I know I've said this before, but I still think this has been a really weird reading year for me. Not bad necessarily, just weird. It can't be helped--life happens and it intrudes on your reading and you just have to go with the flow. Even if the flow has been lots of cheery, frothy, easy sorts of reads (not that there is anything wrong with those--and I've read some very good ones this year!). But I've been thinking lately how much I miss reading classic fiction. Out of curiosity I checked my reading list from this year and discovered that I've read a paltry number of classics (and I use the term in the broadest sense)--six if I can count one nonfiction amongst all the novels. Not even one a month.
Part of my problem is that much like nonfiction I will generally only allow myself one classic at a time. And if the book is really long, well then, all the other books just stack up and must wait their turn. But that makes me a little fidgety all of a sudden. I've been reading Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, and it has been going well, only really slow. And you can see how chunky the book is. Throwing all caution to the wind and thanks to recent bookish conversation I decided that Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South is just what I need. And, you know, it really is just what I need. I love it. I'm reading at a nice clip and it's the book I most want to pick up nearly every time I reach for a book.
I'm hoping to finish North and South by the end of the October (or thereabout) as next month I've already set my mind to reading Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest. Effi is a much more slender novel and I think I can easily squeeze her in. Then there is Wilkie Collins's No Name. No Name is from last year and has been sitting on a special shelf under my night table where I look at it all the time. I'm afraid it fell victim to the distractions of everyday life and being another really long book. I'm a third of the way in and it seems a pity to give up on it, so I'm contemplating diving back in and seeing if I can pick up the thread. Victorian novels appeal to me at the moment and Wilkie is a favorite.
I have a massive TBR stack made up purely of classic novels and I look at it longingly quite often. Edith Wharton, E.M. Forster, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, Thomas Hardy, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola, D.H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney and on and on and on... I'm not setting myself any special task, but I hope to pick up more of my classics to read alongside my other lighter books. Just curious--do you read many classics? Mostly classics? No classics? Who is your favored author, or are you like me with a stack of books to choose from? I like variety in my reading so I guess it is time for the classics to take their turn. I know it is a cliché, but oh so many books, and so very little time. And boy do I wish I could read just a little bit faster.