It was one of her favorite movies. Back in the day before DVDs (Yeah, I'm that old) I remember that the Wizard of Oz was shown on TV once a year. That was the only time I ever got to watch the movie. We watched it every year, which was fantastic. When I got older, I fell in love with different versions of the story. I love Wicked, Oz the Great and Powerful with James Franco, and I even love the mini-series Tinman with Zooey Deschanel (this one is my favorite). Despite my love for the story, I had never read the original Wizard of Oz book by L. Frank Baum. Tragic I know.

So when Leslie told me about the Classics readathon, I knew what I had to read. Regarding page length, this book is a short read, but it took me a while because of the formal language. It's got a weird vibe to it. It's light and reads like a kids book, but holy hell is this book morbid. I was not prepared. It goes into very graphic details of the characters killing their opponents and what not. I was pretty surprised, but from what I hear, all of the classic kid's stories are super dark. While it is labeled as a children's story, I would not let young kids read it.

I was surprised at how different this is from the movie. I guess I always assumed that the film was similar to the book since I didn't know any differently. There's a lot of differences, like another witch, silver shoes instead of ruby shoes, a lot more adventures, and a lot more of characters and enemies. I was also surprised to learn that the winged monkeys aren't bad. They're just essentially slaves to whoever owns the Golden Cap.

Overall I thought it was cute, and now my Wizard of Oz obsession has grown a bit more. If you decide to read this, don't go in expecting just to be reading the movie, and prepare yourself for some pretty morbid death scenes.